Electron Hut: Kyle Bedell’s Blog

After a seven year hiatus and numerous delays, the Smash Brothers franchise saw its latest title hit the Nintendo Wii last week. Boasting an expanded character roster, new levels, a vast single-player mode, improved sound/graphics, and online play, is Brawl what Smash Bros. fans have been waiting for? The answer is a resounding “Yes!”

For the uninitiated, Super Smash Brothers is a multiplayer platformer-fighter using characters and worlds from various Nintendo franchises. There really isn’t anything else quite like it out on the market. Unlike most fighting games, Smash Bros. uses a percentage-based damage system; every attack someone lands on your character boosts your damage percentage. The higher the percentage, the farther you fly when struck. Falling off the side of a stage or off of the screen counts as a knockout for the person who last struck you. Winners are determined by who has the most KOs when time runs out (timed battles), or the last man standing (stock battles where each character has a set amount of ‘lives’).

So what are the most noticeable changes from 2001’s Super Smash Bros. Melee on the GameCube? In general, Brawl doesn’t feel as quick as Melee does. This isn’t a negative thing, it just feels different from the previous titles in the series. Damage mitigation also makes an appearance. Unlike Melee, using the same moves repeatedly in Brawl causes each to deal progressively less damage. This is to prevent players from relying on a single move their character possesses in order to win a battle. Advanced players will notice the removal of wavedashing (air-dodging close to the ground to make one’s character appear to slide) and other mechanics abuses.

Brawl also seems to be a bit more forgiving when it comes to grabbing edges of stages and platforms; it’s almost like there’s some sort of gravitational field that pulls you towards the edges. You’ll occasionally be falling off the stage, make a half-hearted leap to safety (not expecting to survive), and find that you actually made it! Perhaps it’s a concession to all of the absurdly quick characters who seem to be falling towards oblivion every fifteen seconds.

On the single player front, Classic mode (battle a set number of characters one after another) makes a return, but the new experience comes from Brawl’s Subspace Emissary adventure mode. An extremely strange story has the Nintendo world invaded by an evil force of ‘Primids’, apparently bent on total domination. I won’t try to explain the story here, but you progress through individual stages laid out on a world map, collecting new characters for your team as you go. You can collect stickers throughout your journey and place them on certain characters to increase their fighting abilities as well. The mode was an interesting effort, but the mechanics of a fighting title like Brawl don’t translate well to the side-scrolling platformer genre. Many characters lack the jumping capabilities to navigate through some of the levels, and the final stage commits a terrible design sin by making you play through every level over again in the form of a maze. It’s headache-inducing to say the least.

Sporting over 30 characters and a slew of newcomers, Brawl’s character roster is the most varied yet. Most of the new characters have very different playstyles than what Melee players are used to, including the Pikmin-wielding Captain Olimar and ordinance-packing Solid Snake of Metal Gear Solid fame. The amount of ‘clone characters’ has also been reduced; while Falco and Fox were virtually identical except for some speed/strength attributes in Melee, the two have wildly different movesets in Brawl. Other characters like Peach, Sheik, Ness, and Kirby have had various tweaks made to their moves and overall strengths in the interest of gameplay balancing. Needless to say, there’s enough variation in the Brawl roster to please any Smash Bros. player!

Players will also be pleased with the new stages, of which there are 41 in total. Some fan-favorites from Melee return in unaltered form, including the Temple stage from The Legend of Zelda and Big Blue from F-Zero, but the bulk of areas are new. Most pack some sort of environmental effect to mix up fights; for example, the WarioWare-themed stage cycles through various minigames while you fight. If you can complete one successfully, you’ll become invulnerable for a short period. The individual stages really capture the feel of the games they’re based on, and most of the popular Nintendo franchises are represented in the lineup. Of course, some of them are still terrible (Mr. Game and Watch’s Flat Land 2, I’m looking at you.)

Brawl’s characters have received a substantial graphical upgrade in the move to the Wii, which supports widescreen and 480p resolution. The same cannot be said for the various levels and stages; the backgrounds are often kept extremely simple in an effort to keep framerates up. Brawl’s graphics are evolutionary, more like Melee 1.5 than a revolutionary upgrade.

The sound, however, is a different story. Boasting over 300 tracks from Nintendo titles across the years, Brawl’s composers include (but are certainly not limited to) Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts), Yuka Tsujiyoko (Fire Emblem), Kazumi Totaka (Animal Crossing and Yoshi series), Michiko Naruke (Wild ARMS), and Toru Minegishi (The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess). The orchestral score is nothing short of incredible; I would go as far as to say that Brawl has the best musical selection of any game I have ever played. Period.

So was Brawl worth the wait? Definitely! While the game doesn’t break revolutionary new ground, it’s a great refinement to the Smash Bros. formula. A worthwhile buy!

Yay! Katt and I just got approved for our first apartment down at Charlesbank!

Products like the HotCold mug really make my day. How can something so simple be so awesome?

I’m selling my upgraded Asus EEE 4G for $389 (it has 1GB RAM vs. 512MB). It’s in excellent condition, and I’ll even throw a 2GB SD card in! Feel free to send me an email if you’re interested.