Super Smash Brothers Brawl

[Silverline]

So a few days ago Super Smash Brothers Brawl was FINALLY released in Europe, 1500 delays later. And just today I decided to go out and buy the game. Now about 2-3 Months ago my friend (NINTENDO FANBOY) decided to order the American copy and a freeloader. I borrowed it for an evening and what I played was... meh.

Now the one thing that I personally, and what MANY MANY others wanted from Brawl was the ability to play with other people online. I tried this when I had the American copy, and couldn't find anybody, but I simply assumed it was because of the distance between the UK and the States. So I just took down NL's friend code and played a few matches with her.

So I have the European version now, and the first thing I did was jump straight into WiFi. Excitement bubbling up inside me I selected the 'Brawl with Anyone' option. I picked my character, picked a stage and was taken to the familiar sandbag pre-match training arena. After 10 minutes of hitting a sandbag I set the control down and went off to do other things. Half an hour later I come back to find myself in the exact same Sandbag training arena. 40 minutes had passed, and it still couldnt find me a match.
Now I am sure MANY of you are going to attack me and say things like:

'Oh, but its new out in Europe so not many people will have it.'
or
'Your internet connection must suck.'

So I am going to answer both of those in advance.

SSBB is one of the most anticipated games of 2008. I had to search around 6 different video game shops to find a copy of it. It wouldn't suprise me if half of Europe owned the game by now, let alone the world.

As for my internet connection. I have my Wii set up to a standard Netgear wireless router. The same router gives the miracle of Broadband internet connection to my Laptop, PC and Xbox. Of course I dont have every single one running at the same time, but for some reason the internet always seems to piss about when I am playing Nintendo games. If you search around I am not the only one with this problem.


Aside from that I was quite pleased with the game. Its everything we expected, no more, no less. I did find that Nintendo seems to have tried to fit too many different features into the game at once.

Now I am one of those gamers who absolutely LOVE custom level design features in video games. The only reason I constantly buy Farcry and Timesplitters games is because of the brilliant level design features, heck even Halo 3 has one (I play the level design feature in that more than the game itself.), so naturally I was pleased when they announced the Stage Builder in Brawl. Now its not bad, but its very limited, there is very little space to build things, meaning maps tend to be kind of bland and boring.

As for the Sub-Space Emmisa... Yea you know what I mean, its a nice feature, certainly better then Melees Adventure mode, but one thing I found personally is that its BORING. There are tons of levels, all involve the same 'Keep going right and kill anything and everything in your path until you reach the end,' rule. Dont get me wrong, its not BAD, more just repetetive. I havn't completed it yet, but I have seen in Youtube videos that Nintendo have done a last minute attempt to cram Sonic into the adventure mode to please all the fanboys. I found this annoying for two reasons.

1. Ever since Sonic games went 3D I have hated him. (I still love the 2D ones.)
2. He did that STUPID THING WHERE HE SHAKES HIS FINGER AT YOU.

So yea, those were my thoughts. Its not a bad game, and the GOOD things put in the game are still well balanced by the BAD things that are there.

If you have played Melee and enjoyed it there is no reason why you shouldn't decide to get Brawl, but if you ask me it is, far to overrated.

[Avalanchemike]

It's only overrated for you bloody brits seeing as the rest of the world (Which isn't gay and gets games at a decent release date (.... sometimes)) figured it out 2388Q5480287438517batmansymbol9875 months ago. Heck I seem to remember preaching that it would be even before it's release though I might not have don't it around you guys and even from what I remember of A) Your discriminating attitudes and B) Extremism I might have just said something more ambiguous or even better something to the extent of "IT IS AWESOME".

[Leinator]

Brawl is just too slow for me. The falling speed of the characters, the movesets, and viritually everything else just feels too slow. I like the fast paced reflexes of melee more, but regardless of that, brawl is quite good. I like both, and brawl is a great party game, but I enjoy the speed of melee more.

[OLOW]

I don't know why, but i find matches very easily. It's really weird. Oss, whats your friend code? I'll tell you mine in a little bit, im just to damn lazy to find it out

[Nayru's Love]

I want to clear some things up:

I don't hate Brawl. I don't think I ever said that I hated it, in fact (though I'm sure Mike is going to dig something up that I said about it from the past while having a bad day). It's just that because Melee was such a great game, I was expecting so much more from Brawl. Plus, the anticipation built up before getting it. But after playing for a couple minutes, I noticed that it wasn't that great. I'm just going to stop there before I start to sound repetitive. I know that my negative feelings towards Brawl are almost entirely my fault for setting standards that were too high, but Brawl did let me down a bit in the end.

Now that that's done with, OLOW, Oss. Post it.

[Leinator]

I really had no expectations other than "have some new characters to play around with," and I think that's probably why I haven't been as dissappointed as some. Really, did anyone expect subspace emmissary to be good? The new characters are great, not to mention some of them highly complex in terms of fighting style and actually take a certain amount of skill to get good at (Snake, Olimar.)

It's kind of the same thing with Halo 3, great multiplayer, but I really didn't expect the single player to be that amazing. Besides, Halo has always had a really dumb '80's B-movie' plot. Except the first game, they really hadn't gone down that path at that point.

Regardless, I didn't set my expectations too high, but it did please me to some extent.

[Triforcemaster]

I bought this game a month after it came out. I love the game a lot. My favorite characters are:
1. Pit
2. Fox
3. Link
4. Toon Link
5. Ike
6. Marth

I love the subspace emmissary feature, its loads of fun. But it took me forever to beat it.

[NarutoFan]

And then the thread dies after the subject has been changed.

[HaloOfTheSun]

The seven steps of win:

1.) Pikachu throws barrel at Pit
2.) Pit uses reflector shield, barrel bounces off
3.) Barrel hits bomb on floor
4.) Barrel flies up into the air and hits Pikachu
5.) Pikachu is KO'd
6.) ???
7.) PROFIT!

[Nayru's Love]

I wish I could have recorded that.