MookieRah
Kinda Sorta OK at Smash
First I'm going to openly admit that I don't have Brawl and haven't played it yet. I wish I did (much like everyone here who hasn't played it); however, I'm not letting my time go to waste as I have been observing videos of smart competitive players and been keeping tabs on them. From watching I've learned A LOT of stuff, and it all seems to point to one thing. Intuitive play.
To truly understand everything I say in this post you will need to be up to date with what we currently know. If you want a refresher course go here: http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=140981
What do I mean by this? Well think about it. A lot of the stuff we did in melee was incredibly cryptic. We haphazardly stumbled upon it, and while it worked it did divide the community into haves and have nots. Now I'll be the first one to say that those who condemned the AT's in melee were being immature when it comes to playing a game competitively, but it doesn't change the fact that these core pieces to competitive play were not something that someone would just learn on their own.
With Brawl however, it seems that the removal of our old ATs were not to remove depth. I say that because we have already discovered a lot of little tricks and the game hasn't even been around for a week now. A lot of these things seem more intentional. For example, the jump back towards, where you can turn around and jump but keep your forward momentum. This is something that we would intuitively discover by just playing the game. It wasn't cryptic at all, it wasn't some weird function of the physics, it's something that people would realize through observation over time.
This goes to my next point, which is a large portion of why people are upset. This is the removal of L-canceling not being a big deal. For starters, raise your hand if you figured out L-canceling by yourself. I don't see any hands myself, I've yet to run into any person who figured that out on their own before hand. I'm sure they exist, as we found out L-canceling on the smashboards, but as it stands L-canceling just isn't intuitive at all. Nowhere at all is there any mention in melee that if you press R at the right time you will be rewarded like that. Keep in mind L-canceling was an intentional technique added into melee. If you want proof just go to an internet archive and pull up the old old version of smashbros.com where it's talking about SSB64. On that site they actually tell you how to Z-cancel.
So yeah, you are probably wondering now. Why take it out if they wanted the mechanic in the game? Well, for starters like I said it wasn't intuitive. The thing is, we are alright without l-canceling. Sakurai and his team weren't dumb like some people are thinking, they realized that getting rid of L-canceling required them to do something to make the game faster. What they did was simple. Most attacks don't have as much lag upon landing. This is a minor fix, but this isn't the major thing. The big thing, isn't this. People thought this was their fix for it. No. So what is the replacement for L-canceling? It's very simple. Everyone is floatier now. Most aerials are faster now. The new L-canceling is simple, you have to time your aerials so that you land after the animation is over. If you do this you do not suffer from any lag.
I've watched a lot of vids, and it seems like this was indeed their intent on working without L-canceling. It may be too early for me to say this, but I feel as if they spent a lot of time with the characters and they definitely had this in mind in the design of the characters themselves. Even Ganon, being the slowest character I've seen so far, has an aerial that he can spam without lag (his uair). Also, specifically Ganon, they realized that his lag would still impair him, so they gave him what appears to be one of the best moves in melee history, his new forward B. Now you aren't safe from him, as he can severely punish his opponents for shielding and it opens up his options quite a bit. He is still somewhat balanced because he isn't speedy though. That seems to be the magic behind it all.
I hope this will make some of the brawl pessimists change their mindset about Brawl. I think people are too caught up in trying to compare it to melee that they haven't tried looking at it in a different light. Honestly, this game is shaping up to be amazing. I have no doubts that this game will be more deep and more varied than melee.
To truly understand everything I say in this post you will need to be up to date with what we currently know. If you want a refresher course go here: http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=140981
What do I mean by this? Well think about it. A lot of the stuff we did in melee was incredibly cryptic. We haphazardly stumbled upon it, and while it worked it did divide the community into haves and have nots. Now I'll be the first one to say that those who condemned the AT's in melee were being immature when it comes to playing a game competitively, but it doesn't change the fact that these core pieces to competitive play were not something that someone would just learn on their own.
With Brawl however, it seems that the removal of our old ATs were not to remove depth. I say that because we have already discovered a lot of little tricks and the game hasn't even been around for a week now. A lot of these things seem more intentional. For example, the jump back towards, where you can turn around and jump but keep your forward momentum. This is something that we would intuitively discover by just playing the game. It wasn't cryptic at all, it wasn't some weird function of the physics, it's something that people would realize through observation over time.
This goes to my next point, which is a large portion of why people are upset. This is the removal of L-canceling not being a big deal. For starters, raise your hand if you figured out L-canceling by yourself. I don't see any hands myself, I've yet to run into any person who figured that out on their own before hand. I'm sure they exist, as we found out L-canceling on the smashboards, but as it stands L-canceling just isn't intuitive at all. Nowhere at all is there any mention in melee that if you press R at the right time you will be rewarded like that. Keep in mind L-canceling was an intentional technique added into melee. If you want proof just go to an internet archive and pull up the old old version of smashbros.com where it's talking about SSB64. On that site they actually tell you how to Z-cancel.
So yeah, you are probably wondering now. Why take it out if they wanted the mechanic in the game? Well, for starters like I said it wasn't intuitive. The thing is, we are alright without l-canceling. Sakurai and his team weren't dumb like some people are thinking, they realized that getting rid of L-canceling required them to do something to make the game faster. What they did was simple. Most attacks don't have as much lag upon landing. This is a minor fix, but this isn't the major thing. The big thing, isn't this. People thought this was their fix for it. No. So what is the replacement for L-canceling? It's very simple. Everyone is floatier now. Most aerials are faster now. The new L-canceling is simple, you have to time your aerials so that you land after the animation is over. If you do this you do not suffer from any lag.
I've watched a lot of vids, and it seems like this was indeed their intent on working without L-canceling. It may be too early for me to say this, but I feel as if they spent a lot of time with the characters and they definitely had this in mind in the design of the characters themselves. Even Ganon, being the slowest character I've seen so far, has an aerial that he can spam without lag (his uair). Also, specifically Ganon, they realized that his lag would still impair him, so they gave him what appears to be one of the best moves in melee history, his new forward B. Now you aren't safe from him, as he can severely punish his opponents for shielding and it opens up his options quite a bit. He is still somewhat balanced because he isn't speedy though. That seems to be the magic behind it all.
I hope this will make some of the brawl pessimists change their mindset about Brawl. I think people are too caught up in trying to compare it to melee that they haven't tried looking at it in a different light. Honestly, this game is shaping up to be amazing. I have no doubts that this game will be more deep and more varied than melee.