XSilvenX
Smash Lord
She is just as tricky as ever.... you guys that have seen videos of crappy Samus players please ignore them because in my HONEST opinion..Samus can be one of the best characters in this Game.. now let's first start with who I am...
I'm not exactly a popular smasher since I stopped going to tournaments and focused more on other things like school and whatnot...I'm more known for random funny videos..search "xsilvenx" on youtube if you care... if you do watch some of my smash vids you will notice that I was a pretty decent Samus player. I might even say...semi-pro at best.. so with that said you should know that I'm no n00b so It's not like this is a random scrub saying this...
Now about her missiles...yes they take longer to come out but just by a little bit. They are still extremely useful and if you are given enough space (and a platform) you can still spam them enough to annoy the heck out of your opponent. ..sounds pretty nubish right.. homing missiles come out alot faster than the regular missile so for example if I'm running off a platform and want to turn around and shoot a straight missile..it won't come out...but if I run off the same platform and shoot a homing missile it will come out a bit before I land. Also the homing missiles seem to be alot more effective ..it might just be me though but I found that they knocked Foxes very low when they were charging up their up+b's...could have been the same in Melee but whatever.
Her aerials are amazing....all of them have either very little lag or no lag at all when you touch the floor...it's quite amazing really. Even Marth (who's still very annoying to fight against) has a laggy move (dair) and he's supposed to be flawless hah. Doing things like downair to jab will work... also neutral air to anything pretty much works. Shffl'ing pretty much works the same with Samus as in melee the only difference being of course the use of "L" ...you simply DON'T have to press it.
Back-air is amazing..you can do it so many times in the air while DI'ing left and right..it lends alot of maneuverability to her aerial game....at first it feels weird like a developer mistake or something but you'll quickly let go and get over the stagnant Samus of Melee and get used to the floaty jigglypuff-like Samus of Brawl...In my opinion it's just wayyy better.
Now I didn't alway think this good about Samus. At first I was really disappointed in how Samus felt. It really felt like a beta character...like she wasn't quite finished or polished. I thought I wasn't gonna main her anymore but as the vs matches kept starting up I found myself liking her more and more..AGAIN. I kept picking her...in fact I barely played any other characters. I feel that Samus is DEFINITELY my main..as sure as I was in Melee is as sure as I am NOW in Brawl.
I will review all of her attacks now..since I don't want to bore you with this crappy paragraph format.
UpB - Simply amazing...you can STILL upb out of shield and it's just as effective as ever. It pushes the opponent back just enough so that you can safely land after the upb is done. It's still a solid move..and it also goes alot higher than in Melee
DownB - Now this one of those "nerfed" moves you heard about. You can double bomb jump for recovery but you can no longer bomb jump off the character due to the bomb physically exploding on the character and the explosion hitting Samus...it just doesn't happen. The bomb seems to phase right through the character until it's ready to explode.. not much of a drawback..if you were the type of Samus that LOVED bomb jumping off of opponents you will get used to this surprisingly quick..given you learn as fast as I do.
"B" Charge Shot - It charges in about the same time as Melee...I didn't get a chance to actually clock it but it charges pretty fast. It looks alot smaller but that may be because the characters in this game seem to be very large. It's a good kill move around 100+ damage..just like it was in Melee although I do have to admit sometimes I would shoot it at a highly damaged character and go "WTF!" as they did not die...it's probably a bit weaker you might want to use it for edgeguarding and not just for randomly shooting..it probably won't kill as good as you expect it to.
Forward B Missile - I think I talked about this before...lol sorry for the horrible formatting but yah it's still a very solid move. Don't bother trying to missile spam or ledge cancel them...they come out way too slow for that but if you time it right you can semi-spam the missiles..it's hard to explain. Once you play the game for yourself you will know what I'm talking about, it'll probably be the first thing that comes to you like it did to me.
Airdodge - her airdodge lays her out pretty vertically so she's an easy target to spot..don't think you can spam shorthop airdodge with forward momentum as a sort of bootleg air-wavedash..it's completely useless to use like that..given your opponent has some sort of sense they will just wait and forward-smash you. It's pretty easy to predict....what I did find out though is that if you shorthop airdodge across the opponent and through him while he's doing an attack you will land in back of him and that pretty much opens up a WORLD of opportunities..as he won't be able to shield grab you (which is extremely fast in this game)
Grapple hook - This is one of the BEST things in this game. In general ...I love the auto sweetspot now...I used to think it dimished some of the edgeguarding game but this is NOT true. You can intercept anyone from their upb... so the edgeguarding is still there but just not in the same way. For example what you DONT want to do is wait on the stage and uptilt foxes like you could in Melee..they will just sweetspot the ledge and it will just be wasted effort. What you can do..if they're below the stage is drop down while he's charging his up+b and backair while he firefoxes up behind you..for some of you this may be hard to visualize but edgeguarding is alot more creative, fun and intuitive plus it gives alot more characters a better chance to recover. Now specifically..Samus's grapple will work up to 3 times OFF THE LEDGE. Yes you can repeatedly grapple off the ledge up to 3 times..after the 3rd time you can upb so you have a total of FOUR chances to recover and/or play around on the ledge. If you try to grapple a 4th time, it will come out but it will not stick to the stage and you will then be able to upb..so even if you mess up and grapple 4 times you will get a chance to do another up b. It's really a HUGE step-up because in Melee after you used your grapple off the ledge once that was just it.
Forward Smash - OMG...when I saw the knockback on this...I was like YES!!! it actually kills now!!!...only one huge problem...you can't crouch cancel a run so you can't do it while running...atleast not that we know of yet. But when you do perform a forward smash it usually kills at high percentages..so satisfying now. Unlike Melee where people survive Samus's forward smashes at 150% and crap percentages like that.
Downsmash - I never killed anyone with it but it comes out super quick and it has good enough knockback to be considered an escape or "give me some breathing room" type of move and it seems to have the same amount of range but this can be an illusion..this samus looks a tiny bit more "Fat" to me for some reason. She isn't as tall and slim as Melee Samus so her legs seem a bit chubby..this may just be me once again though haha.
Up-smash - I barely used this so I honestly have no idea how it works. From what it looks like it's probably just as useful as Melee...and that's probably saying too much since once again I barely used it..
Final Smash - It takes some sort of skill to aim it because it's really easy to dodge if you are idling...simply jump over it and airstall as long as you can... anyway I tried turning around and using it just like a charge shot..and it doesn't work so make sure your opponent is actually in front of your eyes when you press "B". One thing should be noted though..in high ceiling stages the opponent will usually survive unless they are really high. It's an amazing edgeguard move,and also pretty good to just randomly use as you see fit...not that it will always kill. From my experience I'll say it's near a guaranteed kill if your opponent is over 100.
I'm not gonna go any further into aerial specifics and stuff like that but I'm just providing my little section on Samus just to somehow give hope to all the Samus mains out there. I really don't see any reason to be disappointed...if anything I would say I like this samus wayyyy better than Melee Samus based on the fact that she can do the same things that were considered fair. The exploits like swd, missile spamming, elongated grappling(US Melee) and all that stuff was Melee specific and in true retrospect..does not seem all that special to me now anyway. What I truly miss though is bomb jumping...but that's really the only thing. Samus may be nerfed but who isn't in this game...nobody in my opinion is better than their Melee counterpart and that's simply because Melee's brand of fighting was in a far different league than Brawl which seems to focus alot more on Smashes, spacing, mindgames and dare I say it...randomly slipping *sigh* . It's funny because if you look at Kirby... you will see that he is pretty much EXACTLY the same, other than his running air and forward b...none of which are significantly overpowering...but alot of people say that he is alot better. Maybe he isn't better at all..maybe it's just all the seemingly overpowered characters have been brought down a bit to Brawl's fighting specifics which seems to balance things a bit more. In my whole experience with the game (literally the whole day) I've yet to complain about anything in the game being overpowered or "broken" so to speak.
Sorry in advance for my typing..it's 4AM in the morning and I just felt I had to post this today before going to sleep. After seeing alot of these people disappointed with Samus it kind of inspired me lol. I hope I helped..and of course I'll be checking back to this thread so if you have questions about Samus's specifics feel free to ask.
*UPDATE*
Videos of me showing the awesome effectiveness of Samus
http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?p=3907895#post3907895
I'm not exactly a popular smasher since I stopped going to tournaments and focused more on other things like school and whatnot...I'm more known for random funny videos..search "xsilvenx" on youtube if you care... if you do watch some of my smash vids you will notice that I was a pretty decent Samus player. I might even say...semi-pro at best.. so with that said you should know that I'm no n00b so It's not like this is a random scrub saying this...
Now about her missiles...yes they take longer to come out but just by a little bit. They are still extremely useful and if you are given enough space (and a platform) you can still spam them enough to annoy the heck out of your opponent. ..sounds pretty nubish right.. homing missiles come out alot faster than the regular missile so for example if I'm running off a platform and want to turn around and shoot a straight missile..it won't come out...but if I run off the same platform and shoot a homing missile it will come out a bit before I land. Also the homing missiles seem to be alot more effective ..it might just be me though but I found that they knocked Foxes very low when they were charging up their up+b's...could have been the same in Melee but whatever.
Her aerials are amazing....all of them have either very little lag or no lag at all when you touch the floor...it's quite amazing really. Even Marth (who's still very annoying to fight against) has a laggy move (dair) and he's supposed to be flawless hah. Doing things like downair to jab will work... also neutral air to anything pretty much works. Shffl'ing pretty much works the same with Samus as in melee the only difference being of course the use of "L" ...you simply DON'T have to press it.
Back-air is amazing..you can do it so many times in the air while DI'ing left and right..it lends alot of maneuverability to her aerial game....at first it feels weird like a developer mistake or something but you'll quickly let go and get over the stagnant Samus of Melee and get used to the floaty jigglypuff-like Samus of Brawl...In my opinion it's just wayyy better.
Now I didn't alway think this good about Samus. At first I was really disappointed in how Samus felt. It really felt like a beta character...like she wasn't quite finished or polished. I thought I wasn't gonna main her anymore but as the vs matches kept starting up I found myself liking her more and more..AGAIN. I kept picking her...in fact I barely played any other characters. I feel that Samus is DEFINITELY my main..as sure as I was in Melee is as sure as I am NOW in Brawl.
I will review all of her attacks now..since I don't want to bore you with this crappy paragraph format.
UpB - Simply amazing...you can STILL upb out of shield and it's just as effective as ever. It pushes the opponent back just enough so that you can safely land after the upb is done. It's still a solid move..and it also goes alot higher than in Melee
DownB - Now this one of those "nerfed" moves you heard about. You can double bomb jump for recovery but you can no longer bomb jump off the character due to the bomb physically exploding on the character and the explosion hitting Samus...it just doesn't happen. The bomb seems to phase right through the character until it's ready to explode.. not much of a drawback..if you were the type of Samus that LOVED bomb jumping off of opponents you will get used to this surprisingly quick..given you learn as fast as I do.
"B" Charge Shot - It charges in about the same time as Melee...I didn't get a chance to actually clock it but it charges pretty fast. It looks alot smaller but that may be because the characters in this game seem to be very large. It's a good kill move around 100+ damage..just like it was in Melee although I do have to admit sometimes I would shoot it at a highly damaged character and go "WTF!" as they did not die...it's probably a bit weaker you might want to use it for edgeguarding and not just for randomly shooting..it probably won't kill as good as you expect it to.
Forward B Missile - I think I talked about this before...lol sorry for the horrible formatting but yah it's still a very solid move. Don't bother trying to missile spam or ledge cancel them...they come out way too slow for that but if you time it right you can semi-spam the missiles..it's hard to explain. Once you play the game for yourself you will know what I'm talking about, it'll probably be the first thing that comes to you like it did to me.
Airdodge - her airdodge lays her out pretty vertically so she's an easy target to spot..don't think you can spam shorthop airdodge with forward momentum as a sort of bootleg air-wavedash..it's completely useless to use like that..given your opponent has some sort of sense they will just wait and forward-smash you. It's pretty easy to predict....what I did find out though is that if you shorthop airdodge across the opponent and through him while he's doing an attack you will land in back of him and that pretty much opens up a WORLD of opportunities..as he won't be able to shield grab you (which is extremely fast in this game)
Grapple hook - This is one of the BEST things in this game. In general ...I love the auto sweetspot now...I used to think it dimished some of the edgeguarding game but this is NOT true. You can intercept anyone from their upb... so the edgeguarding is still there but just not in the same way. For example what you DONT want to do is wait on the stage and uptilt foxes like you could in Melee..they will just sweetspot the ledge and it will just be wasted effort. What you can do..if they're below the stage is drop down while he's charging his up+b and backair while he firefoxes up behind you..for some of you this may be hard to visualize but edgeguarding is alot more creative, fun and intuitive plus it gives alot more characters a better chance to recover. Now specifically..Samus's grapple will work up to 3 times OFF THE LEDGE. Yes you can repeatedly grapple off the ledge up to 3 times..after the 3rd time you can upb so you have a total of FOUR chances to recover and/or play around on the ledge. If you try to grapple a 4th time, it will come out but it will not stick to the stage and you will then be able to upb..so even if you mess up and grapple 4 times you will get a chance to do another up b. It's really a HUGE step-up because in Melee after you used your grapple off the ledge once that was just it.
Forward Smash - OMG...when I saw the knockback on this...I was like YES!!! it actually kills now!!!...only one huge problem...you can't crouch cancel a run so you can't do it while running...atleast not that we know of yet. But when you do perform a forward smash it usually kills at high percentages..so satisfying now. Unlike Melee where people survive Samus's forward smashes at 150% and crap percentages like that.
Downsmash - I never killed anyone with it but it comes out super quick and it has good enough knockback to be considered an escape or "give me some breathing room" type of move and it seems to have the same amount of range but this can be an illusion..this samus looks a tiny bit more "Fat" to me for some reason. She isn't as tall and slim as Melee Samus so her legs seem a bit chubby..this may just be me once again though haha.
Up-smash - I barely used this so I honestly have no idea how it works. From what it looks like it's probably just as useful as Melee...and that's probably saying too much since once again I barely used it..
Final Smash - It takes some sort of skill to aim it because it's really easy to dodge if you are idling...simply jump over it and airstall as long as you can... anyway I tried turning around and using it just like a charge shot..and it doesn't work so make sure your opponent is actually in front of your eyes when you press "B". One thing should be noted though..in high ceiling stages the opponent will usually survive unless they are really high. It's an amazing edgeguard move,and also pretty good to just randomly use as you see fit...not that it will always kill. From my experience I'll say it's near a guaranteed kill if your opponent is over 100.
I'm not gonna go any further into aerial specifics and stuff like that but I'm just providing my little section on Samus just to somehow give hope to all the Samus mains out there. I really don't see any reason to be disappointed...if anything I would say I like this samus wayyyy better than Melee Samus based on the fact that she can do the same things that were considered fair. The exploits like swd, missile spamming, elongated grappling(US Melee) and all that stuff was Melee specific and in true retrospect..does not seem all that special to me now anyway. What I truly miss though is bomb jumping...but that's really the only thing. Samus may be nerfed but who isn't in this game...nobody in my opinion is better than their Melee counterpart and that's simply because Melee's brand of fighting was in a far different league than Brawl which seems to focus alot more on Smashes, spacing, mindgames and dare I say it...randomly slipping *sigh* . It's funny because if you look at Kirby... you will see that he is pretty much EXACTLY the same, other than his running air and forward b...none of which are significantly overpowering...but alot of people say that he is alot better. Maybe he isn't better at all..maybe it's just all the seemingly overpowered characters have been brought down a bit to Brawl's fighting specifics which seems to balance things a bit more. In my whole experience with the game (literally the whole day) I've yet to complain about anything in the game being overpowered or "broken" so to speak.
Sorry in advance for my typing..it's 4AM in the morning and I just felt I had to post this today before going to sleep. After seeing alot of these people disappointed with Samus it kind of inspired me lol. I hope I helped..and of course I'll be checking back to this thread so if you have questions about Samus's specifics feel free to ask.
*UPDATE*
Videos of me showing the awesome effectiveness of Samus
http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?p=3907895#post3907895
