"The supreme fighting game? A Challenger Approaches!"

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the third game in Nintendo's popular fighting series. Its predecessor, Super Smash Bros. Melee, not only became one of the best selling Gamecube games, but was also a huge party hit, letting friends battle each other with popular Nintendo characters. So, needless to say, Brawl was under a tremendous amount of hype before it came out. How did it do?

Story: 7/10

There is a game mode in Brawl called the Sub-Space Emissary which I will base the story off of. It is a rather lengthy story mode that can be played in single player or co-op mode. It starts off with a smash fight being fought between Kirby and Mario, when suddenly the Sub-Space Army attacks, led by the various villains of the Smash Bros. series. They have the ability to set off bombs which will transport parts of the world to space, and can also turn characters into trophies to incapacitate them and make dark clones to fight for them. As you go through the story, you will have to team up with various characters to protect the land and ultimately restore it.

I found the overall story to be fairly average. There was nothing too shocking except at the very end, but I did like the way that they had multiple character's stories going on at the same time until they eventually had everyone working together. The story mode also features multiple bosses for you to take on as well as several levels of difficulty to choose from. The inclusion of anything close to a story mode is a major improvement over Melee, though, and gives players that much more to do in Brawl.

Game play: 10/10

Super Smash Bros. Brawl really nailed the game play aspect on the head, which wasn't too much of a surprise since Melee did such a good job, and the basic premise behind the series is so entertaining. If you're a fan of Nintendo and fighting games at all, and for some reason haven't got to try a Smash Bros. game, now is the time! The premise is simple, get together the greatest Nintendo heroes of all time and have them fight each other. You can fight in timed matches where whoever kills the most people while getting killed the least wins, as well as collect the coin matches and stock matches where you are given only a certain amount of lives. As you fight you can utilize a variety of items to inflict damage on your enemies, as well as pick up items to recover health. A fighter's health if displayed as a percentage, which directly affects how far you will be hit back from an enemies punch. So, a character at zero percent will be much harder to kill than a character at three-hundred percent. After getting hit hard enough, a character with a high percentage will be more likely to be sent flying off screen, which will often result in their death.

Brawl features a grand total of thirty-five different fighters as well as forty plus stages to fight in, with the ability to create your own stages. Many of the fighters from previous games return, such as Mario and Link obviously, but there are also many new fighters, even a few from franchises apart from Nintendo. Melee suffered from having certain characters having almost the exact same move-set as well, which brawl improves on tremendously by making those characters moves more varied and unique.

For returning Smash players, Brawl will feel a lot like Melee with returning game play elements such as Classic Mode and All-Star Mode, but there are a few things in Melee that didn't make it to Brawl, such as the race to the exit mini-game and the fact that the break the target mini-game no longer features individual levels for each character. I don't think you have to much to worry about, though, as all the major aspects of the game that made Melee so much fun return, while being joined by some other fun mini-game activities such as the boss battles and the coin launcher.

Graphics: 9/10

The graphics in Brawl are nothing short of amazing. Everything and I mean everything, from stages to character models, look fantastic. The really neat thing is how the makers of Brawl incorporate the graphics into the stages for some variety in scenery as you fight. For example, they have stages that will turn from night into day as you fight, or they have one that will change seasons. They also have numerous moving stages as well, which add a surviving element to the game as you fight. You also have the ability to pause the game mid-fight in order to look at any cool scenes, and you can even change the angle and take pictures. You can also save these shots to your memory card. Another cool feature I should mention is that you can save replays of events or brawl's on your memory card as well, in order to relive your greatest hits. The only thing I felt that could be fine-tuned is that during some of the events, when you finish them, the game zooms in on your character while the score is being tallied. During these zoom-ins, which are usually cool, sometimes the stage will get in the way and obscure your view, so you end up staring at a wall for awhile instead of your character. So, all in all, the graphics are great.

Music/Sound effects: 10/10

Similar to Melee, Brawl features many different composers who have come together to provide the music for the game, re-arranging and re-using many familiar tunes that gamers have grown up with. I personally feel the music in Brawl as a whole is a vast improvement over Melee. Not only is there a vast selection of songs initially available, but there's also many different songs you can unlock and even pick up as you're fighting, much like the standard trophies. On top of all of that, there is even a juke-box option where you can even set-up which songs to play on which stages and at what frequencies!

The sound effects are also top notch, and considering the amount of characters and items that Brawl has to make sound effects for, that's quite impressive. Each character sounds great, though they can be annoying if certain moves are preformed back to back to back, such as Pikachu's thunder attack where all you would hear would be: PIKA! Ka-crack! PIKA! Ka-crack! PIKA! Ka-crack! But in those cases, you can only blame the player for relying solely on one move.

Re-playability/Extra's/Etc.: 10/10

While the re-playability of Brawl can hardly be described anything other than unbelievable, the extra content alone is also amazing. Brawl expands on Melee's trophy system that was so popular by also including a “trophy stand” as a usable item that when thrown at an enemy will turn them into a trophy. The coin system was also revamped, and instead of using your coins in a lottery to gain new trophies, you can now use them in a mini-game called the coin launcher, which is essentially where you launch coins at trophies in order to acquire them. Brawl also features a sticker collection, which do more than just sit around in a gallery, as you can apply stickers to the base of character trophies in order to power that characters attributes up. And of course you can't overlook the whole online multiplayer experience that brawl offers, allowing you to fight your friends and strangers in online brawls, where spectators can watch your fights and even bet on them!

Overall: 9/10

Overall, Brawl is the must-have multi-player fighting title for today's Wii owner! You can really tell the amount of time that the developers put into the game, and I'm sure that any Nintendo fan would love to own Brawl. If you're a Nintendo/Fighting fan at all and own a Wii you really have no reason not to pick up brawl, especially if you have a couple of friends to play with. Brawl receives very high 9's from me, as it is very close to being a perfect game. Have fun and keep playing!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/24/08

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