Well.. I thought going into Brawl would turn out to be a fun and exciting new experience for me seeing as how I never had a really good history with Melee. But now it turns out that people are just as (even more) competitive as they've been before, which I hate because it just makes more arguments.
Melee's cool and all, but I seriously just don't believe all that much in a game where combos consist of incredibly relentless attacks which your opponents can do absolutely nothing about. For example, Sheik's forward tilt to forward aerial death combo. It's fast , the hit stun is really long, and the trajectory of the aerial is so strong that even Smash DI can't save you from death. Not even Kyle can live from it and he's DI pro.
At least in Brawl, people have a chance to defend themselves from most attacks, allowing different approaches and predictions to be made in the attackers combos. I believe the game is more even now except for some characters that can be abused such as Snake, Metaknight, or R.O.B., which is what I believe Sakurai said he intended it to be. He said in an interview that he didn't intend either games to be competitive (It is just a bunch of Nintendo characters fighting for no reason anyway.) It's like what I was discussing with Phil and Kyle last night about who would win in fights between different super heroes. By removing the technical barrier from Melee, the game now appeals to less experinced players who didn't enjoy Melee before because their opponents were just simply able to overwhelm them with all of their cancels and relentless approaches. Simply put, people just didn't have enough time to think. The distance even between pro and decent players was just incredibly too much.
Even snaking was taken out for Mariokart Wii to make the playing field more even. Trust me.. There were a lot of complaints on the Mariokart forums about that. I was good at it too. Ask Randall.
Now there is a camping issue in Brawl that I am a little upset about due to Eric's Olimar, but I must say that I'm having fun trying to figure out how to get past it. It's making me think more on my feet rather than just using the same approach over and over. I can beat it sometimes, but not without a lot of trouble. I can beat Eric's other characters just fine too, but I still consider him a better player than I am because he's smarter. Just because it's harder to win in Brawl doesn't make it a bad game.
And I'm sorry, but I'm tired of the same 4 characters being picked in almost every single fight. Not to say it won't happen in Brawl eventually, but that's all I saw in the entire last year of Melee. At least in Brawl right now, I've seen every character being used in fights, including Ganon and Bowser of all people.
And people don't like this game why? Because they took out some things that they liked and put some different things in? Sorry, but this is a different game and a little harder to adjust to. The same thing was with the switch from DDR Extreme to DDR SuperNova with harder timing and harsher scoring and more difficult songs. 9 footers seem more like 10's now with the addition of SuperNova 2. Seriously, I've never HAD to use the bar in order to be decent on a 9 footer before, but you don't see me complaining. Sorry to say this, but l-canceling and wavedashing just made Melee broken in my opinion. They made different characters have their own specific cancels in Brawl.
And people still continue to treat this game, which was supposed to be fun, for an overly competitive use. Because of this, I am upset with both Melee and Brawl. Although I have fun with both games, others seem to take it to an entirely different level. This is the same reason why I quit competitive Pump It Up other than the fact that I didn't really like the game in the first place. The community took it way too seriously for my taste. I thought it'd be different for Brawl in Smash, but unfortunately I was sadly mistaken. No offense to anyone in particular, I blame the whole boards for this. Gee wiz, people. The game hasn't even been out for 2 months yet...
I hereby announce that not only am I quitting competitive Smash forever, but I am also quitting competitive gaming as a whole. Too many arguments are being made and too many people are getting hurt at the same time. All I really wanted to do was to play this game for fun. I see that can't ever happen with tournaments where everybody wants to win so badly, that they counterpick top tier characters that they don't even play with against you just so they feel they have a better chance to beat you. I'm not naming any names, but you know who you are. I just don't feel that that's the way to play and have fun.
I do not regret having played with the people that tried to help me and make this game fun. People like Taylor, Eric, Tim, Kyle, Randall, Lee, Nicknyte, the NOLA crew and recently Sudai, DSK, and Ken which I feel like I've become better friends with over the time that I've been competitively playing. Call me up sometime, guys. I'll still be playing both games for fun and I won't john or complain because I know that I'm not all that pro, but I will not be entering nearly as many tournaments as I used to. It'd be about as rare as me wanting to go to a Pump tournament. And I'll still go to Dibbz sometimes to see Lee and the NOLA crew because I like to play with them too.
I had a similar problem with this game last summer too. Then I realized that the only reason I really wanted to play it in the first place was because Zelda was in it and you can play as her. And I still do to this very day because she's simply my favorite character.
Congratulations, Smashboards. You've officially ruined the game of Super Smash Bros. for me.
