A new path to Glory.

[Hylian]

http://smashbrawlrankings.com/index.php?topic=755.0


Article I just wrote. I think it's worth a read .

 

[shadydentist]

http://smashbrawlrankings.com/index.php?topic=755.0
A new path to glory.

Hello everyone. Recently, I have spent many hours playing brawl. I have also spent time watching videos, reading forums, discussing the game with friends. You get the picture. Something that I think everyone should realize is how different this game is then melee. On the surface, they look pretty similar. Brawl just seems to be a slowed down version of Melee where everyone is floaty. I am here to tell you that on a competitive scale…these games don’t even seem like they belong in the same series. Once people stop trying to play Brawl like how melee was played, I think the game will progress much further.

Let’s start from the beginning. You just got brawl. Or maybe you are playing at a friend’s house for the first time. You have seen tons of videos of people playing, and read everything about the game. Thoughts race through your mind as you pick your first character. You want to know how it feels. To have your own opinion. A credible opinion. Everything that you have heard about the game is about to be experienced. You are about to experience complete bliss, and you know exactly how you are going to do it. So you start the match. You suddenly realize that, even after all the time you spent watching people play and reading about Brawl, that you have no idea what you are doing. At all. Everything feels different. Nothing works the same as Melee. You realize, this game is something else.

Something else indeed. It’s this, “Something else” that people need to start focusing on. Forget the days of shield pressuring in melee. We need to unlearn melee to get good at brawl. Almost all of the habits a competitive player has in melee, put him at a disadvantage in brawl. When you try to JC grab you just jump and airdodge. When you accidentally dodge off the stage, you forget to recover, because you think you are dead. So many little things that we programmed our hands to do after playing melee for so long have to be undone.

Now, you have done it. Gotten used to the physics. When you want to grab someone, you can actually do it as opposed to jumping and airdodging. You stopped killing yourself. You feel comfortable playing. This is a point in which you get much better at brawl. You can start to learn how the characters work, as well as combos and mechanics. You no longer have to think about trying not to wavedash. This is when you need to start trying new things.

Competitive players are going to need to adapt to play this game well. In melee, most players just disregarded things such as spacing until almost 5 or 6 years into the games release. Why did they do this? It’s simple. In melee, you could just cancel your moves into fast attack that came out before grabs. Or powershielded attack. Or other attacks even. You could interrupt things easily. Why worry about spacing, when you can just pillar someones shield with falco until they roll so you can catch them with a laser and get a free grab or death combo? This style of play rendered almost half the cast pretty much useless in tournament play. It took many years before players found out how important things such as spacing are. And when we did, we got much better.

Now look at people trying to play brawl. In almost all the videos I have seen, people try to do things like in melee. They approach almost exclusively in the air. I have seen so many matches that could have been easily won by just shielding the whole time. In melee, we were so fast that shielding almost put you at a disadvantage if you couldn’t wavedash out of it fast like samus. Shielding in brawl is going to be much more important. Powershielding is now much easier. It also reduces all stun and knockback. It is pretty much a parry. I predict that in a year, everyone is going to be able to powershield every attack perfectly, and then counterattack. This makes the player think about what move they want to use and the consequences of using it. Players will now be punished for using moves. Almost no move now will be uncounterable now that shield pressuring is pretty much gone. So you are going to need to know what you are going to do, what your opponent is going to do, and what you are going to do to counter-act that. Playstyles will be completely different from melee. Let me give an example of a character I am very familiar with. Samus.

In melee, Samus is a good character who is used moderately in tournament play. She has an amazing spam game with platforms, and is very fast with overall great priority, and the least amount of average lag on all of her aerials. Her laggiest aerial has less landing lag then sheiks fastest when L-canceled. She has amazing range and a great shield pressure game with jabs missiles and screw attacks. Her defensive game is amazing, and she is one of the hardest characters to approach due to her Up-B out of shield and her amazing crouch cancel. Now look at the brawl Samus. She was nerfed beyond belief from melees viewpoint. Her smash missiles now have seemingly almost no use. There is no wavedash to compensate for her horrible roll. She lost her amazing crouch cancel. Bomb jumping is now harder. Her amazing nair was nurfed a ton. Down smash was nerfed. Her character model is now huge and is slow. Many samus players like myself were very disappointed at all of this. Samus was practically the worst character in the first game, and now Sakurai made her bad AGAIN? Why?!?!.

But what happens when we stop playing this game like it is Melee? Samus becomes much better. Her grapple in the air is amazing and much different then melee’s. It has good knockback, and can be used several times in the air. Also, if you land during the animation, then all of the lag is immediately cancelled, allowing you to do any attack to your opponent if you hit them. A samus in melee would never do this, so many players might not even think of trying until they saw someone else do it. This tactic will allow samus to be able to keep away from opponents very effectively, as her grapple is probably the longest move in the game. Also, the tip of the grapple has a sweetspot with more knockback then the rest of it. When I found this while playing with Tobias, he thought of another interesting thing. You can full hop, and then homing missile then grapple cancel into anything. The grapple will hit your opponent right after or before the missile does, allowing you to grab them or use any attack depending on how far away you are from them. Many new tactics like this are waiting to be discovered.

Another thing I noticed while playing Samus in Brawl was that her homing missiles come out faster then her smash missiles now. While I was disappointed that she seemingly had no projectile game now, this made me happy. Why did it make me happy? Because you can now DHM (Double Homing Missile). This is much like double missiling in melee, except potentially better. Two homing missiles in one jump! And you don’t even need platforms to cancel them! Amazing! Discoveries such as this will move peoples views away from how melee was played and show them how playing differently will benefit them greatly.

Players are now going to have to come up with new tactics and ways to play this game. A new path will be followed. A different road that melee took. While melee focused on speed and combos and shield pressuring as well as moving so that your opponent didn’t know where you were going, Brawl is going to focus more on spacing and precision, as well as being able to counter attack and plan out your approaches and edgeguards.

Good luck to all the upcoming brawl players and keep in mind, this is not Melee!

-Hylian.

Good read. And quoted so people don't have to hunt down another site.

 

[VU!?]

I have to agree with everything you said. I loved melee but I wasn't into all the advanced techs or even L-canceling and I could never beat my friends who did. In Brawl I'd say we are pretty even since they can no longer wave dash and all that stuff.

 

[sv3]

Nice article

Edit: "A samus in melee would never do this, so many players might not even think of trying until they saw someone else do it."

I think this is a pretty important quote. Some 'competitive' players of Melee have difficulty understanding stuff like this. They watch other people do something and copy, so it was easy for them to jump into the competitive scene Melee had. These people, unfortunately, lack any sort of general fighting game knowledge though, so now they have to wait until they can see someone do various stuff in Brawl before they can play Brawl competitively. In the meantime, they seem to have nothing better to do than talk about concepts of which they barely have any understanding.

I think that point, though, is just a subpoint to the crucial 'Don't play Brawl like it's Melee' point you're making in the article.

 

[Fizz-sama]

You own man. Seriously...I absolutely loved reading that.

What is it with me loving Texas smashers? You guys rock.

 

[Hitaku]

I think it's worth a read .

I couldn't agree more. =)

Thanks for taking the time to write this.

 

[Syde7]

One of the best posts I've ever read.... ever.

If there is one, I mean *ONE* lousy 'Oh Im really, really good... Im a competitive player who thinks brawl sucks even though I haven't played the game because I wanted a Melee 2.0 and didn't get it. I use jargon and such and hate people who casually play the game' person who flames this with some half arsed, three sentenced failed attempt at sarcasm post... they should be, Iu'un know... banned.

Excellent article.

 

[Hylian]

Thanks everyone .


After my first one was taken so well I thought I would put more thought into this article .

 

[Rohins]

Pretty much hit the nail on the head, at least as far as me starting Brawl and getting better at it.

 

[GameICY1]

really nice work, Hylian, another great article!

 

[Sir Bedevere]

Great read. And I'm thankful you focused on Samus, my old main, because I can understand this so much better . ^_^

 

[jay~B]

Could've just copied and pasted that over here.

 

[Lupo Aro]

Excellent read, great job.

 

[T.U.C.]

So you start the match. You suddenly realize that, even after all the time you spent watching people play and reading about Brawl, that you have no idea what you are doing. At all. Everything feels different. Nothing works the same as Melee. You realize, this game is something else.


great!!! i love that

 

[da K.I.D.]

i loved the article it was amazing, and pretty GD'd close to perfect but i only have two gripes. 1. is that we know that there are those that will watch vids and copy what the original ppl do on their own and this is going to stop them. even though that wasnt really the point of the post was it. but ne way 2. is that the post was crazy long as it is so i dont think it would have hurt to make it a lil longer and use another, maybe two more chars. as examples.... why do i say that? because i dont main samus. lol how about handing me some Adv. manuvers for kirby or falco now. because even though i am an avid fighting gamer and i teach myself a lot of aspects of these games. it doesnt hurt to go out and see what other ppeople can come up with.

btw im not being serious i had just wished you had used some 1 else besides samus cause like i said i dont main her
but other than those 2 things it was entirely perfect and correct

kudos to you my man

 

[iron blade]

Wow. You explained it better than I thought possible. Great read, this should be super-stickied.

 

[CO18]

Nice article man.

 

[DeadtoSin]

Wow, a fairly unbiased article written about Brawl?!?!

 

[TheKoopaBros.]

An excellent article. Obviously I won't be making any judgements on Brawl until I play it, but this article is a good reference on the gameplay of the game and a good way to point that Brawl is going to be much different than melee was.

Very well written, by the way.

 

[Tanzz]

As if it hasn't been said enough already...
Awesome post. Brawl is going to be sick.

 

[timbers92]

it's gonna be weird trying to learn how to play brawl after playing melee for so long.

 

[Super Drybones]

Playing Melee to playing Brawl is why pencils have erasers.

 

[Prax]

You brought up a good point, the only reason people are saying brawl wont be a good tourney game is that their all playing it like melee or havent played it. I agree with almost everything in the article.

 

[Pi]

But I liked how melee was played...


But I guess that's not really relevant to this article, if I want to give brawl a chance you've showed me what I need to do, ty.

Still though, I'd have been fine with melee v2.

 

[Kirby M.D.]

Thanks for breaking it down Hylian, your articles are well-written and sane.

 

[soviet prince]

great read.

 

[Azamgi]

Nice job. I really like it.

I have this feeling that Brawl is going to have a whole new set of competitive players. Or Meleers are going to have to adapt fast!

Now I'm glad I never became a competitive Melee player!

 

[Hylian]

But I liked how melee was played...


But I guess that's not really relevant to this article, if I want to give brawl a chance you've showed me what I need to do, ty.

Still though, I'd have been fine with melee v2.

I also would of been fine with Melee 2.0. I love melee. I am one of the most technical melee players and I love moving fast.


That doesn't stop me from seeing how amazing brawl is .

 

[Moustachio]

I'm sooo happy it's not melee 2.0....

 

[Rang Flash]

I'm sooo happy it's not melee 2.0....

I'm with Hylian in that I wouldn't mind it being a Melee 2.0, because frankly, Melee was a really good game competitive or not. Brawl on the other hand looks like it's something completely unique, also good IMO.

 

[HiougiQ]

DUDE after reading that Im so hype for brawl now!!!! Im going to show this artical to some people I know ^_^

 

[GameICY1]

do you think that we'll find brawl has as much depth as melee given time, or do you think its not only a different game, but a fundamentally shallower one?

 

[Eldiran]

Excellent article. I'm tempted to ask, what was the first one you wrote?

 

[da K.I.D.]

maybe

do you think that we'll find brawl has as much depth as melee given time, or do you think its not only a different game, but a fundamentally shallower one?

i was thinking about the exact same thing and i think it might be shallower but either way we will have to play the game extensively before we can come to that realization and that option is just fine with me

 

[billywill]

Preach on brother Hylian, preach on

 

[Timat the Slayer]

I applaud you, sir.

Nice thread. Good read amongst the lameness of the rest of the General Brawl boards.

:bigthumbu

 

[Hylian]

Excellent article. I'm tempted to ask, what was the first one you wrote?

Look at the Advanced Tactics sticky. At the bottom where they link all the other misc topics click the one that says "Melee players transition to brawl"

That is the first one.

 

[Vadorojo]

Great article! After finally getting a chance to play at the LA Tourney, I can't agree with you more.

Although I was well aware of the terminology and the tactics of the advanced Smash community, I never got into it myself and I rarely wavedashed, but I certainly tried to L-cancel and shield-grab etc., etc. However, since I didn't rely on typical Melee-tournament techniques, when I picked up the Classic Controller for Brawl, it felt like a friend I had heard a lot about, but was finally meeting. The characters moved in a way that made sense to my Melee-programmed mind, but at the same time, it felt different. Overall, it was different and great!

Regarding the advanced players, I could easily tell who the Melee-tournament players were. First of all, they mainly picked Shiek and Fox (lol), but second of all, they just LOOKED like they were playing Melee. The way they fought in the air and when they chose to dash and smash felt like it was trying to imitate Melee. While they certainly did better than the complete newbs, they didn't do nearly as well as you might expect. All of the Final 4, for instance, seemed far more Brawl-attuned than Melee-attuned.

Anyway, I look forward to discovering this new path to glory! Brawl is a fun and DIFFERENT game!!!

 

[GameICY1]

So you start the match. You suddenly realize that, even after all the time you spent watching people play and reading about Brawl, that you have no idea what you are doing. At all. Everything feels different. Nothing works the same as Melee. You realize, this game is something else.

though, watching and reading about Brawl might be a good way to start unlearning Melee, right? especially if we keep your advice in mind.

 

[supraking777]

though, watching and reading about Brawl might be a good way to start unlearning Melee, right? especially if we keep your advice in mind.

It would only help marginally, if any, I would imagine. Most of Smash is physically getting used to reacting in certain way to certain situations. It requires the experience of playing, I would think, to unlearn Melee and learn Brawl.