Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) Review
Think back to 2005, its Nintendos pre-E3 conference – we knew something was up. The GameCube was near the end of its life and the DS had yet to become the smash-hit it is today. Satoru Iwata took the stage and presented the Wii (then Revolution). While we didnt get to see anything other than a mock-up of the console, we did get one promise. A new instalment in the Super Smash Bros series was in production (Sakurai hadnt even been asked) and would hopefully be a launch title complete with online play. Its now March 2008 and while not all of Nintendos promises have been kept, a lot have and finally we have the result in our hands – well Japan and America do anyway. With a predecessor that sold 6,000,000 copies, Super Smash Bros: Brawl has plenty live up to, and thankfully, it does.
For those who have never played a game of Smash Bros before (which is probably not many of those reading this review), Super Smash Bros Brawl is a fighting game, but unlike any other fighting game out there. Brawl pits an all-star ensemble cast of Nintendo characters from every era, but unlike normal fighting games, your health meter counts up. The higher it gets, the higher and further off the stage your character will fly. Thats until your foe performs a Smash attack which can knock you off the screen to the left, right, or even the top. While thats the basic component to the battling in the game, it also contains many different modes that use this mechanic such as the Hit the Targets, and the Home Run Contest. Brawl is also complemented by a new, in-depth single player mode (which well go into later) as well as the older modes included in previous entry Smash Bros Melee.
The Solo Menu is where the single player modes are found – funny that. First, the newest addition to the Smash franchise is the revamped adventure mode titled The Subspace Emissary (SSE). The SSE puts you into a side scrolling multilevel platform game with all the characters in the game teaming up to take on the Subspace Army. After taking out a stadium in which Mario and Kirby were fighting in with a couple of suicidal R.O.B units and a SubSpace bomb, the characters team up in some odd combinations across the levels which take place in various locations on and above the unknown land. Different levels will have different team ups with Samus (in her suit and in Zero Suit form) teaming up with Pikachu, Diddy and Fox, Solid Snake, Meta Knight and also a secret character. Thats not all the combinations and between levels after the FMV has played, you can choose which character to start off with and once they get knocked out, youll swap to your second choice. Speaking of FMV, the SSE contains many minutes of humorous video clips containing all the characters, while there are no voices, the characters are animated colourfully and its never hard to understand what they are on about. While the SSE is more fleshed out than the adventure mode from Melee, it is very repetitive. The first couple of hours are fun, but the next few hours are more of the same and then more of the same again to the point where the last level is a backtracking extravaganza. Despite being in the solo menu, a friend can also drop in and play the backup character at any point in the game, which is a nice addition. The best way to get the most out of the SSE is to play it first before you jump online and before you Brawl. While you can unlock all the characters in the game just by playing through the SSE, you can still play the other modes to unlock the characters, which removes another reason to play through the SSE. While we can respect Sakurai for trying to expand the single player, and it is better than what is on the GameCube, its still not perfect, and youll only be playing through it once. The Vault is next. Its the home for the Trophies and your means of getting them as well as some other options. The trophies are back and while we know they give out some information on the character or item its showing, the method for gaining them has changed, with the old gumball machine out and the Coin Launcher in its place. Its like a mini game in itself, allowing you to shoot down trophies flying around or fleets of ships. Coins are earned like before, by completing stages and winning battles. The trophy stand item in the SSE is also another method of gaining trophies as well as clearing classic mode, after that youll get the character you completed it with trophies.
In addition to collecting trophies you can now collect stickers; with these youll be able to stick them on your characters during the SSE and power up certain abilities. Like trophies, you can position these stickers and make diorama type images which you can send to your friend. Also available to collect are CDs and Masterpieces, which are demos of VC games. Sadly, Earthbound is missing from the US version, even if it was added in the Japanese version. Brawl also features an achievement type system, which will give you certain unlockables. Once an item is unlocked, the surrounding items turn opaque and you can learn what you need to do to unlock the next bit. All these additions add tons of hours to the Smash Bros Brawl fun. When it was revealed on the Dojo that Smash would allow 4 different control methods and include full customisation for buttons, everyone rejoiced. The control choices include the Wiimote sideways, the Wiimote + Nunchuck combination, the Classic Controller and the GameCube Controller. Everybody from the casual gamer to the hardcore tournament player should be satisfied with the choices. In the end, its going to come down to personal taste but from the minute I got the game, I have been playing with the GameCube controller. Ive had the displeasure of playing with the Wiimote on occasion and it works, but its just too foreign for anyone who has played with the GameCube controller before. Wiimote and Nunchuck also works, but having the controls sprawled over two controllers is a little cumbersome at first. Next on the chopping block is the Classic Controller, and it works like the other methods. No review will help you decide which control scheme you will want to use, but for Smash veterans, your dusty old GameCube controllers will be coming out of retirement, unless theres a new player who could become accustomed to the Wii Remote. The in-game engine of Smash really is a thing of beauty. While its missing some of the nicer effects from Mario Galaxy, there is a whole lot more going on in Smash and it is more in the foreground. This is one Wii game you can tell is using the bulk of the available power, as not only does it look nice, it also runs at a silky smooth 60FPS with no noticeable loss in frame rate, no matter how hectic the action or how many players are on the screen. The games beauty also translates into its marvellous cut scenes, which naturally cant be as sharp as other next gen consoles cut scenes, but are a joy to watch as the games characters come to life. Its great that Nintendo has taken the leap into dual-layer disks with Smash, especially for the FMVs, as the game would lose a fair amount of character, mainly from the SSE, without these scenes. As we saw in the first trailer for the game, the character models have had a significant boost to not only the amount of polygons but also their design and detail. Characters like Kirby and Pikachu may look similar as well they are quite simple in design, but characters like Link, Samus and Bowser look absolutely sublime. In fact, its somewhat ironic that Mario and Bowser and the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom universe characters look better in Brawl than in the upcoming Mario Kart Wii.
Outside of the game environment, the menus also look the part and like its predecessors, the menu system is very different to anything Nintendo usually designs. This time Brawl takes on a very clean, minimalist white design for the menus, navigation is easy and, yes, that little Easter egg of fiddling with the C-Stick makes a welcome return. Everything is easy to find and thats the way it should work. Be sure to check out all the menus too because its deep. If you want to Brawl really quick, you wont be waiting long once youre in, but dig a little deeper and there is a myriad of customisation options throughout every mode. Unlike its GameCube cousin, and due to its nature as a dual-layer disk, Brawl takes a long time to load. After booting it up youll have to wait about 20 second before the intro movie (which is easily skipped), but after that youve got a pretty free run with the SSE providing the only other significant load times. There are periods where youll be waiting for the drive to catch up when you load a level or return to the menu after a battle, but the game behaves itself most of the time. Last year Galaxy hit us with one of the best soundtracks weve heard in a hell of a long time, and Brawl equals its brilliance. Yes, not all the tracks are brand new compositions but most are for the first time fully orchestrated tracks from the original composers and in some cases like the Zelda track, sound better than the music included in the original versions of the game. Smash contains over 300 tracks and listening to the myriad of remixed songs (of which you must unlock over the course of the game) and original recordings in the sound test mode is nearly worth the price of admission alone. While the music of the game is great, you wont always be sitting still listening to it, as the characters voices and various grunts and noises soon take over. The characters are all voiced by their usual actors (for the games that have voice) but the ones who dont or who have never been voiced do have a varied vocal base. The voices of several of the unlockable characters seem a little weird, but thats more a personal thing and in no way detracts from the game. Super Smash Bros: Brawl has the best music as a whole on the Wii and I dont think it will ever be topped. Its a Nintendo fans, and a gaming music fans, wet dream.
As clichéd as it as it sounds, Super Smash Bros: Brawl is a complete package. From the single player mode, with the colourful and much improved 8 hour Subspace Emissary, Classic Mode, Home Run Contest, Target Smash (4 Levels of Difficulty), Co-op events, Multi-Man Brawl (with 6 different variations), and Boss Battle, to the multiplayer side of things and all the different options that entails, such as special brawl, rotation and tournaments for up to 4 players and the online mode featuring battles with friends or random people and even spectator matches. To cap off all the features, there is the Vault with its trophies, stickers, coin launcher, stage builder, snap shot view, challenges, and masterpieces. There is a systems lifetime of things to do in the game, whether you are playing with mates locally or away, or by yourself. People are still playing and enjoying Melee YEARS after its release and its not often that a game hits that will have the guaranteed longevity of Brawl. Unlike the console that Brawl was introduced alongside on that stage back at the 2005 pre-E3 conference, Brawl is an evolution to the series rather than a revolution. Thats not to say that Brawl hasnt made significant changes and additions to the Smash genre though, with the addition of new and exciting characters, levels and modes, as well as the inclusion of an online mode improving on what Melee was, but not changing the system so significantly that it breaks or changes what made it great. Brawl succeeds in its mission of appeasing fans while allowing new fans from many franchises to join the fray, and apart from one or two little niggles, the game will be entertaining Wii owners for a long time yet. Smashing.
