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!

The fourth entry in the acclaimed Ace Attorney series, Apollo Justice does a bang-up job of continuing the Phoenix Wright legacy. While old fan-favorite characters have made themselves scarce seven years after the end of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations, the new cast is nearly (but not quite) as charming and funny as Gumshoe, Edgeworth, and Maya were. A few new gameplay elements and an interesting storyline keep the formula fresh as well.

Some things never change, and Apollo Justice, like the Ace Attorney games before it, is a point-and-click adventure title at heart. Each case introduces you to a crime of some kind (now with upgraded visuals for the DS!) and places the defense of the supposed-perpetrator in your hands. Scour scenes for evidence and interview involved parties to get enough background information to go to court, then cross-examine witnesses and present evidence to get to the truth!

Apollo Justice mixes up the traditional formula a bit with some new additions. Forensic evidence plays a larger role in this game than in the previous ones in the series, and you’ll be able to examine evidence in full 3D. Psych-locks have been removed, replaced with a new “Perceive” system where Apollo can catch people in the act of lying by noticing their nervous habits. In addition, Emma Skye from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney’s extra fifth case fills in for Detective Gumshoe in Apollo Justice, allowing you to dust evidence for fingerprints, take shoeprints, and conduct other nifty forensic analysis.

While I’m not a huge fan of the new soundtrack, Apollo Justice’s graphical presentation has been upgraded substantially. Character sprites and environments are substantially more detailed than in previous Ace Attorney titles (which were all ported from the Game Boy Advance to the Nintendo DS for their North American release). The transition from GBA ports to a native DS title might seem subtle at first, but once you see the old 2D diagrams transform into 3D scenes, you know something’s changed for the better.

In the end, Apollo Justice is full of what makes the Ace Attorney series great: hysterical writing (Capcom’s English localization team is fantastic), interesting cases, and entertaining characters. The new additions do a great job at freshening up the series’ forumula, but don’t expect anything drastically different here. If you didn’t like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney or the other games in the series, Apollo Justice won’t change your opinion. That being said, adventure lovers and fans of the series will have a grand time with Ace Attorney’s latest rookie lawyer.

Plus, you get to yell “OBJECTION!” and point your finger in a menacing fashion at people. How awesome is that?

Every year, the Independent Games Festival holds a competition to “reward innovation in independent games,” giving recognition to titles developed by single people or small groups. In particular, the IGF focuses on games that break from the standard genres; the titles that usually win bring something new to the table. Today, I’ll be looking at the grand prize winner for 2008: a title recently picked up on the Steam distribution service called Audiosurf.

A fusion of racing, puzzle, and music games, Audiosurf is unique in that it builds its tracks based on music files on your computer. While there are a variety of game modes, the basic gist of Audiosurf is to create clusters of blocks of the same color by running them over. The more you string together, the more points you get. “Hot” colors like red and orange grant more points than “cool” colors like blue or white. The shape and intensity of each track is determined by analyzing a song; fast, hectic tunes lead to downsloping, block-laden tracks while slow, mellow songs slope upward and have fewer blocks. All of this has to be accomplished while avoiding grey blocks; hit too many and you’ll lose a slew of points when your futuristic “car” explodes. Since the song the track is based on plays through to the end, any time your car explodes it will automatically “reconstruct” itself after a set period of time. However, you won’t be able to pick up colored blocks in the interim, so be careful!

There are fourteen different game modes available in Audiosurf, although only six of them are unique. The other eight are permutations of the six main game modes, offering increased difficulty for players looking for a challenge. For a relaxing time, try Mono mode which only has two colors of blocks to contend with. Looking for a challenge? Try Double V mode where you have two cars to control at once. More competitive individuals will be thrilled to hear that there are high-score boards for each game mode and song title, so you can track your performance against others from across the globe.

There’s enough variety in the gameplay to hold your attention, but combined with a huge music library Audiosurf should remain a part of your gaming library for months to come. Anyone who is looking for a quirky alternative to the cookie-cutter titles plaguing the gaming market should consider Audiosurf as a refreshing alternative.

Hooray! It’s shipping day for Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney! Let’s hope that this entry in the Ace Attorney series is a good as the previous three.

Review to follow after I’ve finished it!