First real post of 2008, yea, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, aka Dairantou Burazasu X, aka Sumabura for the Wii is a barrel of fun.
As I mentioned in a previous post, my experience with the series is actually pretty limited, so I will try not to over-criticize the game technically too much. Sumabura is sometimes called a fighter, but sometimes more accurately, it has been called a brawler. Having grown up on the classic Street Fighter II, I found the endless assortment of "randomness" in Brawl initially very taxing.
I'm more used to fighters working like this: you pick a guy, I pick a guy, and then we get put in a ring, not just a figurative one, but usually a literal one, one that is often square, symmetrical, usually with clearly marked boundaries, and is also almost always FLAT. Do not overlook this small detail, you may not realize this, but a FLAT place for two fighters to duke it out has been a pretty fundamental staple in fighting game history. Not only does it symbolically imply an even playing field, a fair fight, but mechanically, it also means nobody is at an obvious advantage/disadvantage.
Brawl has maybe... one? maybe not even one FLAT stage to fight on. Nearly all the stages are exploding with unevenness, shit that keeps moving around, ground that is there one second, and gone the next. Some stages even scroll, sometimes very fast, and if you decide to do a final smash move at the wrong time, you may very well get "knocked out" in the middle of your move as the stage scrolls past your not-paying-enough-attention-ass.
Not only do the the variety of stages to fight in provide a great deal of "randomness", but the assortment of items that pop up also make the fight very unpredictable. Some are dangerous, like bombs that will do a lot of damage to you if you set them off, or if you are unlucky, straight out blow you to oblivion. Others are of limited use, laser guns, light sabers, wands for wacking, paper fans for bitch-slapping, food items that lower the damage percentage you've taken. . . nothing spectacular, but if your opponent keeps picking them up, you are probably not doing that well. But then sometimes there are really powerful items, a baseball bat that makes your smash attack into a one-hit-wonder, the hammer from the old Donkey Kong game that sends anyone it touches past the moons of Kobol, or the smash ball that allows a character to perform their final smash move, usually meaning at least one knock out, sometimes maybe more.
I know I'm making the game sound like a gigantic keg of WTF?! But I'm sure there are many people out there who would love a gigantic keg of WTF, after all, you DO SURF THE INTERNET, right?
But back to my initial concern for the game, too much randomness. . . as a unique conglomeration of platforming and fighting, Brawl does seem like it lacks the depth of strategy that old-school fighting games had. I recall my old Street Fighter days when a very experienced player would go up against an amateur, mano y mano, none of this exploding bombs falling from the sky or metroids jumping out of a glass trophy and sucking on your brains shit. Sure, they both know how to do all the moves whenever they wanted, but the experienced player knew WHEN to do them, and WHEN NOT TO do them, he understood the strengths and weaknesses of his opponent because he knew their move-set like the back of his hand, and it allowed the more experienced player to control the fight, almost entirely, and I'd be lying if I didn't say it was beautiful, graceful, inspiring, down-in-the-mud-dirty awesome to watch. Yea, those were the fights.
Thus, my initial fear is that Brawl is intrinsically too random, there are too many equalizers that are out of the players' control, what is fun about watching a player who is clearly better and more skillful lose because of bad luck? Well, I'm relieved to report that after playing enough to unlock Ness, Marth, Luigi, Falco, Captain Falcon, Snake, and Lucario, I'm finding that Brawl's defensive game mechanics are actually quite deep and robust, dodging almost in every form, blocking, parrying, absorbing, countering and even using offensive attacks to save yourself from falling to your doom. Though I have yet to grasp the practical extent of the game's defensive arsenal, the means with which to control the flow of the fight, I have to admit I am definitely enjoying this epic ballad that is Sumabura.
I'd like to leave you with a little gem I stumbled upon that I believe is probably the best argument for everyone to buy this game.
http://kotaku.com/355157/the-princess-peach-freeze-frame-to-end-all-peach-freeze-frames
US release on March 9th, suckers!
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