JO: It’s that time of the half-decade again, when the latest installment of Nintendo’s genius marketing superfighter is unleashed upon the masses. As is traditional for the franchise, it’s taking its sweet time to reach the PAL market (some of you may recall that the N64 original almost didn’t get a UK release). However, those of us with credit cards and faith in unlicensed third-party peripheral discs have had enough time to have a fair ol’ whack at our imported copies. Alas, not all is right in the fuzzy world of Nintendo fandom – just now coming down from a six-year, Melee-induced high. We find ourselves liking Brawl, but not, perhaps, as impressed by it as we were with past installments. They’ve updated the hell out of everything, tricked out the single player mode and literally jammed the disc with enough nostalgia to make us miraculously sprout 80s mullets overnight, but at the absolute core of things, it’s the same game. What say you, Dylan
DB: Okay, I guess I should come out of the closet here. You see, I’ve never played a Smash Bros. game before this one – So I’m one of those people who watches the fervor of fans with not a little bit of confusion. I just don’t get it. I mean, I get that the series is all about fan service, and that it’s basically a Nintendophile’s wet dream to get to smash the shit out of Yoshi and maybe collect some esoteric 1980’s character as a trophy, but at the end of the day I’m an outsider… which perhaps makes me actually qualified to sit here and ask, ‘What’s the big deal?’
JO: It’s not that the gameplay in Brawl isn’t great –
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fundamentally it’s unchanged.
I plugged 120 hours into Melee, a game with all the bells and whistles. Brawl has all the bells, the whistles, plus whipped cream and a cherry on top. But when it comes to gameplay it doesn’t have Melee’s sense of balance. The incremental attacks – the fireballs, lasers and missiles – feel much more worthless in comparison to the harder-hitting moves, such as Smash Balls and Assist Trophies. Far more than ever, it feels like the players are desperately clinging onto the chance to land a massive attack on a heavily injured fighter. How the fighter got to 100%+ in the first place doesn’t seem as important as it once did beneath all the clutter. Character balance doesn’t seem right either. Newcomers feel pretty spot on for the most part, but a few old favourites
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either feel like they haven’t been tweaked properly or have changed too much. Mario’s water cannon? Pathetic.
DB: I guess I should back track a bit for those readers who are like me and new to the series. Basically, you bash the
living daylights out of your opponent(s) and as you do so their percentage, which acts as a life bar of sorts, increases. We have no idea what the hell 300% actually is, but it’s there.
When your percentage is really high you get thrown farther from the stage with each move, until you get smashed to the moon and lose a point. The person with the most points wins
the match – or whatever particular rules you have set up; the game is very accommodating and customisable, particularly when it comes to controls, which will accommodate pretty much any Nintendo controller
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you care to throw at it.
Each Nintendo character has all these little moves that are a wink to their origins. For example, Samus has the lock-on missiles and Bowser can breathe fire. Let me tell you that each and every match is a veritable clusterfuck of special moves, powerups, random drops et al – and on top of that you have the particular environmental elements relating to the stage you’re on, which in some cases can completely change the pace of the battle.
Also, this game is pretty much aimed solely at multiplayer. Yes, there is a single player ‘game’ called The
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