Review: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Super Smash Bros. Brawl (hereby referred to as SSBB to avoid confusion and infuriate fans of the full stop) was announced about two years ago, in the form of a trailer at E3. Fans of the series rejoiced, and then fell into a stunned silence by the news that Solid Snake, infamous protagonist of the Metal Gear series, was returning to Nintendo for a brief cameo after years of hanging around Sony HQ, hiding in cardboard boxes and smoking enough cigarettes to make the oil industry rise again. Naturally, the director of the game, a Mr. Sakuri, began taunting fans of the game via the official website, which updated once a weekday for many, many months, each new day bringing one small detail about the game, which made the wait so much more painful for fans of the first two games, Super Smash Bros. on the Nintendo 64, and Super Smash Bros. Melee on the Nintendo Gamecube. At last, the long wait is over and the number one spot has been secured for a few weeks at least.

SSBB follows the format of the first two games, being both a fighting game with a twist, and a tribute to Nintendo gaming history. Unlike most fighting games that involve randomly mashing buttons until either the controller or the other player dies (in-game or literally in both cases, due to the sibling rivalry that often ensues - Glen, if you're reading this, I hate you because you ruined Street Fighter forever for me at the age of 6), Smash Bros offers a different style of play. The characters are located in arenas based on the setting of various games from Nintendo history, which vary in size from a claustrophic nightmare to arenas rougly the size of Liverpool, except with less violence (har har har). Each character has their own set of special moves, ranging from projectiles to your basic punches and kicks, and instead of a health meter, each character has a percentage for their health that begins at 0% and rises to stupidly high levels as they take more and more damage. As the percentage rises, the characters become lighter, until knocking them off the stage results in a point or loss of life.

As predicted in a Nintendo fighting game, the characters (bar two - we'll get to that later) are all from various Nintendo series, from the olden days of Super Mario to the newer franchises such as Pikmin or Pokemon, also visiting japanese-only games to further torment european gamers, such as Fire Emblem and Earthbound. The roster, including secret characters, spans 35 different characters, 10 higher than Melee's final cast, with five characters removed from Melee (Pichu, Dr Mario, Roy, Young Link and Mewtwo for those who care - although all four characters are clones of others except Mewtwo, who has been replaced by someone else in this game, so they can get the hell out). There are two guest characters this time round, the aforementioned Solid Snake of MGS fame, and Sonic the Hedgehog, of...umm....Sonic the Hedgehog fame. However, both have to be unlocked through the eight hour story mode in order to be played in multiplayer, making the hype about them somewhat unsatisfying.

The story mode's plot is detailed and interesting enough to keep you playing, and the combination of platforming and fighting through the varied environments makes it an enjoyable experience, even if the difficulty curve is crazier than a bulemic fire-eater, and can also be played in a two-player mode, for those who can't stand playing alone - or those that don't have the choice. The boss fights are challenging enough to make you care, and the final level takes three hours to complete and involves visiting segments of the past levels in the game, something which is a novelty at first until you realise you need to repeat them several times to get things you've missed, but this is forgiveable.

The game was originally developed by Hal Laborities, creators of the Kirby series of games, which is extremely noticeable. The three characters from the Kirby series present - the pink ball himself, the mysterious and too-cool-for-school Meta Knight, and King Dedede, who is a giant penguin with a hammer. His name is instantly forgiven because he is a GIANT PENGUIN WITH A HAMMER. However, the story mode, despite having 32 hero characters (35 with the three super duper secret replay-and-find-me unlockables), results in most of the characters being obliterated and turned into trophies, resulting in the Kirby characters to save the day at one point, which seems a bit egotistical.

The game is bleeding with replay value, from the 500+ trophies to collect, the Stage Maker (which features a daily download from Nintendo, who choose the best submitted stage for playableness), all the characters, Classic Mode (which involves beating the stupid out of a series of characters one by one), another secret mode in which you fight every character in the game with one life and limited healing items, a target breaking mini-game, a game where you smack around a sandbag character and see how far you can launch him in the time limit, and much, much more. The game shines in multiplayer, but even if you don't have any real-life friends fear not, because the one player options have been expanded, making this a fan for any fans of the previous games.

It helps a great deal to at least recognise a few of the characters - people who locked themselves in a cave with a Playstation twenty years ago and never heard of Nintendo may find the experience less enjoyable, but the game itself is still enjoyable. There are four control methods - the wii remote on the side, the wii remote with the nunchuck attachment, the classic controller and the Gamecube controller - but I want to make one thing clear. You play it with the Gamecube controller. No other methods are worthwhile. If you use them, I will eat your soul. Saves battery power too.

Colour me biased as a Nintendo fan, but I really enjoyed this game, but it's not without fault. There are a large variety of random items to use in battle, which sadly range from useful as a chocolate fireguard (like a paper fan) to self-destructive-megaownage (a smart bomb which takes up a quarter of the screen and kills anything that goes anywhere near it), so a player with the controller in his mouth might get lucky and throw a bomb at a champion player, who will proceed to wipe himself up off the floor. This, known in the media by gaming critics, as "Mario Kart Syndrome", is present in a lot of games these days, but the game makes up for it by giving you an option of which items to turn on and off, and how often they appear. One new feature of this game is the Smash Ball item, which appears once in a while and floats around the stage, like a Steps fan at an Iron Maiden concert, before being smashed apart until it breaks, like a Steps fan at an Iron Maiden concert. Unlike a Steps fan at an Iron Maiden concert, when it breaks, instead of blood and presumably glitter, the person who hit it the last time before it breaks begins to glow strangely. This glow can be knocked out of people easily, but a simple button press is all it takes to activate the Final Smash, a move of UBEREPICNESS which results in death for a lot of people. Each character has their own Final Smash, which range from completly unfair but totally awesome (like Samus firing a huge cannon that takes up the stage, and Lucario jumping up in the air and firing a huge beam of energy downwards, killing anything in its path) to completely sodding useless (like Princess Peach making everyone fall asleep and having - get this, it's GENIUS - peaches appear). Avoiding some Final Smashes is near impossible, but the clawing and screaming whenever a Smash Ball appears makes for an awesome experience, even if you claw someone's eye out.

It's not my fault that Jigglypuff is one of my best characters - rai-thunder@hotmail.co.uk