Introduction
Super Smash Brothers Brawl is a good game, but it has a few problems that make it a letdown. As many know, this game experienced a lot of hype after melee's success. I'm going to keep it short and flat out say it, this game would have been better if it was on another system. I'm going to tell you why, read on.
Graphics 6/10
The game looks decent. However some characters hardly look different than their melee versions. The only ones that really stand out in terms of graphics are donkey kong and diddy kong. The rest look very plain.
The particles are better than melee's and in fact are one of the few things that are really an upgrade. The full motion videos featured in the intro of the game and SSE (subspace emissary, AKA adventure mode) are well done and look much better than the actual game does. That does bring a bit of grief because we all know brawl could've looked a lot better. These FMV's are not the best i've seen either.
How does brawl look on an HDTV? Poorly. It's only passable if you are a good distance away from your television and tweak with your sharpness settings. Most of the game (or possibly all of it) is not featured in true widescreen, there will be still be some black bars on the sides of your hdtv. Why nintendo does this with a lot of their wii games? We'll never know. So it looks poor on an hdtv, Ultimately you'll get the best graphical experience on an SDTV (tube television).
The saving grace to the graphics are the animations. There was an outstanding job done on the animations. Everyone moves great and are a major improvement over melee. It has to be seen to be really appreciated.
The graphics overall? Doesn't look much better than melee, and that's lame considering the wii could do better. I know this opinion is not shared by many, but better graphics do equal a better experience. I'm not saying the game has to look realistic and have M rated on it, and i'm aware some characters and stages are meant to look 'simple'. Many however are the opposite and could have looked much better.
Sound 9/10
The soundtrack is this game is outstanding, and one of the best soundtracks ever. When you get the game (and I presume that's why your reading this) you'll understand how great it is as well. One of those things you gotta hear for yourself.
The voice acting on the other hand, gets this section a point taken off. Melee's was better. Most of the characters sound lame. The crowd sounds terrible and very fake. The announcer is almost as bad, he tries to be overly dramatic and he says everything really fast. Moving on...
Gameplay 7/10
This is it, the big section, what really matters more then anything else. There's are good reasons it gets 7/10, read on. This will be broken up into sections.
The differences
Smash brothers melee and brawl have two major differences. Melee is faster, brawl is slower. This would be unpleasing to competitive gamers, but for people like myself, who never got the chance to play that way, and wasn't that good, this is a plus. I have more fun with the game now that it's slower, I can fight just as well as anyone. Now many advanced techniques (or basic ones) were taken out of brawl, with very little new and useful ones to replace them. If this will change over time or not, that remains to be seen.
Items
Brawl many more items then melee ever had, many are incredibly overpowered. You may find yourself removing many of them as they give everyone a good excuse to complain about the cheap item winning the match. Pokeballs have taken a dive, they are not very useful now, to be quite frank they are not worth picking up. As it's always been, items are best left off all together if you want a serious match. They are however fun in the SSE, but they are just plain annoying everywhere else.
Single player content 6/10
Brawl is a mixed bag when it comes to single player content, it really improves itself over melee, but takes steps backward in other ways.
SSE is very cool for the first time up until you get to 'the great maze' which is one massive level that makes you fight 32 of the characters in the game., fight all the bosses again, go through every single level in the game all over again, in the form of a maze. Most people hate this, and I agree, going through every piece of content in the game all over again is boring and frustrating, and just a pathetic way to make the single player 3+ hours longer. The actual length of this mode varies on the difficulty, I beat it roughly 8 hours on normal. This doesn't really have much of a story, it's very vague and by the end you should be left confused. The story is only better if you read the 'fanfics' that people are doing in an attempt to explain a story that doesn't exist. It has a coop mode, which could be better then by yourself, I never tried it though. There are not many different enemies, and it gets boring fast. You may also collect stickers in the game (in any mode) for collection purposes like trophies, or you can use them on a character in SSE to boost your stats. Overall I could see you coming back to it 2 times and never again.
Classic mode, event mode, and stadium mode have been downgraded. Classic mode has no random aspects to it now. Master hand has ZERO new moves. There are no character unique break the targets anymore, everyone does the same ones now, all varying in difficulty, no race to the finish, that trophy minigame is gone. The event matches have no real thought put into them. It's basically just like fighting the AI in a regular VS match. There are no cool events like there was in melee where you would fight special enemies, use captain falcon to race, and so forth. The final event is also lame. The upside is you can choose to play any event in whatever difficulty you want, and you can do them cooperatively. All stadium content can be done cooperatively as well. Home run contest is way better now, multi man brawl is about the same, and break the targets is bad as I already explained. There is a boss rush mode you can unlock later, which makes you fight every boss in SSE with any character you want on any difficulty. Not fun and very frustrating actually.
Challenges 9/10
This game has an addictive and fun system where you can do challenges in the game. Such as unlocking a character, beating classic mode on hardest difficulty, playing on X stage so many times, playing 100 hours of brawls, and the list goes on and on. When you beat these challenges, you unlock an additional reward like new music, a trophy, a stage etc. You may also use rare golden hammers you can get in the game to beat some of the challenges for you without you actually meeting the requirement.
Trophy mini game and coins 5/10
The coin system is the same as melee, except you can use these coins in a shooter mini game. Your coins are your ammo and you shoot them with a coin launcher that is stationary. You shoot these coins at 'things' to obtain trophies, bonuses and stickers. It's very repetitive, easy, and gets boring fast, but it's an easy way to collect stuff. Brawl has a ton to offer if you like the process of collecting stuff.
Stage Builder 3/10
You can choose to create your own stage if you wish. Problem with this is it is very basic, and doesn't offer much in the terms of appearance or appeal.
The AI 6/10
The AI is weird. Some characters have better AI than others. The AI is sometimes really smart, and sometimes really stupid. This will depend on what setting you put them on, what stage you put them on, and what character it is. On moving stages, the AI doesn't make an effort to attack you, and is paying more attention to moving with the stage then anything else for example. The ai is less obsessed with items this time around, but wether or not they pick up items seems random. The AI is better in some ways, and just as bad as melee in others. The AI can still be exploited, especially with use of stage builder. So its better or it's worse than melee, you decide.
Stages 8/10
Many more stages than melee, some old stages return from melee as well, no n64 stages sorry folks. Some stages are worthless and scream random and imbalanced, but there are a few gems that stand out. Unfortunately final destination (one of the most popular stages in melee) has a problem when it comes to the edges, making it less desirable to play on. Overall I am pleased with the stages.
Multiplayer offline 9/10
It is better, I can tell you that. More options is always a good thing. It is great, no complaints.
Multiplayer online or wifi play 1/10
This is a joke. I primarily got this game for online, knowing nintendo doesn't have the best online system, I expected nintendo to learn from their mistakes and as a result have little lag. I was wrong, very wrong. This is the worst online play i've ever experienced, this is nintendo's worst, you can change the router settings to perfection, have the best internet possible and it'll still lag. The lag is unavoidable, and unless someone has perfect amazing conditions to play online, you will experience lag. Sometimes the lag is unplayable, other times it's passable, but often you can blame the lag for your loss, because it's that bad. Friend codes are awful, and you have to go through horrible steps and much waiting to actually play with someone.
The with anyone mode is what it sounds like. You play with random people. You can only play timed battles at 2 minutes, and you have little control over items and stages.
The with friends mode requires you to input friend codes to play with people and they are awful, and you have to go through horrible steps and much waiting to actually play with someone. You may however get less lag (but any lag is bad lag), and you do have complete control over how you want to play.
Will this change over time? I hope so, but according to nintendo's reponse, they are 'waiting it out' and 'it's getting better everyday'. Not according to thousands of people it isn't. So nintendo will probably leave it to rot. I know the online is free, but i've seen better online for free, and from nintendo. I would be willing to pay nintendo for better online, and they are seriously losing out on money for not offering this service.
Which brings me to my original point. This game would have been much better on a ps3 or a 360. I own neither systems, but I know that their online rules in comparison to this trash. The game would have had way better graphics and sound. It would have been glorious.
Controls 8/10
The controls are good and bad. The wiimote is practically unplayable, and is not a viable option. The wiimote+nunchuk is better, but I could never get used to it. Classic controller is good too, but it would have been a much better option if they let me use the D-pad to move, and this one is hard to adapt to, also zero rumble. The other problem with these controllers is they all use batteries and they don't last forever, batteries running during this game? Terrifying. The gamecube controller is and always will be the best way to play smash and plus if you use a wired one, you use no batteries you get rumble.A wavebird will use batteries however and has no rumble, be warned.
All controllers are nearly fully customizable, and this is useful for smashers. It's very lame that this game makes almost no use of the motion sensoring. Can't use wiimote in menu's, the only thing you can do with motion is shake it to do a quick smash.
Replay value ?/10
This game has great replay value if you have friends or family members that are willing to get together and smash. I and many other people have never been able to do this, so online and single player gaming are the only options. This game is seriously lacking in this way. So the replay value is high to some, and low to others.
Other technical issues
This game has a serious problem/annoyance (that is more common then you'd think).This game uses a dual layer DVD, it uses more memory then the average wii or cube game. As a result, the wii has a hard time reading the disc. If dust gets in your wii (and it probably has it or will) you may get a disc read error and have to return your wii to nintendo so they can 'fix' it, or you can take matters into your own hands with a compressor or can of air. The wii also has serious problems with the loading. This may or may not be a dust problem. My wii, and many others have very slow or just plain slow loading times. Sometimes i've had the initial game load take 5 minutes. Sometimes it takes 1 minute or less to load. It applies to all loading, not just the initial one.
Overall / Rent or Buy or not play at all(and recap for those tl;dr people)
Positives
I think it's overall better than melee, and despite some major flaws, it's a solid game and it is worth picking up if you have real life people who will play with you. The sound is outstanding.
You can use a GC controller.
Stages are very good, and lots of them.
Negatives
Graphics are average.
Online play is a joke.
Items are more annoying then ever.
The disc read problems are a real pain.
At this point it's a party game, not a competitive one.
Controller options could have been a bit better.
Most of the single player content is boring, repetitive, and dumbed down.
This game was made for casual players, it is clear and it is obvious. It is not worth disputing because deep down you know its true. If you are a casual gamer, you will adore this game. If you are looking for any sort of serious matches or competition look elsewhere or wait until players find more glitches. OR if you don't have real life people to play with, you would probably be better off saving your money and renting this, as it's most certainly worth a rent.
To be honest I wish i'd save my money and got something else instead.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl is a good game, but it has a few problems that make it a letdown. As many know, this game experienced a lot of hype after melee's success. I'm going to keep it short and flat out say it, this game would have been better if it was on another system. I'm going to tell you why, read on.
Graphics 6/10
The game looks decent. However some characters hardly look different than their melee versions. The only ones that really stand out in terms of graphics are donkey kong and diddy kong. The rest look very plain.
The particles are better than melee's and in fact are one of the few things that are really an upgrade. The full motion videos featured in the intro of the game and SSE (subspace emissary, AKA adventure mode) are well done and look much better than the actual game does. That does bring a bit of grief because we all know brawl could've looked a lot better. These FMV's are not the best i've seen either.
How does brawl look on an HDTV? Poorly. It's only passable if you are a good distance away from your television and tweak with your sharpness settings. Most of the game (or possibly all of it) is not featured in true widescreen, there will be still be some black bars on the sides of your hdtv. Why nintendo does this with a lot of their wii games? We'll never know. So it looks poor on an hdtv, Ultimately you'll get the best graphical experience on an SDTV (tube television).
The saving grace to the graphics are the animations. There was an outstanding job done on the animations. Everyone moves great and are a major improvement over melee. It has to be seen to be really appreciated.
The graphics overall? Doesn't look much better than melee, and that's lame considering the wii could do better. I know this opinion is not shared by many, but better graphics do equal a better experience. I'm not saying the game has to look realistic and have M rated on it, and i'm aware some characters and stages are meant to look 'simple'. Many however are the opposite and could have looked much better.
Sound 9/10
The soundtrack is this game is outstanding, and one of the best soundtracks ever. When you get the game (and I presume that's why your reading this) you'll understand how great it is as well. One of those things you gotta hear for yourself.
The voice acting on the other hand, gets this section a point taken off. Melee's was better. Most of the characters sound lame. The crowd sounds terrible and very fake. The announcer is almost as bad, he tries to be overly dramatic and he says everything really fast. Moving on...
Gameplay 7/10
This is it, the big section, what really matters more then anything else. There's are good reasons it gets 7/10, read on. This will be broken up into sections.
The differences
Smash brothers melee and brawl have two major differences. Melee is faster, brawl is slower. This would be unpleasing to competitive gamers, but for people like myself, who never got the chance to play that way, and wasn't that good, this is a plus. I have more fun with the game now that it's slower, I can fight just as well as anyone. Now many advanced techniques (or basic ones) were taken out of brawl, with very little new and useful ones to replace them. If this will change over time or not, that remains to be seen.
Items
Brawl many more items then melee ever had, many are incredibly overpowered. You may find yourself removing many of them as they give everyone a good excuse to complain about the cheap item winning the match. Pokeballs have taken a dive, they are not very useful now, to be quite frank they are not worth picking up. As it's always been, items are best left off all together if you want a serious match. They are however fun in the SSE, but they are just plain annoying everywhere else.
Single player content 6/10
Brawl is a mixed bag when it comes to single player content, it really improves itself over melee, but takes steps backward in other ways.
SSE is very cool for the first time up until you get to 'the great maze' which is one massive level that makes you fight 32 of the characters in the game., fight all the bosses again, go through every single level in the game all over again, in the form of a maze. Most people hate this, and I agree, going through every piece of content in the game all over again is boring and frustrating, and just a pathetic way to make the single player 3+ hours longer. The actual length of this mode varies on the difficulty, I beat it roughly 8 hours on normal. This doesn't really have much of a story, it's very vague and by the end you should be left confused. The story is only better if you read the 'fanfics' that people are doing in an attempt to explain a story that doesn't exist. It has a coop mode, which could be better then by yourself, I never tried it though. There are not many different enemies, and it gets boring fast. You may also collect stickers in the game (in any mode) for collection purposes like trophies, or you can use them on a character in SSE to boost your stats. Overall I could see you coming back to it 2 times and never again.
Classic mode, event mode, and stadium mode have been downgraded. Classic mode has no random aspects to it now. Master hand has ZERO new moves. There are no character unique break the targets anymore, everyone does the same ones now, all varying in difficulty, no race to the finish, that trophy minigame is gone. The event matches have no real thought put into them. It's basically just like fighting the AI in a regular VS match. There are no cool events like there was in melee where you would fight special enemies, use captain falcon to race, and so forth. The final event is also lame. The upside is you can choose to play any event in whatever difficulty you want, and you can do them cooperatively. All stadium content can be done cooperatively as well. Home run contest is way better now, multi man brawl is about the same, and break the targets is bad as I already explained. There is a boss rush mode you can unlock later, which makes you fight every boss in SSE with any character you want on any difficulty. Not fun and very frustrating actually.
Challenges 9/10
This game has an addictive and fun system where you can do challenges in the game. Such as unlocking a character, beating classic mode on hardest difficulty, playing on X stage so many times, playing 100 hours of brawls, and the list goes on and on. When you beat these challenges, you unlock an additional reward like new music, a trophy, a stage etc. You may also use rare golden hammers you can get in the game to beat some of the challenges for you without you actually meeting the requirement.
Trophy mini game and coins 5/10
The coin system is the same as melee, except you can use these coins in a shooter mini game. Your coins are your ammo and you shoot them with a coin launcher that is stationary. You shoot these coins at 'things' to obtain trophies, bonuses and stickers. It's very repetitive, easy, and gets boring fast, but it's an easy way to collect stuff. Brawl has a ton to offer if you like the process of collecting stuff.
Stage Builder 3/10
You can choose to create your own stage if you wish. Problem with this is it is very basic, and doesn't offer much in the terms of appearance or appeal.
The AI 6/10
The AI is weird. Some characters have better AI than others. The AI is sometimes really smart, and sometimes really stupid. This will depend on what setting you put them on, what stage you put them on, and what character it is. On moving stages, the AI doesn't make an effort to attack you, and is paying more attention to moving with the stage then anything else for example. The ai is less obsessed with items this time around, but wether or not they pick up items seems random. The AI is better in some ways, and just as bad as melee in others. The AI can still be exploited, especially with use of stage builder. So its better or it's worse than melee, you decide.
Stages 8/10
Many more stages than melee, some old stages return from melee as well, no n64 stages sorry folks. Some stages are worthless and scream random and imbalanced, but there are a few gems that stand out. Unfortunately final destination (one of the most popular stages in melee) has a problem when it comes to the edges, making it less desirable to play on. Overall I am pleased with the stages.
Multiplayer offline 9/10
It is better, I can tell you that. More options is always a good thing. It is great, no complaints.
Multiplayer online or wifi play 1/10
This is a joke. I primarily got this game for online, knowing nintendo doesn't have the best online system, I expected nintendo to learn from their mistakes and as a result have little lag. I was wrong, very wrong. This is the worst online play i've ever experienced, this is nintendo's worst, you can change the router settings to perfection, have the best internet possible and it'll still lag. The lag is unavoidable, and unless someone has perfect amazing conditions to play online, you will experience lag. Sometimes the lag is unplayable, other times it's passable, but often you can blame the lag for your loss, because it's that bad. Friend codes are awful, and you have to go through horrible steps and much waiting to actually play with someone.
The with anyone mode is what it sounds like. You play with random people. You can only play timed battles at 2 minutes, and you have little control over items and stages.
The with friends mode requires you to input friend codes to play with people and they are awful, and you have to go through horrible steps and much waiting to actually play with someone. You may however get less lag (but any lag is bad lag), and you do have complete control over how you want to play.
Will this change over time? I hope so, but according to nintendo's reponse, they are 'waiting it out' and 'it's getting better everyday'. Not according to thousands of people it isn't. So nintendo will probably leave it to rot. I know the online is free, but i've seen better online for free, and from nintendo. I would be willing to pay nintendo for better online, and they are seriously losing out on money for not offering this service.
Which brings me to my original point. This game would have been much better on a ps3 or a 360. I own neither systems, but I know that their online rules in comparison to this trash. The game would have had way better graphics and sound. It would have been glorious.
Controls 8/10
The controls are good and bad. The wiimote is practically unplayable, and is not a viable option. The wiimote+nunchuk is better, but I could never get used to it. Classic controller is good too, but it would have been a much better option if they let me use the D-pad to move, and this one is hard to adapt to, also zero rumble. The other problem with these controllers is they all use batteries and they don't last forever, batteries running during this game? Terrifying. The gamecube controller is and always will be the best way to play smash and plus if you use a wired one, you use no batteries you get rumble.A wavebird will use batteries however and has no rumble, be warned.
All controllers are nearly fully customizable, and this is useful for smashers. It's very lame that this game makes almost no use of the motion sensoring. Can't use wiimote in menu's, the only thing you can do with motion is shake it to do a quick smash.
Replay value ?/10
This game has great replay value if you have friends or family members that are willing to get together and smash. I and many other people have never been able to do this, so online and single player gaming are the only options. This game is seriously lacking in this way. So the replay value is high to some, and low to others.
Other technical issues
This game has a serious problem/annoyance (that is more common then you'd think).This game uses a dual layer DVD, it uses more memory then the average wii or cube game. As a result, the wii has a hard time reading the disc. If dust gets in your wii (and it probably has it or will) you may get a disc read error and have to return your wii to nintendo so they can 'fix' it, or you can take matters into your own hands with a compressor or can of air. The wii also has serious problems with the loading. This may or may not be a dust problem. My wii, and many others have very slow or just plain slow loading times. Sometimes i've had the initial game load take 5 minutes. Sometimes it takes 1 minute or less to load. It applies to all loading, not just the initial one.
Overall / Rent or Buy or not play at all(and recap for those tl;dr people)
Positives
I think it's overall better than melee, and despite some major flaws, it's a solid game and it is worth picking up if you have real life people who will play with you. The sound is outstanding.
You can use a GC controller.
Stages are very good, and lots of them.
Negatives
Graphics are average.
Online play is a joke.
Items are more annoying then ever.
The disc read problems are a real pain.
At this point it's a party game, not a competitive one.
Controller options could have been a bit better.
Most of the single player content is boring, repetitive, and dumbed down.
This game was made for casual players, it is clear and it is obvious. It is not worth disputing because deep down you know its true. If you are a casual gamer, you will adore this game. If you are looking for any sort of serious matches or competition look elsewhere or wait until players find more glitches. OR if you don't have real life people to play with, you would probably be better off saving your money and renting this, as it's most certainly worth a rent.
To be honest I wish i'd save my money and got something else instead.
