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lowens's Super Smash Brothers Brawl (Wii)
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| [February 9, 2008 01:26:58 AM]
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Gameplay 2:
The next round I played in Brawl, I chose Metaknight. After playing him, I discovered that Brawl has many quick characters to choose from, and that it has much more variation than Melee in that sense. Furthermore, there are many extremely slow characters such as Ganondorf and Ike to complete the spectrum.
Playing as a quick character, I was able to outmaneuver the slower characters and defeat them. This raised the question of balance, which seemed tilted in the agile characters favor. Ultimately, I won the match because I didn't lose as many lives as the more sluggish characters, and against the last remaining player I could almost dance around him, all the while dealing damage, until I could clear them off the stage at a high damage percentage.
Afterwards, I decided to play Ike to see if I could overcome the speed of other characters with brute force. I found this play style to be very exciting, as one powerful swing could clear a slightly damaged opponent off of the stage. I found that timing my attacks on a slow character was effective enough to beat the lighter, yet faster, characters. However, in competitive play, I would still prefer to use a quicker character.
Design:
Overall I believe that Super Smash Brothers Brawl is a very well designed game, and will be enjoyed by many. In multiplayer, the game is constantly challenging because the other players are constantly improving with different and new characters. Furthermore, as I learned the different characters, some moves can work in combination with others, making mastery of the game potentially very complex.
Keeping in character of the Super Smash Brothers series, the majority of the levels in Brawl present hazards. Such levels can add flavor, but ultimately detract from the gameplay in a more competitive setting, in which getting eaten by a fish on the Ice Climbers level would be very frustrating. For recreational play, I believe that dangerous levels added to the interaction among players, because my fellow players and I could laugh at the surprises.
Concerning tone in Brawl, the levels and tones of the gameworlds from which the all-stars came are represented well. I had fun playing on the stages from the characters' worlds, or at least containing the elements and art style of their corresponding gameworlds. I felt in Brawl, they were particularly well represented, and it allowed me to kind of relive Nintendo's other games
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Feb 9th, 2008 at 01:54:58.
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| [February 8, 2008 10:03:43 PM]
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Summary:
Super Smash Brothers Brawl is the third installment of the Super Smash Brothers series published by Nintendo. Following the style of the other Super Smash games, it is an all-star fighting game based on knocking an opponent off the stage to their demise, rather than depleting an opponent's hit points. Numerous characters with new mechanics were added, while several from Super Smash Brothers Melee were removed, such as Pichu, Dr. Mario, and Young Link. Although a story mode exists where character must progress through various levels, because I was playing the Japanese version of the game (since the North American version will not be released until March 9, 2008) and other friends wanted to play, I opted to try the multiplayer part of the game.
Gameplay 1:
Upon viewing the character selection screen I became very excited about the many new options offered, but before trying someone new I decided to test out one of my favorite characters who appeared in Super Smash Brothers Melee, Marth. I first noticed that the movement of the characters was significantly slower than Melee, but still faster than the original. Being used to Melee, I felt bogged down, but quickly learned to enjoy the new pace of game. I was glad that Nintendo didn't just remake Melee, and that I could learn how to move and dodge effectively in new environments.
Next, it became apparent that Brawl had removed wave dashing (an exploitable mechanic of Super Smash Brothers Melee basically consisting of short jumping and then air dodging into the ground to increase movement speed and to also be able to avoid attacks while still being able to attack) from Brawl. Although useful at a competitive level, I didn't enjoy wave dashing when playing recreationally with friends. Without this mechanic, I was free to enjoy focusing on the timing of my attacks and dodges, instead of having to focus on an exploit to win.
While playing with items on, specifically the newly added smash balls, the gameplay centered around acquiring/breaking open the smash balls to pull off a final smash. A final smash is a unique attack for each character(with some repetitions), that allows the user to dominate the playing field. Whenever one of the smash balls appeared on the stage, everyone would stop fighting to instead chase after the smash ball. While, this was fun in a recreational, care-free match, I expect smash balls to be undesirable in highly competitive games because using a final smash frequently ends in one or more other characters getting knocked out, while being relatively helpless to the player who used their final smash.
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Feb 8th, 2008 at 22:30:11.
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lowens's Super Smash Brothers Brawl (Wii)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Wednesday 6 February, 2008
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