Super Smash Bros : Brawl

Super Smash Bros Brawl : Some kind of fighter/platformer hybrid where players control a variety of characters from Nintendo’s past and battle each in some kind of King of the Hill-style of cartoon combat. Along the way, Nintendo will pat itself on the back a lot throughout the game.

Story : Oh yes, this one has a storyline, based in the new single-player campaign “The Subspace Emissary.” Apparently, the Nintendo mascots were engaging in some kind of friendly tournament popular enough to sell out the Tokyo Dome, only to be interrupted by an army of ROBs (the robot toys that plugged into your NES and dicked around according to what happened in 3 or 4 games) who use tactical nuclear strikes and special guns to transform Nintendo’s golden cows into statues. On the surface this appears to be the work of some bizarre Legion of Doom-like alliance of all the Nintendo villains but in truth is the work of one of the lamest “ultimate evil force” characters ever concocted. It’s as someone at Hal discovered a stray copy of The Watchmen, thought it was some small time independent book and that no one would notice if they ripped off a certain blue character. Oh, and the story sucks. There are several smaller subplots but the lack of dialog fails to give any depth to what’s going on, assuming most people will just geek out over seeing Pikachu and Samus Aran on the same team.

“The Subspace Emissary” is an example of SSBM’s attempt to produce as many new features as physically possible in an attempt to produce the most impressive press releases physically possible. I don’t think any other game at the time sounded more beefy in previews than Brawl. IGN may have spent more time typing stories about Smash Bros Brawl than most people will spend playing it…or any single game in general. However, in its attempt to be so ambitious, perhaps the developmental efforts that went into Brawl were too spread out, leaving most of these new features to falter. The aforementioned Emissary mode for example; besides the dull story, almost every level is the same series of uninteresting platform jumping and enemies all too blatantly ripped out of Kingdom Hearts. Fighting these doll-like…things gets old after the first stage, and you’ve got about 10 hours of fighting them before you reach the final boss and unlock Sonic The Hedgehog (yes, you have to unlock the two most prominently advertised features on the back of the box, Sonic and Metal Gear’s Solid Snake.) I found it cute and novel when the game filled the levels with goombas and koopas, and perhaps diversifying the worlds with enemies from Nintendo canon instead of the Heartless would’ve helped make this gameplay mode more interesting, but alas, it ultimately serves as a chore players are forced to go through to unlock the hidden characters and impress their friends at parties.

So right off the bat, the game strikes out at attempting to create an interesting single-player campaign. There’s also a much-publicized attempt at online play. The Wii’s online play already suffers from Nintendo’s need to protect kids playing online from stalkers and profanity with a lack of voice chat and the whole friend code system (which begs the question of why the ESRB included a message at the beginning of the game warning that they hold no responsibility over online play). Fair enough, but for some bizarre reason the game restricts your options when playing with strangers. You’re essentially limited to 2 minute timed battles, where the winner is usually whoever grabs the all-powerful Final Smash orb first. The ability to customize match rules is limited to playing with friends, and odds are the only friend codes on your system are going to be codes of people you know in person and thus can PLAY TOGETHER in person anyways, thus begging the question of why bother incorporating online play in the first place.

Many of the other new additions are minute. The Stage Editor is too barebones, only allowing you to make the most primitive and visually dull arenas to fight in. It feels useless when most people will wind up using Final Destination as their tournament setting or …every other stage for fun. (It’s worth mentioning that most of the levels in the game are clever in design and that whoever thought making an arena out of the third level of Donkey Kong should get some kind of promotion for his or her efforts.) There’s some kind of new sticker system which is essentially the same as trophies from the last game but…well, not as interesting and thus leaves you wondering what the point is. Trophies and stickers are unlocked throughout all the game modes but can be obtained the fastest through some weird shooting mini-game that randomly throws out trophies and ensures that only players who invest several hundred hours into the game will actually see all of the game’s content. The controls and general gameplay ideas are all but unchanged here, with the one new addition being the previously mentioned “Final Smash” attack. Final Smashing involves an orb that floats around the screen every now and then, and whoever successfully destroys it gets an overpowered, often screen-covering attack that racks up several instant-kills and in a timed match, usually translates into an instant victory. Thankfully, these can be turned off.

Otherwise, the core gameplay is intact. The controls are more accessible than most every fighter on the market, but at the same time, the control concepts (namely the notion of pressing different directions with the same button yielding completely different attacks) are too abstract to make this game pick-up-and-play friendly for newcomers. This is not a party game unless your party comprises of a bunch of SSB veterans who’ve been playing this franchise since its inception. For me, Brawl’s greatest strength lies in the way it handles its cast of characters. Being that most of the characters originated in 2D platformers and the game itself is a platformer disguised as a fighting game, most of the characters handle like you’d imagine them to, adding to the game’s goal of being a demented form of fan service. Kirby still floats around like a helium balloon, Wario fights like a soccer hooligan, Sonic jumps and speeds around the stage like a mosquito (and inflicts as much damage as one), Solid Snake tactically plants explosives and sets up traps, and Diddy Kong is a scrawny little monkey who can tactically plant banana peels (and becomes obsolete once you unlock Solid Snake and opt to use C4 over banana peels).

Ultimately, Super Smash Bros Brawl succeeds with flying colours in the areas that the series has always succeeded in; being an entertaining offline multiplayer game for fans of previous installments, and Nintendo giving itself one big $50 pat on the back. However, the game fails at pretty much every attempt to be more than that, and unless you have several friends who also love the franchise (or love it when Nintendo pleasures itself in their face) then you won’t be spending too much time playing it after you’ve forced yourself to unlock all the hidden characters.

Pros : The rare case of a fighting game where most of the new characters feel fresh and not retreads of past characters. Makes no attempt to use Wii-specific motion controls.

Cons : The main theme, complete with symphony and choir, feels too self-serving and is too grand in scale for any game with Pikachu in it. At the end of the day, it’s still a game about Nintendo loving itself. Fanboys will argue over what character should’ve been included from now until the next game comes out.

3 1/2 stars