- A fun game, but if you loved meleeThis review is from the tournament player point of view. I've been going to melee tournaments since 2004. Brawl is fun, hours of fun actually. Unlocking and all that other neat stuff. Plenty of characters and items. However, outside of better graphics and an amazing sound track, the game seems to lack in some places. The final smashes suck, after playing with them for a while, they get boring, or you pick the space animals for the best specials. Only one special per character, and here I thought they put some effort into the specials outside of just snazzy looks.
Great multiplayer fun, but it's hard to take this game seriously. After a few tournaments, I've come to notice that there aren't many exploits to make this game any deeper. Even heavy talk about banning metaknight. The games characters are disturbingly unbalanced which is a horrible thing. The speed in the game was horribly reduced, and it's probably due to the new physics engine being used. The first moment I played brawl, it didn't feel like a smash brothers game.
Everything floats, it's not possible to nail a successful combo. Even when you feel you are, the amount of stun was reduced, this leaves you to be able to quickly recover out of hits, and with brawls dodging, you're able to dodge quickly, and multiple amount of times. The knockback for some things seem either unreasonably low or too high. Some characters attacks have no knockback and have discovered infinites (Marth and Lucario on ness/lucas)
In melee, even with unbalanced character, there was always a counter to a character you could pick. This game, seems... to have so many character, but due to physics and stun in the game, every character will react to every character almost the same due to the float and how far they'll stray. Someone with no projectiles is at a horrible disadvantage with someone with a projectile. Someone slow is at a horrible disadvantage against someone quick. Someone who has short reach or bad range is probably going to lose to someone who has dislocated hitboxes or disturbing range. Hell, in melee, ganondorf and dk had no projectiles, but the physics and stun allowed them to still be dangerous characters, but the same can't be said about ganondorf and captain falcon in this game now.
My main hate towards this is that I can't enjoy this at tournaments. So, let me enjoy it online right? For a game like this, the lag shouldn't be this terrible, there are fighting games with MORE going on the screen than this game. How is it that they don't lag being countries apart yet I lag with someone a state away? Green, yellow, red connection? I don't want this crap. I don't mind paying for the service, I've always love smash bros and would love to play this game with very little to no lag. Noticeable lag is noticeable, and this game has a lot of it. Not to mention friend codes is a pain, and the amount of options for the game is actually embarrassing. Two play modes, quick match, or teams. You don't get the option of joining the games with your friends, displaying your name, or even better ranked matches. You're forced to find an online community to find people to play.
I picked this up at launch, and I really really really had high hopes for this. While I know it's a different approach to the game, I feel they took out a lot of what made smash brothers what is is. I feel they went nuts adding little pointless things, and a massive amount of modes (subspace emissary is a joke), and the one thing I had strong hopes for (the online) is just crap.
By all means, if you have a wii, this is a must own title. However, this was the only reason I had a wii, and I will continue to be disappointed with this release and will eagerly await for another smash.
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