First we smashed, then we melee’d and now we get to brawl. Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii is Nintendo’s latest incarnation of the popular series. Super Smash Bros. Melee was the Gamecube’s best selling game, so Brawl had a lot of hype to live up to. Thankfully, it doesn’t just live up to it – it punches it in the face, Pikachu style.
The premise of the game is simple. Take a bunch of Nintendo characters (and Sega and Konami for good measure) and let them fight against each other. Give them each special moves related to the character, then tweak speeds, power and abilities until they’re balanced. Then, have at it. It’s a formula that worked well before, and it works flawlessly in Brawl.
First and foremost, the roster has been increased to 35 playable characters. Everyone from Mario to Pikachu is included. Some are unlockable, such as Solid Snake and Sonic. Each character has their own special gameplay style, with some completely new ones thrown into the mix. The Pokemon Trainer, for instance, throws out different pokemon to battle with, while being able to recall and send out a new pokemon at will. Each pokemon has different capabilities.
It’s not just the roster that has been expanded; the audio score has been as well. Nintendo has always been strong with their audio tracks, but this time around they’ve reinvented the wheel. Original composers from the StarFox games and others were brought in, and the result is fantastic. Many old tunes have also been thrown into the mix for good ol’ Nintendo nostalgia.
Other notable additions to the game are the upgraded graphics and online capability. The amount of polygons used for each character has been significantly increased, and the frame rate never dips below a steady 60 frames per second.
These features are just the mechanics, the underlying machinery of a masterpiece that comes together flawlessly, a true gestalt of multiplayer mayhem. The single-player experience in Brawl has been bumped up considerably from Melee for a lengthy 8-hour experience, but it is in multiplayer that Brawl truly shines.
Multiplayer is the reason Brawl, and the whole Super Smash Bros. series in general, exists. The amount of fun extracted from beating Mario over the head with Link’s boomerang is not just satisfactory, it is an uplifting experience of epic proportions, followed up by a short stab with Link’s sword and a smash that sends Mario careening off the screen in an inevitable flash of defeat. Even more joyously, experiences such as these can now be experienced online with friends over the Internet.
The online portion of the game, while a noteworthy addition, is the only aspect that could have been implemented better. Matches are limited to a short two minutes with those who don’t have your friend code, and headsets are not supported. This is not surprising coming from Nintendo, as their past online forays have been similarly shackled, in an attempt to prevent the young from intermingling with the old. While this may offer some degree of protection for the under age, it is simply frustrating to those who value human communication.
Brawl is a masterpiece of an addition to the Nintendo Wii’s library of games. The XBox 360 may have its Halo 3, and the Playstation 3 may have some games worth playing… eventually… but it’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii that will be getting all the attention this month.