You already know about Brawl from lots of sources besides me. Chances are you know how Melee played, and Brawl isn’t too terribly different in that regard. But there are a couple of gameplay tweaks that I’ll point out here, and if you have anything to add, do feel free to comment.
- There are a lot more unconventional angles in the game now. What I mean is that attacks used to be fairly predictably directional. A side smash hits to the side. A down smash hits to both sides. An up special acts as the third jump. Except in Brawl, that’s not always true any more. Zero Suit Samus’ third jump is actually her down special. Snake’s down smash is to lay a mine, not to kick to both sides (in fact, he has no attack hitting both sides at all). And Olimar…well, he’s just weird.
- Even returning characters have had lots of little but noticeable tweaks. My favorite character has always been Zelda/Sheik, and I’ve noticed quite a few changes with her already. Zelda now has a three hit combo, her up attack seems to hit a wider area and Din’s Fire seems to have a larger area of effect. Sheik’s up attack is a vertical axe kick just like before, but it now comes out in two stages going first up and then down instead of quickly swinging around as it used to. Stuff like that makes the character much more balanced and potentially more powerful to play. Unfortunately, it seems that Link has somewhat less range and has gotten even slower. And I’m not really a fan of Mario’s FLUDD attack. I just haven’t seen it used at all.
- There’s so much stuff to unlock that it will probably take me the rest of the year to do it. And that’s ok by me. I just wish some of the trophies and songs were tied to online playing, but I guess Nintendo didn’t want to exclude those of us who don’t have broadband.
- Speaking of online, it has been working ok for me, but I haven’t played any games yet which are quite as responsive as playing offline at home with friends. Even in the fastest games, there is a tiny but noticeable lag between when I input my commands and when they actually come out. Sometimes it’s small enough that I can ignore it more or less, but it’s still there.
- It seems like every new iteration of Smash Bros features an even faster character. This time we have Sonic whose foot speed, naturally, blows everyone else away. I was afraid that this would cause him to run off the edges of platforms a lot, but it’s actually not that hard to keep him on ground. His rolling attacks do send him out of control, but they have a slight stickiness at the edges of platforms that prevent him from flying off into the abyss.
- While we’re talking about new characters, I never got into Ness, and it’s not looking like Lucas will be one of my favorites either. I understand why some people use the Earthbound characters, but they just don’t work for me. Lucario is interesting because he gets stronger the more damage he takes, and despite being Mewtwo’s replacement, he really plays nothing like Mewtwo. I’ve already mentioned Zero Suit Samus’ unusual jumping, but her whip attacks are also very nice. She may end up giving Sheik a run for her money in the agility department. Oddly enough, I find Snake to be most comparable to Zelda. His gameplay is all about properly setting up your opponent and then getting yourself into the right place to deliver a big explosive hit. Ike is probably going to end up being a favorite for many players because he has such huge reach and power which makes what they did to Link all the more annoying. Link may be faster, but he just can’t take more than two or three big smacks from Ike.
- There were hints from Sakurai that he wanted to improve the heavy characters so that people wouldn’t ignore them all the time in favor of Fox, Sheik and Marth. Admittedly, I haven’t had enough time to test them out yet, but my sense is that although Bowser and Donkey Kong are a bit better, they still don’t hold a candle to the faster characters. What I’m seeing in Brawl, though, is the emergence of a powerful group of characters that you might call medium sized power hitters. These are characters who aren’t very big but who punch considerably above their weight. Characters I would put into this class are Zelda, Snake, Ike, Ganondorf and Ivysaur. They all walk a little slowly, but still not as slowly as Bowser. Moreover, their roll dodges can get them around quickly enough to be where they need to be. And the majority of their attacks have large knockback so that they don’t have to hit you with a charged up smash to send you flying. A regular directional attack might do the trick. To counter this, we now have several new characters such as Pit, Meta Knight and Dedede who now join the ranks of Kirby, Peach and Jigglypuff in their ability to recover from almost anything.
- In fact, I’m consistently impressed by how well balanced all the characters are. Every tactic I can think of has a counter tactic, and even the Final Smashes can be avoided if you’re really good. Although I regret certain characters not being included in the game (Mega Man and Lyn, for starters), I can see how much work it would have taken to put even just one more character in. That said, the Space Animal Clones are pretty lame.
- I was prepared to hate Subspace Emissaries, but it actually wasn’t that bad. The final segment with a maze was annoying, but otherwise it was fun to go through. And the CGI cutscenes were often hilarious (there’s one involving a cup of tea that left me grinning). As long as you didn’t attempt any difficult platforming with Bowser, things would work out all right. Tabuu, however, is one of the cheapest bosses ever created. He made me wish for Master Hand again.
- My favorite control scheme is actually the Wiimote and Nunchuk. I mapped jump to down on the control pad which is more or less where the Y button on the GameCube controller is. Everything else works just fine. I’ve found that after all this time, I’ve grown very used to playing games with my hands resting two feet apart. Clutching a controller just feels cramped now.
- This post is getting way too long, but I’ll just end by saying that the soundtrack is awesome. I won’t call it the best original score ever because, well, it’s not really an original score. It may be the best ever official compilation of videogame tunes, though, and it certainly highlights just how much good music Nintendo has produced over the years.
Now why haven’t you added me to your Friend Codes list yet?
