The insanely popular fighting franchise that pits characters from dozens of different universes against one another in combat is back. But how could such a zany formula could eventually sweep the world of fighting games? Even after its release in 1999, who knew that Super Smash Bros. would ever evolve into its own subgenre that would legitimately redefine the concept of a fighting game? The original N64 title introduced the now-famous “rising percentage” design*, and yet it did so within a package that came off as hardly more than a well-designed party game, with lots of short-term appeal, but an only modest amount of depth.
*In case you aren’t familiar, in the world of Smash Bros, one must knock his/her opponents off the edge of the screen in order to defeat them. Rather than a life meter, characters sport a percentage indicator that rises with damage taken. The higher the percentage, the farther they fly when hit.
In 2001, though, Super Smash Bros. Melee changed all of that. With this single gargantuan salute to all things Nintendo, the brilliant designer in charge of the project and responsible for the creation of the series, Masahiro Sakurai, supplemented a wealth of Nintendo nostalgia with one of the most unique and compelling fighting systems in any game of the genre. This led to a community of serious competitors (all of whom could undoubtedly trounce the Chumps here on staff), and ever since then, the Super Smash Bros. elite have argued that their choice of competition is every bit as hardcore as that of the Soul Calibur and Street Fighter variety.
Considering that, after having played Melee for hundreds of hours, how many of us actually expected Nintendo to attempt to successfully expand such a vast experience even further? On one hand, they absolutely rank amongst the top developers in the world. Having said that, though, judging by precedent, it might not have been outrageous to expect a Smash Bros follow-up of the Double Dash!! assortment; that is, puzzlingly different, questionably balanced, and arguably shallower than its predecessors. But perhaps Sakurai is the special ingredient here. With Melee, he took his direction to an entirely new level. Can Brawl replicate that degree of success, or is it trapped within the shadow of its world-famous predecessor?
The Basics – Controlled Chaos
If you’ve read the short italicized synopsis above, that’s the meat and potatoes of the Smash Bros. approach. It’s truly the only fighting game of its type, and it’s amazing to behold the level of balance achieved by the designers in implementing such a novel concept. Beyond that, the game exerts a focus on reflex and strategy rather than a wealth of complex techniques, a philosophy that happily foregoes the need for memorization of profuse amounts of button combinations. And you can forget the inescapably endless combos and positively geeky frame-counting opportunities that adorn some fighting games; in Smash Bros., every match is different, thanks primarily to the game’s ingenious implementation of controlled chaos.
What I mean by this is that Smash Bros. will not allow you to formulate a foolproof sequence of events to win any match. It invalidates such strategies by introducing a system of random variables that affect the flow of a typical match. The first, and most pronounced, of any of these variables is the items system. Throughout the course of a match, any number of over 50 different items—swords, bombs, laser guns, Pokéballs, you name it—will appear in an attempt to shake things up. Any character that comes into contact with one of these items can pick it up and use it in a variety of ways at any time, or even just throw it at their enemy as a projectile (each item produces entirely different results when thrown as well). Some items are relatively weak, and others are very powerful and can produce game-changing results. Love it or hate it, the Smash Bros. series was designed around the existence of these items, and while you can disable them at will (even tinker with their rate of appearance or selectively turn them off if you wish), there’s something to be said for their appeal in three- and four-player Brawls. In one-on-one, most serious players tend to switch them off entirely, but otherwise, a low appearance rate and exclusion of the truly powerful items makes for a well-balanced, albeit stimulating and chaotic, battle.
The second most prominent element of controlled chaos in the Smash Bros. modus operandi is the interactive levels. In contrast to the mostly passive environments in other fighting games, Smash Bros. levels are dynamic and dangerous. While there is still a small selection of inert locales to satisfy those times where you just want to spar without distraction, the rest of the levels are built upon a principle of patterned interference, chocked full of variable fare and all manner of hazards. The levels range from mostly tame and calm (Final Destination, Battlefield) to outright treacherous (Pictochat, DK Rumble Falls). There are dozens in all, every one of them completely unique and highly entertaining in its own right. A select few of the levels are so hazardous as to be overly distracting, but the random stage switch, which is available after you unlock all the stages, rectifies this problem by allowing you to turn off the ones you wish to avoid. Overall, the levels in Brawl are very well-balanced; they’re interactive, but usually not so much as to be bothersome after a bit of practice.
The final major element of this chaotic formula is the in-built uncertainty of techniques. As with most fighting games, by studying your character’s various moves, you can get a good feel for which ones are most powerful and will be more helpful in certain situations (a training mode is included to assist you with these study sessions). However, unlike other games, the damage potential of each technique varies ever-so-slightly with each execution. That means that you can’t base your entire strategy on preformulated mathematics, as things will turn out differently every time. Likewise, still other random variables are introduced to foil such attempts: in Brawl, for instance, rolling dodges occasionally result in your character tripping (presumably to discourage incessant dodging matches, which were all too common amongst experts in Melee).
What does all of this mean? That the game does not require skill? That it requires less skill than other fighting games? No and no. As any seasoned player can show you, Brawl requires plenty of skill, but it’s an entirely different type of skill. As opposed to rout memorization and programmatic strategies, Brawl requires practicing for uncertainty, and it rewards quick decision-making in times of crisis. What separates Super Smash Bros. from other fighting games is this break from the formulaic and deterministic. Through its inclusion of various anomalies from one battle to the next, the series breaks ties with the rest of the fighting game genre and instead embraces a philosophy that is still highly rooted in skill and reflex, yet overwhelmingly probabilistic. In Super Smash Bros., you must pay attention to more than just your opponent—the environments and items are equally threatening. You get good by perfecting compartmentalized techniques and practicing for specific scenarios that can arise at any given time. In other words, it isn’t that item that caused you to lose the match; it’s how your opponent used the item and how you responded to his use of it.
If It Ain’t Broke…
Sakurai clearly knows the strengths and weaknesses of his formula, and so he chooses not to tinker with what makes Smash Bros. so successful. The copious attention to detail and outrageous amount of content still remains in Brawl, and in many ways, it’s more pronounced than ever. If you’ve played Melee, you’ll feel right at home with Brawl, which capitalizes upon that design with more of everything, including a seemingly endless amount of subsidiary content. The heart of the franchise remains untouched, though some of the capillaries have seen adjustment.
Right from the start, the game resembles Melee’s design. Amid a plethora of modes and options you will find mostly familiar substance: an Adventure Mode, Event Mode, Classic Mode, Stadium Modes (Home Run Contest, Multi-Man Melee, Target Test, etc.), Practice, and an enormous array of multiplayer options. In Brawl, most of these modes are nearly identical to those in Melee, although a couple of them have been completely worked over.
The most obvious of these is Adventure Mode, which is now a full-on ten-hour-long side-scrolling adventure game of its own, featuring a wide range of locales, characters, and enemies from all Nintendo universes, full-motion video, numerous boss battles, a save system, and more. Adventure Mode is deeper than it seems, with a good helping of hidden content and the ability to apply stickers you find to your characters’ trophies to endow them with heightened abilities (more on this later). The FMVs are nicely done, though the storyline and environments honestly could have been better (nonsensical fusion of different gaming universes notwithstanding). Overall, it’s a cool addition to the game, though it does tend to drag in the later stages, and the gameplay isn’t quite as compelling as you might expect (seeing as it’s truly nothing more than traditional Smash Bros. gameplay set in a number of side-scrolling levels).
Apart from the Adventure Mode, most everything else in the game is simply Melee refined plus more. There’s so much content here that it’s likely to make your brain bleed from dopamine overload. More characters, more levels, more music, more items, more trophies, more secrets; you can take snapshots, save replays, send them to friends, create your own levels… if you thought there was a lot to see in Melee, this game will send you reeling.
As for the rest of the game modes, Classic Mode is essentially the same format as it was in Melee; it’s classic fighting game design where you’re pitted against one character after another in their home environments, with a few variables tossed in (giant battles, metal battles, etc.) to make things interesting. Event Mode offers a few dozen preset scenarios which you can choose to complete on any of three different difficulty levels, plus an additional set of co-op events. The Stadium Mode includes the same modes as the last game (plus one that’s hidden), and this time, each mode can also be played with two players as well. You’ve got your training, of course, and lastly, the most prolific mode of them all—the multiplayer Brawl.
Quality and Quantity
Beyond that, the game is simply brimming with encouragement to continue playing. During and after nearly every match, you’re bound to unlock something, and probably for the first solid week or so, you’ll be rewarded with something pretty big at least once per play session. The prizes range from items as small as any of over 700 stickers, or more than a few hundred trophies, or spendable coins, or tons of awesome unlockable songs, to as significant as new playable characters, levels, modes, items, and features. Brawl truly has the concept of positive reinforcement down to a science: you play, and whether you win or lose, you’re rewarded simply for spending the time. An enormously expansive 3-D Challenges matrix graphically documents some of the more noteworthy prizes you can unlock, all of which are contained neatly in one of 128 sealed boxes. It plays out sort of like a game, revealing the prerequisites to winning the prizes in each box only as you complete one of the adjacent boxes. Before long, you’ll find yourself browsing this array of rewards in search of something to go after next, and you’re bound to have fun doing so.
The unlockable characters and levels are fantastic treasures, of course. But even the stickers and trophies provide ample incentive to anyone with a thing for collecting (packrats unite!). The stickers are merely game art… they’re abundant and yet they serve a worthwhile purpose in the adventure mode (while that lasts). The trophies, however, just as in Melee, all include exhaustive descriptions of their origins, and they’re often beautifully detailed. Collecting them is as simple as picking them up during single-player gameplay, completing certain objectives (as detailed in the Challenges matrix), or playing the addictive Coin Launcher mode, which is sort of like a shoot-em-up mini-game where your weapons are coin projectiles and your targets are enemy ships and collectible trophies (but once you run out of coins, it’s back to the other modes to earn more, you bum).
And the music… oh, the music. At first, I was openly concerned about the fact that most of Brawl’s music that had been released in preview form was clearly not done with live instruments (in Melee, a respectable portion of the soundtrack was live orchestra). However, now that I have unlocked a majority of the songs in the game, I must happily rescind my concerns. This is, quite simply, one fabulous soundtrack; in fact, it’s probably one of the best in videogame history. The theme song, while overused throughout the production, is excellent (and written by ex-Final Fantasy composer and legend Nobuo Uematsu, no less). The rest of the soundtrack is either original (a small percentage of it) or comprised of rearrangements and original versions of a grand selection of tunes from other games. And there are some truly wonderful pieces here—stuff that’s really surprising, and a wide range of different styles to behold. You will hear everything from orchestral to hard rock, ranging from the famous to the obscure—and if you’re an audiophile, you’ll be grinning the entire way.
Super Smash Bros. Alpha
But let’s get back to the gameplay. While most everything here will be familiar territory for Smash veterans, some changes have been made since Melee. The first and probably most notable change is the slightly “floatier” physics with which the characters move (this can be both a gift and a curse depending on your perspective). Most returning characters retain their general “feel” from Melee, but their movesets have been rebalanced, so you will probably have to adjust your fighting style to some degree. In addition, everyone has now received the ability to execute a Final Smash—an extremely powerful move which is unique to each character. These grand techniques can only be unleashed after you manage to break open a floating Smash Ball in the midst of battle (or, and this is rather controversial, when you are falling so far behind in the fight that the game deems your case hopeless). Turning off items, of course, disables the Final Smash system, so if you don’t like it, don’t sweat it.
Apart from that, various other adjustments have been made to the general combat mechanics, including the omission of “bugged” techniques like wavedashing, et al, and the addition of others in their place like head-jumping and dash cancelling. If you’re curious as to the extent of such changes to the advanced techniques in the game, I won’t cover them here, but you can find an explanation in any amount of detail you desire on the aforementioned SmashBoards.com web site.
Smashing on Teh Internets
Should you wish to take your skills online, Brawl finally allows for such reckless overzealousness (kidding, I’m sure you’re great). Sure, it might be super-simplistic-16-digit-friend-code-zero-communication-allowed online play, but nevertheless, it still exists, and that counts for something. The matches are primarily lag-free, so that’s an achievement in itself… though there is some degree of delay between your input and the on-screen action, a caveat necessitated by (and proportional to) the geographic distance between yourself and anyone else playing. The “With Anyone” option allows for a quick match sporting basic rules—and basic it is indeed. You can’t decide whether you’d like to play two, three, or four players in a match; the game makes that decision for you. It chooses to sometimes pair you up with one other player if no others can be found for a one-on-one, but by the same token, it might also throw in a couple of CPU-controlled contenders. Also, you can’t view the names or records of anyone you’re playing against, much less communicate with them in any fashion short of zig-zagging your messages across the sky with Kirby (not recommended). You can’t even play team matches against others with two players on the same Wii console, and that’s a bummer.
Playing with friends is a slightly different scenario. In this situation, you’re at least allowed view who is online and set any rules with which you wish to play (the actual rules and stage are selected randomly by the game from the choices each player makes). You can also enter short preset messages to be displayed above your character’s head when you press any of the four directions on the D-pad assigned to “taunt”. The game communicates the connection quality of each online player as well, something that is helpful in deciding who to battle. Beyond the basic and team brawl modes, you can also arrange a team multi-man brawl with your friends (quite fun) or even stage a home-run contest.
Finally, the Smash Service allows you to specify whether you’d like to receive premade content from Nintendo every day on your Wii after logging online. This content includes one snapshot, one short replay, and one custom level per day. Sadly, however, you cannot save any of these things to your console’s memory, so once the day is over with, it’s gone for good (explain that one). You can choose to view other players’ prerecorded matches and bet your coins on them if you want, something that’s perhaps entertaining when you’re eating dinner while your cable is out. The online options menu also lets you choose whether to allow spectators, and if you accept, your online battle replay data will be made available for others to view and wager based on as well.
Overall, as is generally the case with Nintendo’s first-party titles, the online mode in Brawl is surprisingly simple, and if you don’t count the absolutely asinine sixteen-digit friend code registration mandated by the With Friends option, it’s relatively painless, too. The matches are fun and quick, and some people would argue that they’re all the more enticing devoid of all manner of trash talk and profane chatter generally married to such experiences (I say, you don’t like it, turn the option off!). Unfortunately, the simplification extends too far, leading to a gaping omission of any sort of interaction whatsoever, including a complete lack of leaderboards or record-keeping of any type. This makes Brawl’s online experience passable, yet painfully thin in comparison to nearly any other game of its type.
Real Men Play Offline
But seriously, nothing beats having a Smash party anyway (sure, laugh it up; my Diddy Kong will smack the taste out of your mouth). And for that, Brawl is every bit as perfect as Melee has been for the last 6.5 years. If you’re able to assemble four or more real live bodies for some battles, you’ll find a wealth of play options, including a tournament mode and a new rotation mode to help you keep track of who plays when. And, as before, there’s enough variety to keep you playing for countless hours, especially if you switch up your playing conditions from time to time (stock vs. time matches, team battles, items on/off, random stage selection, etc).
Smashing Again
Any way you slice it, Super Smash Bros. is one of the premier franchises in gaming today—and Brawl, with its measured adjustments to the formula and massive helpings of additional content, simply solidifies this enviable status. If you’re one of those people who has been playing Melee on a regular basis for the past six years, you will fall in love with Brawl. Or, if you’re just looking for a great game to play with your friends, you can’t go wrong with Brawl. True, people who aren’t very familiar with the world of Nintendo might struggle to find value in the unlockable features, but even for them there is plenty to love here.
The supreme amount of effort that went into nearly every area of this game is just mind-boggling. You will be amazed by the scope of the experience equally as much as you are by the little things—the terrific soundtrack, the trophy descriptions, the surreal trips through space dogfights and beautiful vistas through which the levels fly… for $50, it would be difficult to imagine a more complete package.
Apart from the disappointingly restrictive online experience and a few other minor complaints (the level editor is a bit of a letdown as well), Super Smash Bros. Brawl has this whole sequel thing absolutely nailed. It doesn’t take much to be able to say with confidence that, like Melee, this is another game that we will all still be playing years from now, even after this generation of games has come and gone. Sakurai has gone on record saying that he designed the game with that very type of rare long-term appeal in mind… and he has absolutely succeeded in that regard.
