December 26, 2009

Christmas Roast: Super Smash Brothers Brawl

A new feature and holiday tradition here at Installation 04: the roast.


Releasing Brawl was a stupid move. At least, in the form Nintendo pushed it out the door with. You'd think that delaying it about 100 times would make it a quality product when it finally releases. Unfortunately, we got stuck with fail. Why does Brawl fail, you ask? Many, many reasons.

First and foremost, the game fails right off the bat when you boot it up:

Second, what the hell is up with the theme song? You got Japanese people to sing Latin? Really!? Here's what they translate to:

I have heard of his rumor,
He alone rushed into his enemies,
And saved his homeland.
I have heard of his rumor,
He ran across the lands and everything he touched was destroyed.
I have heard of his rumor.
I have heard of his rumor.
He gave everyone hope, as he gave me.
He gave everyone fear, as he gave me.
He is now next to me.
He is now next to me.
My allies are with me.
My allies who were once heroes,
And old enemies are here.
As they fiercely competed and battled,
Their spender grew.

Eh? Did I miss something, or does that not make any sense to anyone else either? It sounds like a bad anime opener. The theme for Melee was epic and most importantly lyricless! Lame theme song, no announcer, and we have to hear the song again in the menus? Melee had a separate menu song that was so catchy people still hum it to this day! Well, at least we could change it to that, but it would have been nice to have a new epic song.

Although, the music was very well done. However, there's still complaints to be had. For one, everyone and his uncle wanted a soundtrack to go along with the game. The problem is that it had 300+ freaking tracks! That's most definitely longer than a typical Final Fantasy set with 4 or 5 disks. Nobody wants that many disks. And while we're on the subject, I still don't approve of some of their choices. There's some tracks that had no reason not to be included. And why the hell can't I play any track from a given game on a stage from that game!? What? I can only play that Zelda song on one Zelda level? But I want to play it on this Zelda level!

And the levels! Sure there's a lot of them, but how many are good? What the hell is up with those stupid levels from non-games? Nobody wants to play in Pictochat, dammit! Too many of those. And there's Melee stages, but no 64 stages? Why? I would have loved to see the 'ol Zelda and Pokemon stages thrown in there. The stage builder was nice... in theory. But it lacks the variety and options to make something truly, well, good. After a while you realize you've already made that one before and then just give up. And why can I play any music track on these stages?


The characters were done all wrong. Selection was fine for the most part. Well, except for the whole Mewtwo/Lucario debacle. That was MAJOR fail. But the progression was all wrong. I don't want to play as all the cool new people right off the bad! I want to earn the cool new people! And It makes absolutely no sense that they give you some but not all of the cool new people from the get-go. What should have happened was this: they give you who remained of the 25 fighters from the previous game and let you unlock all the new people. Just like they did before! But no! It was a jumbled mess of characters randomly mixed together. And if that wasn't bad enough, they were easier than ever to unlock. Way to make the game a noob fest. Instead of rewarding good players with awesome character that they earned, they nerfed it all up and it ended up something like this:

To get Marth, you could complete Classic Mode... or you could just play 10 versus matches. To get Captain Falcon, you could beat Classic Mode on Normal in 12 minutes or less... or you could play 70 versus matches. Not to mention the so called "adventure mode" that was Subspace Emissary (nothing more than a dumbed-down platformer) could be used to unlock all of the secret characters the easy way. Each character had three unlock methods. Melee had two, and the minimum number of matches to play for the alternate unlock was 50. And it got you everyone's favorite, Jigglypuff. The number of vs. matches needed to unlock characters went all the way up to 1,000, with the more interesting, non-clone characters up in the higher digets. This was incentive to unlock them the alternate way which was actually challenging, not simply having them join you in story mode. Brawl also did nothing about the clone problem. In fact, the added even more clones. And I'll never forgive them for not only keeping Gannon's moveset the same, but nerfing him even more. Come to think of it, if you had a favorite character in a pervious game, chances are they got nerfed to be more noob-friendly. Eveyone moves in slo-mo now, and what the fuck did they do to the Starfox Team's voices!? Also, I'm sorry, but Zero Suit Samus and Shiek do not count as extra characters. And Pokemon Trainer does not count as three. And if you want any more proof that that the gameplay was noobfied, then look no further than the smash ball, the single worst idea anyone could have conceived. That and a couple of other extremely cheap items make playing the game with noobs an infuriating bore fest as they laugh in your face after you die cheap death after cheap death. I can't believe the red shell was out, but they brought back the evil bumper. Ugh.

Brawl is simply a dumbed down version of the previous games that adds some shiny new packaging. Once you realize that the new is simply skin deep, it becomes apparent that the old, what made the games so fun in the first place, has actually been modified for the worse. It's sad to say that Brawl simply doesn't live up to the high expectation and lofty goals of being the next great Smash game. We'll always have Melee, but I do wish Brawl was improved Melee just as Melee was improved in so many ways over the original. Its just... not. I've had Melee for eight years and am not ashamed to admit I still have yet to unlock every stage. Those classic ones are damn hard to get! I had Brawl for all of a week and had gotten everything worth getting. I think I'll continue to play Melee for the next eight years to come, while my copy of Brawl sits collecting dust. Here's to hoping the next Smash does it right.

1 comment:

  1. I agree. Also i like the new top picture header thing, looks good

    ReplyDelete