Super Smash Bros Brawl: Mini-review

[Jobocan]

Got a big SSBB party yesterday at home. We played nonstop(well, we stopped for eating...) for around 11 hours. I got a fairly good grasp of the game, so here's my first impression mini review of the game.

Graphics: They are great. They seem pretty much Super Mario Galaxy level graphics. The characters look better than their Melee incarnations, and the stages look great. The backgrounds in some stages are just plain awesome. Final Destination and Lylat Cruise in particular are badass.

Controls: With 4 types of controls to choose from(each fully customizable), there's no way you won't find a control method that fits you. No much more to say, the crontrols are great and very fluid. No complaints here.

Gameplay: The core of the game. The gameplay might seem familiar to you if you played Melee a lot. But even then you'll feel like the game plays quite differently from before. It's really a new experience. The fact that everything in the game can be multiplayer in some way is awesome.
There are some new gameplay elements. The main one is Final Smashes. I feel they were integrated pretty well, but they can be kinda unbalanced. For example, Peach's puts everyone to sleep and enables a free smash attack, but that it. Now Olimar's hits everyone without fail, and the explosion from his ship is so huge it kills everyone on a small stage.
Some gameplay modifications include the air dodge system which is completely different(and IMO is much better) and picking up items seems a lot easier(what?) really, you can be comboing someone and out of nowhere you'll pick up an item that's close to you and it won't stop your combo.
Well, i could probably go on, but let's for the gameplay, needless to say it's awesome.


Characters:
There's a great cast of characters. It could have been better of course (why is ridley not playable, WHY?!?!?), so here's some little impressions on every new character i tried (please note that we only played VS, so we couldn't do enough VS matches to unlock them all.)

Ike: He's a beast. Insanely powerful, and not as slow as i thought he would be(he is slow, but i thought he would be worse). He was one of the most popular characters in our SSBB party and for good reason.

Pit: He's badass. Good killing moves, incredible recovery, good combos. Definitely some high/top tier potential here.

Dedede: He's big. And he's slow. Really slow. Insanely slow. He has some good moves, but hitting with them isn't easy considering how slow he is. His Up+B is madness though, definitely his best move.

Captain Olimar: He's actually awesome. Great air moves, great range, and he can dish out huge damage(around 50% for one attack if someone doesn't shake off a white pikmin). And he has one of the better final smashes(as explained above).

Diddy Kong: He has good combo potential, good normal attacks, but his B moves suck ass. And his recovery could be better. Vertically it sucks, but horizontally he can go pretty far.

SNAKE: Well he surprised me. He's kinda hard to use and requires some planning, but he's quite powerful. His mines are pretty cool, and his smashes are very different from other smashes.

SONIC: He's fast. His B attack all work pretty much the same, and some of his A attacks and smashes also involve him rolling. He has pretty good recovery(and he can attack after using his Up+B). He definitely has potential.

Pokemon Trainer: Very fun to play as. 3 characters in one, and each of them are completely different. Squirtle is not too bad, but my least favorite of the bunch. Ivysaur can rack up damage fast, and Charizard is super powerful. A great team if you ask me.

Lucas: Despite having some attacks similar to Ness, he plays WAY different. He's fast, has powerful smashes, and good specials. With some practice he could become a very good character to use.

Wario: Another surprise. He's fat and powerful, yet he's relatively fast. His fart kinda sucks if it's not charged up, but fully charge don't expect to survive if you have some damage. He has lots of good attacks. Very fun to use.

Lucario: He's not too bad. But he's nothing special. I didn't notice a huge difference in damage when he's hurt. His attacks are good, his counter (down+B) is great but hard to time. Overall he has potential but i'm not really sure... I'll have to play as him a bit more.

Zero Suit Samus: I only tried her like once or twice, so i couldn't get a good grasp of her, but my friend used her a lot and loved the way she played and performed quite well as her. Too bad she reverts to normal Samus with her final smash. She would have been better if she was wearing a schoolgirl outfit though >_>

Old Characters: Well, Mario sucks as always(i hate his new down+B), luigi is buffed a bit(love his final smash :P), Peach is nerfed badly(her FS is much better than expected though, although it still sucks...), Samus as been nerfed a bit(much weaker charged shot, missiles suck), Kirby has been buffed quite a bit since Melee, bowser and DK are a bit better, Fox is a bit slower but still good, Falco is a bit better(IMO), Marth is just as good as before and most other characters are pretty much the same as before from what i've seen.

Characters overall:
I feel that Brawl is a LOT more balanced than Melee. Heavy characters are no longer at as big a disadvantage against fast characters as they were in Melee. I even saw a few matches where Donkey Kong won, which barely ever happened before. The balance is definitely good compared to before, and the nerfs and buffs helped balance some things out. Some final smashes, as explained before with Olimar's Final Smash, can unbalance things a bit, but overall the game is very well balanced.


FLAW
The game is excellent, but has one big flaw. The loading times. They are kinda long. You can wait around 20-30 seconds for some matches to start sometimes(although most of the time the loading is not that bad). Yeah, it could have been worse, but sometimes it can be annoying.


Closing comment:
If you have a Wii and don't have/plan to buy SSBB, you need to get your brain checked right away.

Well, that's it for now, I might post some more as i play the game.(still have a couple new characters to unlock)

[Jobocan]

How could i forget to mention the music?
Well, with over 300 tracks, you know they did their best to make the soundtrack as good as possible. The remixed tracks are awesome, and old unchanged tracks are obviously awesome as well. I could go through the soundtrack and talk about it for a long time, but i'll stop myself from doing that >_>
Some of the music sucks(Sonicboom needs to die a horrible, horrible death...), but overall the soundtrack is awesomeness in the purest form.

[Spaded!]

So about online play, is it just me or can only one person per system play online with a random match? I was under the impression that 1-3 people could join a match on a console and let the last slot get taken by an online stranger. if this is the case with friends as well, I'm gonna be severely pissed.

[Jobocan]

I haven't played online yet(i'll only play with friends though), but you can play with 2 people in "With Friends"(press start on the second controller... not sure if you can with 3 people).
Not sure about in "With Anyone", but i'm pretty sure you can't.

[Jobocan]

Subspace Emissary impressions:
Well, I finished SSE yesterday, so here are some impressions.
THE GOOD: A vast improvement over the adventure mode from Melee. The cinematics are fun to watch. The story isn't too bad even if there's no voice acting at all(except randoms grunts and stuff).Some of the stages are pretty fun. Boss fights are pretty cool and have an old-school feel to them.

THE BAD: It's incredibly repetitive. The normal enemies deal HUGE amounts of damage and knockback(don't let them gang up on you). The great maze level is interesting, but oh so long. It kinda feels like the mode should have lasted an hour or two less...

THE UGLY: WTF, what kind of ending was that? Seriously, that was stupid... And how can the camera be bad in a side-scrolling game? Seriously?

Overall: It's a fun mode, but although it's not long, it should have been shorter.


More Character:

R.O.B: He's quite fun to use. And honestly, who doesn't want to control a robot that shoots eye lasers? Anyways, he has great aerial attacks, great smashes, great recovery, and eye lasers....

Wolf: He's not a Fox clone. FAR from that. His special attacks are similar, but otherwise, his normal attacks(smashes, aerials, stuff like that) are completely different. I haven't really figured out how to use him well yet, but he seems very good.

Toon Link: Remember Young Link in Melee? Well he's back in Wind Waker form. He's not exactly like Young Link in Melee, but he's taking on a similar role by being a faster Link. I personally find him a lot better than Link. He has strong aerials, good smashes, and he's pretty fast.


A few old characters:
Jigglypuff seems a bit worse than before to me. Not sure how, but i'm not as good with her as i was before. Her Rest attack was slightly nerfed but is still pretty good(less knockback, but puts a flower on the targets head for overtime damage, which compensates).
Mr Game & Watch somehow seems better than in Melee. Not sure why... His attacks are strong.
Not sure about Ganondorf.. I sucked with him in Melee, and i still suck with him. He seems a bit slower than before... that can't be a good thing...

[Spaded!]

Just to add on this, for anyone worried about online play lagging, between friends it seems to be ok. I played a night with the woman who's in tennessee while I'm in maryland, so although it's not cross country, it's still a good distance and and there wasnt any lag to speak of once the connection settled (first round was kinda rough).