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Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Score: 95%
Same score for Melee. Sakurai made this game like it was his last and the effort clearly shows.
The roster is almost near perfection in my opinion. We finally have characters like Meta Knight, King Dedede, Wario, and Diddy Kong on the roster with other great additions like Pit and Olimar. We also have the presence of two third party characters, Sonic and Snake.
The cuts made from Melee were Mewtwo, Roy, Pichu, Dr. Mario, and Young Link. The lack of Mewtwo is awfully surprising to me, especially when it's a highly popular and important Pokemon. The exclusion of Roy is also a bit of a shock, but it's nothing I would lose sleep over.
The multiplayer is still very fun with great new items introduced, like the Gooey Bomb and Smart Bomb for example. My favorite new item is the Assist Trophy; it would summon a Nintendo character and they will attack for you or preform some weird action (like Resetti coming out only just to rant).
Single player has been more emphasis on it seems. Well, emphasis on the game's Adventure Mode, the Subspace Emissary. The game takes you through a story about a world where Trophies fight and an enemy, the Subspace army, is trying to take pieces of their world to make it their own. While I like that the character's personalities and whatnot are represented and while I love seeing all of these Nintendo characters interact with each other, I am a bit bothered by the mode. Story-wise, not every character has a major role in the story; this is understandable for characters like Sonic, Jigglypuff, Toon Link, and Wolf, but characters like Luigi and the Ice Climbers don't have a major role in it as well (Ice Climbers only got to be playable and had a role in one level before the final levels and Luigi is seen once and is seen again in one of the final levels). I will also say that I am not a fan of the setting. I am disappointed that you don't explore many Nintendo locations (where's the Mushroom Kingdom? or Hyrule? combine these worlds into one!) and the only enemies are Subspace enemies and Mario enemies; it makes the adventure mode more bland and boring. Because of this, I personally prefer Melee's Adventure Mode.
As for the other modes, Classic Mode is still intact as well as All-Star Mode. Event Matches are back, with now even Co-op Event Matches. Stadium has been improved in one area and was downgraded in another. Home Run Contest saw an improvement where you can now freely attack Sandbag to your heart's content until the barrier breaks. The downgrade was that Target Smash now has 5 different levels for every difficulty, so the unique Target Smash levels from the previous games are gone. Multi-Man returns as well and there isn't much to say.
The gameplay... has lost some of its luster. According to Sakurai, some of Brawl's changes were done to better fit the casual audience buying the Wii.
I will say this right now: I don't mind that Brawl is on the floaty side. I can get used to that. However, two major things were implemented that make the gameplay a bit inferior to Melee. First of which are that combos are now rare to do. Why? Players can now act out of hitstun and do an air dodge. So, the game has become very defensive than the previous games. Second is the infamous addition of random tripping. Why was it implemented? I have no clue, but it ruins game-flow and some battles can be lost due to tripping.
Also, the balancing is at it's worst... but I won't go into that too much. Just know that Brawl Meta Knight is the absolute best Smash character ever while Brawl Ganondorf would be lucky to own Pichu.
You can still use the GameCube controller and now the Wii Remote, Wii Remote and Nunchuk, and Classic Controller. You can now even set up the controls to your hearts content. Don't like tap jumping? Well, you can remove that!
Brawl's stages are a bit of a mixed bag. What I mean is that some of the stages are absolutely fun (like WarioWare, Yoshi's Island, Isle Delfino, and Lylat Cruise for example) while others are a plain annoyance (like New Pork City, 75m, Mario Bros., and Hanenbow for example).
The music is fantastic, but I find it to be inferior to Melee only because the soundtrack doesn't have the "heart" that Melee's had. I still enjoy a large number of tracks; I would post them, but that would be long.
Also, I do enjoy the Main Theme of Brawl. It's incredible and I love the translated lyrics to them that you see at the end of the SSE. Despite this, hearing it over and over again in other variations in different menus
can be annoying.
Graphically, it looks great, but I'm not a fan of them going for a more realistic look. It makes the game look a bit boring to look at.
I know that my review is a bit on the negative side, but I still think that this is a fantastic game. I know that effort was put on the game, but I think that they emphasized on something that didn't entirely need emphasis on (the SSE).
It greatly mixes quality and quantity. Seriously, there is a lot you can do in Brawl, like do Challenges, collect Trophies and Stickers, make replays and photos and more.
I recommend that you at least give Brawl a shot.
Nominations: Super Mario 64 5x