"BAH GAWD! That Italian plumber is stomping a mudhole into that yellow rodent's ass!"

Unless you've been living in a cave somewhere in the Antartic next to some penguins with a huge rock seated on top of your head, then chances are that you have heard of Super Smash Brothers Brawl, one of the most anticipated Nintendo games to be released in a very long time. Well, after some soul-crushing delays, Nintendo Wii owners finally have their magnum opus. While the core gameplay hasn't changed much from Super Smash Brother Melee, Brawl does have three things going for it that makes it outshine it's predecessor: MORE, MORE, and…what's the word I want…oh yeah, MORE! For the most part, the wait has been entirely worth it.

SMASHING GAMEPLAY

SSBB can be controlled in one of four ways: Wiimote + Nunchuck, Wiimote held horizontally, the classic game pad, and finally a Gamecube controller. Now, it shouldn't take a Smash Brothers expert to know that, obviously, your best control choice is a Gamecube controller. Both Wiimote configurations just don't feel right at all and the classic pad's analogue sticks were to loose for my liking. So if you got ‘em, hook in those Gamecube controllers, although I do find it odd that the Nintendo Wii's biggest selling point, it's controller, just doesn't work well with it's biggest game to date. Oh well, go figure.

Brawl delivers the biggest cast of fighters in a Smash Brothers game to date. After unlocking everyone, you'll have 35 ass-whomping machines at your disposal. Old favorites like Mario, Link, Yoshi, Pikachu, and Samus Aran are joined by such newcomers as Wario, Pit (from Kid Icarus fame), Diddy Kong, Capt. Olimar, and the Pokemon Trainer. Also, for the fist time ever, two non-Nintendo characters join the fray. Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog gets ready to throw down, as well as some guy from Konami named Solid Snake who I have never heard of…. just kidding! SOLID FREAKIN' SNAKE in Smash Brothers people, Come on!! If that doesn't earn this game cool points, I don't know what does. Anyway, the rules of Smash Brothers are quite simple: to damage your opponents well enough so you can smash them off the screen. You have two attack buttons, one for normal attacks and combos and one to unleash a character's special attacks. Once you have gotten your opponents damage percentage up enough, you can hold a direction on the analogue stick in conjunction with the regular attack button (or if you want to keep it simple, a direction on the “c” stick on the GC controller), to perform a smash attack and hopefully knock your opponent into outer space. In some cases, a character's special attack can also cause a smash. You also have the ability to jump, block, and grab opponents as well. Even after all these years, the Smash Brothers fighting system in still as fun, unique, and complex as ever, catering to newcomers and veterans alike. One of my favorite fighting systems ever next to Marvel Vs. Capcom 2.

You can choose to go Solo in SSBB, but lets start off with the excellent multiplayer modes. The main mode is Brawl, where up to four players, human or CPU, pick their characters, pick a stage, and have at it. The great thing about brawl mode is that you can fully customize pretty much everything about your matches. You can have a timed brawl (most smashes in a certain time limit wins), a stock brawl (every player has a set number of lives) and a coin-collecting brawl (attacks cause your opponents to drop coins, and the player who collects the most coins at the end of the match wins). You can also set things like damage ratios, handicaps, and what helpful items appear in your matches. Speaking of items, besides the classic ones (Pokemon balls, baseball bats, party balloons, Donkey Kong hammer) two new items make their Smash Brothers debut. Assist Trophies work just like Pokemon balls, except with supporting characters from various games coming in to damage your opponents (it's pretty cool to see guys like Grey Fox from MGS and Saki from Sin and Punishment included in the bunch). Finally, Smash Balls are big, glowing orbs that appear from a time to time and float around the stages. If you able to attack and break one, then you'll be able to unleash your character's final smash with a press of the special attack button. A final smash is basically an all-powerful super move that can highly damage opponents and quite possibly smash them off-screen in one shot! Rounding out multiplayer are rotation, tournament, and special brawl modes. Get a group of friends together, and you'll be beating each other to death into the wee hours of the morning.

What's that? You don't ever take showers and therefore have no friends? Fear not, as SSBB caters to the solo player as well. First you have the classic mode, which is your basic “choose a fighter, go through 12 stages beating opponents, then beat the last boss to win” mode. You have the mini-game stadium that includes target smash, home run contest, and multi-man brawl modes. Event mode also makes a return, where up to 40 different challenges using certain characters can be tackled. You also get a training mode that is surprisingly robust and customizable. The last solo mode you can play is unfortunately one of SSBB's weakest links, and it's called “The Subspace Emissary”. You know the adventure mode from Smash Brothers Melee, the one that wasn't really all the great and just seemed way out of place in a fighting game like this? Well, imagine that, except about 8 ½ hours longer. Yep…thrown against the backdrop of a story involving pretty much every character in the game fighting against some evil aliens, or something, Subspace has you taking the fighters through dull, side-scrolling environments fighting off the same enemies over and over again with the occasional boss fight or brawl match to break it up. Besides the repetitiveness of it all, one of the main reasons that this mode doesn't work is that the SSBB gameplay just doesn't translate well to a side-scroller. It's hard to translate into words, but when you play it you'll know and feel like the gameplay just doesn't belong. Seriously, it didn't work for Guilty Gear, it's not going to work for Smash Brothers. The only reason you may want to play all 9+ hours of this dreariness is that you can unlock characters by meeting them in the story mode rather than play tons of versus matches. Then again, most people who play this game probably don't mind playing tons of versus matches.

But wait! There's one more new mode to discuss, and it's a doozy! For the first time ever, you can now take the brawls online over Nintendo Wi-Fi connection…and unfortunately it's a mixed bag. First off, you can either Brawl with friend, brawl with anyone, or watch replay data as a spectator. Brawling with friends is obviously the best option, as you and up to three buds can participate in brawls, home run contests, and multi-man battles, complete with 4 personalized pre-written messages you can make appear on-screen at anytime (no voice or keyboard chat here folks, but no surprise there). Sounds good, right? Well there's just one problem, and it happens to be the worst invention in the history of mankind: Friend Codes! You have to somehow actually get a series of numbers from the people you want to be your friends, then input them into SSBB to actually play against them. Keep in mind this isn't the same friend code that's assigned to your Wii, as EVERY online-enabled Nintendo game has it's OWN personal friend code. Just a terrible, terrible idea on Nintendo's part, and you wonder why their online plan looks like **** compared to Microsoft's XBL and Sony's PSN. So unless you want to E-mail a bunch of people asking them to input the number 8482093910 into their copies of the game, your left with the brawl with anyone option. Just choose to be in a regular or team-based brawl, wait for three strangers to join the match, and have at it. For the first week or so, this mode just didn't work, as no one who ever be able to join games and even if some people were able to start a match, chances are they would lose the connection before the match finished. I guess Nintendo though the “Brawling with Friends” option would be the most popular online choice </sarcasm>. However, over the last few days or so, things have gotten better and I've been able to play many matches online with hardly any lag at all with up to 4 people. Spectator mode has you viewing replay data from various online matches and betting coins on who will win them (coins, BTW, can be earned in almost every game mode and used to earn new trophies). So, an overall nice addition to Smash Brothers, but it could be done a whole lot better.

If I had any other annoyances with the game besides the ones I've already mentioned, it would be some lengthy load times at the start-up of the game and after some Subspace Emissary cut-scenes. Long load times like these are an oddity to see in Nintendo-made games, that's for sure. Seriously, I thought my game froze once after one of the cut-scenes. Also, with a pretty large group of fighters, I would have liked to have seen some effort made in making them all wholly original. I mean, besides looking different and having different animations: Fox, Falco, and Wolf are all pretty much the same character. Same specials and final smashes and all. Same thing goes for Link and Toon Link and Lucas and Ness. It's just kind of lazy to me.

Bottom line though: SSBB delivers everything you love about the series, just a whole lot more of it!

SMASHING GRAPHICS

While not a huge improvement over Melee, SSBB still has enough enhancements to make it one of the best looking Wii-games yet. Characters models are brimming with detail and look extremely sharp and are well animated. Attacks, specials, final smashes and all the other special effects in the game are great. The excellently designed battle stages that basically come to life as you play on them are just as colorful and awesome as ever (Shadow Moses Island and Pokemon Stadium 2 are my favorites). Although The Subspace Emissary is dull gameplay-wise, the many cut-scenes involving the Smash Brothers characters that inhabit it are phenomenal! The entire game runs in full 16:9 widescreen mode and 480p in 60fps without any hitches. For the Wii, truly spectacular.

SMASHING SOUND

Simply put: some of the game industries greatest composers have come together and given SSBB a soundtrack for the ages. After listening to the godly main theme, you'll be treated to awesome music tracks taken from classic to modern Nintendo (and other) games. From Super Mario to Metal Gear Solid (including a track from the upcoming MGS4), it's truly melts your ears and brain until nothing but a pile of awesome is left in their place. Sound effects and the small amount of voice acting also get the job done just as well. Amazing, and one of the best game soundtracks of all time.

SMASHING SOCIAL LIVES SINCE 1999

Imagine, if you will, that someone invented a vacuum that sucks away time. Know what that vacuums name would be? Super Smash Brothers Brawl, that's what! Unlockable characters, stages, music tracks are all there for you to discover during gameplay. The Nintendo Vault also makes a return, and with it even more new trophies of Nintendo characters and such from the companies history that can be found while brawling (or completing other tasks). Add in an all-new stage builder, WiiConnect24/7 support, and just WAY too many other things that I don't have the time to list here, and you'll see SSBB in your Wii for many months (or years) to come.

Not much more to say, really. Most of you have bought this game already anyway, so you really don't need me to convince you of anything. Still, I will say that despite it's flaws, Super Smash Brother Brawl lives up to its enormous hype and delivers an extremely fun gaming experience that is still one of the best multiplayer games ever made. A Wii without this game isn't a Wii.

KEWL
+Gameplay that is still so very, very fun
+Large cast of fighters
+Multiplayer that will blow you away
+Solo player got some good modes, too.
+Online works for the most part
+Graphics are awesome
+Soundtrack is phenomenal
+More unlockables than almost any game in history
+Solid Snake's hidden codec messages…
+Solid Snake…in general!
+Infinite replay value

LAME
-Kinda odd that the Wii's biggest game controls best with a GC controller
-“The Subspace Emissary” is dull and pretty pointless
-Some long load times
-Some characters are pretty much copies of each other
-Down with friend codes!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/20/08

Game Release: Super Smash Bros. Brawl (US, 03/09/08)