Nintendo Wii Review: Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Published March 11, 2008
Back in the 80s the term "fanboy" had not been coined yet, but you could hear in the playground the argument between who was cooler, Mario or Sonic. Now this can finally be settled in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
Games have defined consoles in the past - Halo, the Xbox, Sonic, the Sega Genesis, now the Wii has Super Smash Bros. Brawl as the game that will define this next generation console. Many think that whoever pushes the most pixels or has the most content on their downloadable catalog is going to rule the console wars, however, I think the other companies did not count on Nintendo putting out such a superior piece of software that is actually tons of fun to play.
I know that people spend their lives in MMOGs right now, but mark my words, people are going to lose hours of sleep this week thanks to the release of this game. I have not had so much fun playing a game since the original Super Mario Bros.
The game is simple, mix together the concept of a platformer with a fighting game and you spawn a wildly frantic game that at times seem impossible to follow. The cool thing is that you do start to follow and have fun smashing characters that are familiar to everyone around the screen. The character lineup is amazing and the different game modes make this game worth hundreds of hours of replay.
A game that was doomed by the release for the Sega Dreamcast, Power Stone, first showed how much fun a well-executed brawler could be. Many thought that Nintendo had reached the pinnacle of this type of game with the popular iteration of the series on the GameCube. However, they hit this punching bag out of the stadium with Brawl.
The game is not complicated, but rather complete. You can play by yourself or with a friend on a very complete platform jumping story mode, or you can connect your Wii online and challenge the world to a match with up to four players at once.
- Nintendo Wii Review: Super Smash Bros. Brawl
- Published: March 11, 2008
- Type: Review
- Section: Gaming
- Filed Under: Gaming: Nintendo Wii
- Writer: Logtar
- Logtar's BC Writer page
- Logtar's personal site
- Spread the Word
- Like this article?
- Email this
Save to del.icio.us
Comments on this articleComments
"You take SSBB over Mario Galaxy as the defining game for the Wii? Interesting."
Well, Smash Bros. is arguably a more popular series than the straight-up Mario games at this point in time.
Super Smash Bros. Melee was pretty much the overall top selling game for the Gamecube, with Mario Sunshine being a disapointment to many (I personally didn't hate the game, but it wasn't great, and even Nintendo themselves have called Mario Galaxy the first worthy successor to Mario 64). It was consistently on the shelves for pretty much the entire run of the system, even at stores that tend to have a pretty quick turn around time on removing older games from their shelves, and the game never did go under $29.99 as a standard price in retail stores (in fact, my local Best Buy still has a handful of Gamecube games remaining, including a few copies of Melee still at the $29.99 price).
While Mario Galaxy is arguably a better game than Sunshine was and while it's been selling very well (which was expected), The excitement and hype around Smash Bros. is just HUGE. Pretty much EVERY Gamestop store (or close to all of them) opened at midnight for the launch of SSBB, and many other retail stores did the same. While it's certainly not the first time that stores opened their doors at midnight, having THAT MANY locations do so is a pretty big thing.
Having said all of that, I have SSBB, and I am enjoying it, though it hasn't blown me away. I was pretty blown away when I first got Melee, but Brawl didn't change things up enough for me. I didn't want them to completely reinvent the wheel, but throwing in more new surprises would have been nice. They should have really mixed things up in the 'classic' mode a bit more. I mean, it's pretty much the same system of a mix of straight one-on-one fights, multi-character fights, battle against a giant somebody fight, and battle against a metal somebody fight, with some Target breaking thrown in here and there. I think they should have come up with another main villain other than 'Master Hand', or at least they should have given him some new moves. His moves are pretty much identical to what they were in Melee. I don't hate Brawl by any means, but IMO it did not live up to the hype.
However, despite my opinion, the hugeness of this game and it's popularity cannot be ignored, and while Mario being in the game is clearly a major selling point for it, it seems that this series has taken over the regular Mario series as "THE" game series to have on the Nintendo systems.
"Back in the 80s the term "fanboy" had not been coined yet, but you could hear in the playground the argument between who was cooler, Mario or Sonic."
Psst.... the original Sonic the Hedgehog didn't come out until 1991.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/74710)
You take SSBB over Mario Galaxy as the defining game for the Wii? Interesting.