Super Smash Bros. Brawl Impressions

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the third title in Nintendo's long running and popular Super Smash Bros. series of party fighting games. Super Smash Bros. pits Nintendo's famous mascots and characters against each other in a very unique and hilarious take on the fighting genre.

I arrived somewhat late to the midnight launch of SSBB this past Saturday night/Sunday morning, and was surprised to see how many copies the local Gamestop still had of the game. It seems that retailers are expecting the game to do very well. Anyway, the game:

The first thing I noticed about the game when I put it in Sunday morning was how tiny characters appear on the screen. As all you SSB fans know, the camera zooms and pans in&out/across the stage constantly in order conserve space, yet at the same make sure everyone and all items can be seen at the same time. But the stages are grander and busier than ever now, and if you have an old television, or one that's just small, you will be hurting. In general, the game was not made to be played on a small television (I had trouble just reading some of the menus). 

However, this was just on the television in my room –which is old and small. Though of course, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is beyond all else a multiplayer game, and the next day the Wii was moved back to the family room. The past several nights have seen some crazy brawling with many of my friends, including some who are new to the series. 

All of your favorite characters from Melee are back, except for these four: Dr. Mario, Pichu, Mewtwo, and Roy. In their place we have fourteen new characters, a couple of which I still haven't unlocked. 

One thing I immediately noticed are that the game's controls are much tighter, unlike the looser and fancy free feeling of Melee, and the pacing in fights is therefore a tad slower. This isn't to say the game is less frantic, because it's not; this is still typical smash bros. in the frantic department. I can't decide if the tighter controls work out better or worse. Reason I say that is because I use Ganondorf mainly, and he was a very slow character in Melee. Now he's much slower than that! So all of a sudden I went from being the best player among my friends to more average. 

But because of this, some of my friends seem to perform better. Melee's controls were so sensitive that light and fast characters were difficult to handle at times. The tighter controls in Brawl seem to have balanced the game out considerably. Also, I used to be able to get away with mostly using Ganon's basic attacks, and now I find myself having to utilize all of his abilities. Once I get used to it, I can say what I'm already thinking: Brawl's controls are much closer to perfect and better balanced than Melee, even if it puts me at a slight disadvantage with Ganondorf. 

More comments on Brawl tomorrow.