"Gamerman555 likes to Brawl. And so should you."

I remember playing the original Super Smash Bros. at my friend's birthday party just after it came out on the Nintendo 64. I picked up Melee the day it was released and have enjoyed playing it since it came out. I wasn't able to pick up Brawl right away, however I have been lucky enough to get a copy and play through it. I was quite impressed with it, and I will explain here what really makes this the best Smash Bros. in the series and why, if you have a Wii, it is a game you must pick up.

Gameplay: I have decided to split the gameplay review into two sections: single player/local machine multiplayer and online multiplayer (the latter can be found below). Super Smash Bros. uses a fairly different fighting system in comparison to other fighter games. You and up to three opponents (you can play against 3 computer-controlled players, 3 human controlled players, and combinations of both in-between) select a character from a vast list of some of Nintendo's most popular names (such as Mario, Link, Pit, Captain Falcon, Fox, etc), 35 in total (although several must be unlocked), select a stage to battle it out on, and start throwing attacks at each other. As you land attacks, your opponents will have a damage meter (measured in per cent) increase at the bottom of the screen. The higher the per cent of damage, the further they will fly when they are hit. The goal is to hit your opponents so far off or below the stage so that they are "out of the ring," scoring you a point or making them lose a life.

There are items that can help you out. These range from some classics as the Home Run Bat (hit someone with this and it's an instant KO), Heart Container (returns your health to 0%), and other projectiles. Items, of course, can be turned off. Which items, and their frequency, can also be altered in the game menu.

There are many new stages in the game, several which can be unlocked, as well as classic stages from Melee (which can also be unlocked). You also have the option of building your own stages. The stage builder is, unfortunately, quite limiting. You cannot use your stages online, which also kinda stinks (however you can send them to other people in your friend list). There aren't too many options for what you can do, however there is still more than enough stuff for you to create a stage as challenging or simple as you like. Most of the new stages are... okay. Several of them have too many hazards (by that, I mean they contain things that can hurt you or even kill you if you aren't careful) that somewhat defeat the purpose of fighting: you'll find yourself dodging the hazards more so than fighting your opponents.

Brawl has greatly surpassed what previous Smash Bros. games have done for those people who play by themselves. Event matches are back (these are special battles that contain certain objectives, such as you having to be Link so you can protect Zelda from her enemies while she meditates), as well as the Classic Mode (where you must fight through a ladder of randomly chosen opponents). The new Subspace Emissary mode is a single player campaign. I won't spoil it, however you will get to play through various side-scrolling stages, defeating enemies and bosses, and finally get to see what's behind the Master Hand (for those who don't know, Master Hand is the final boss of the Classic mode). The cutscenes in Subspace Emissary are fantastic and show off the graphical power of the Wii: they have a very "cinematic" feel. Some of the levels are quite tedious and repetitive, but it isn't too bad. The boss fights are also quite pointless (they attack you, you easily dodge, then you attack them while they sit at the edge of the stage) and boring with the exception of the final fight, which I found to be quite entertaining.

One thing I"m very upset with is the new Break the Targets mode. In previous Smash Bros. games, each character had their own unique target test level (where you basically go around a small stage, destroying targets as fast as you can). In Brawl, each character can play the same five Target Test stages (one being the easiest, and five being the hardest), but really, don't be that lazy Nintendo. You're more creative than that.

All and all, there are many other single player modes that the game has. You can fight in various pre-made Special Brawls (such as a Brawl where everyone is massive, very small, or invisible) which can be a great change from the typical battles. The home run contest is back where you get 10 seconds to rack up damage on Sandbag, then hit him with the home run bat (the higher his damage, the further he'll go). Like Melee, the All Star mode is back (once you've unlocked all the characters) where you can fight all of the characters in a row. There is so much stuff that you really have to see for yourself.

Online: I give Nintendo credit for outfitting the game with Wifi so you can play against either friends or random people on the internet. If you want to play with friends, you'll have to exchange friend codes (which can be annoying). If you wish to play with random people online, you simply select your character and wait for the servers to match you up with some other people. The main issue I have here is that it LAGS LIKE CRAZY. I have a good internet connection, and it still lags. The game moves at about half the speed online than when playing locally on the machine (against friends, however, it seems to be okay). There is also an issue with your connection "being lost" during or after a battle which is also very annoying. Of course, this is really Nintendo's first attempt at going online, and being able to play with others, even with lag (which you do somewhat get used to) is a fantastic addition.

Single Player/Local Machine Score: 9.4/10
Online Multiplayer Score: 7.2/10

Graphics: Brawl supports some of the best graphics to date on the Wii console, especially in the Subspace Emissary cutscenes. There is much more attention to fine detail (especially on the character models, which look quite good). The backgrounds of stages is much more 3-d than it was in Melee, Donkey Kong actually has rendered fur instead of a flat texture, the lighting effects are fantastic, and the stages themselves look great. Oh, and the background to the Final Destination stage is pure awesome.

Graphical Score: 9.7/10

Sound Effects and Music: I was very, very impressed with what Nintendo did here. The game features nearly 300 original and remixed musical pieces from various Nintendo games. Yes, that's right, 300. The remixing was done quite well (such as the Bramble Blast remix from Donkey Kong Country 2) with very good quality. About half of the songs are remixed, while the other half are the original pieces. A great new feature is the My Music option. Here, you are able to choose between which songs you want to play on certain stages and even decide the probability that each song has to play on each stage. You must play through Subspace Emissary to unlocked many of the tunes in the game (or complete certain tasks to gain access to the "CD's" - see Unlockables for more info) or pick up CD's when they randomly drop into battles. The sound effects are also flawless (the range of punching sounds differer from each character, to Peach's small slap sounds to Captain Falcon's "Falcon Punch" whallop), with each character having their own unique range of sound effects. I applaud Nintendo for including such a huge number of tracks and letting people have control over what is played when.

Sound Effects and Music Score: 10/10

Unlockables: There was quite a bit to unlock in Melee, between stages, characters, and trophies. Brawl easily has over 1000 unlockables. Trophies are back, and there are more than ever which can be found in the Subspace Emissary. There are many "stickers" that you can also win, highlighting various Nintendo characters, attacks, items, and classic moments that can be placed in an album. In Subspace Emissary, stickers can be placed on each character (not physically) that will do things such as increase their attack power, defense power, and so on (although you won't see too much of a difference). You can also pick up CD's which give you access to the game's approx. 300 audio tracks for battles.

A great new feature is the Challenges screen. Here, there are over 100 challenges that you can take on. Completing a challenge will give you things such as a CD, a trophy, a stage, a virtual console game demo, and so on. The challenges are laid out on a board. An uncomplete challenge has a blue square around it. A completed challenge has the trophy or whatever you won visible inside. Each time you complete a challenge, the squares to the immediate left and right of the completed challenge will turn red. Hover over this challenge to find out how to complete it. When the square is blue, you don't know what you have to do to complete it. Going through the game will unlock several challenges, giving you access to red squares so you can continue from there. The challenges range from quite easy (using Peach 10 times in normal Brawls, playing on the Mushroomy Kingdom stage 10 times in Brawl, etc), to quite difficult or time consuming (completing the Boss Fights with 20 characters, beating All Star on Intense difficulty). All and all, there is so much to unlock, I doubt you'll ever get bored here.

Unlockables Score: 10/10

The CPU/AI: Nintendo really did something right here: they made the AI fight almost exactly like human players. When a human player knocks their friend off of the stage, they go and wait on the side of the stage so that if their friend is able to jump back, they just hammer them back off again! That's the way most people play, and that's how computer players play too. If they knock you off, they'll be waiting for you right at the edge of the stage. They dodge and attack in unpredictable patterns (bosses are predictable, however), meaning you'll always be on the edge of your feet. While Brawling, you can choose an enemy difficulty of 1 (easy to defeat) to 9 (intense, hard to defeat). In all modes, you are also able to choose difficulties (such as easy to intense in the Subspace Emissary), even in the Event matches (which you couldn't do in Melee; now you can select Event matches to be Easy, Medium, or Hard). Of course, you can change from easy to intense on the menu of all modes whenever you please (so if you start out Subspace Emissary on Intense and just can't beat a certain area, tone it down to Hard or Normal). All and all, I was very impressed with the enemy AI.

The CPU/AI Score: 9.8/10

Replayability: Because of the online mode, you can really never get bored of finding fights. Because there are so many modes and SO MANY COLLECTABLES, there will almost always be something to do. And trust me, finishing some of those challenges will take a while. If you do finish them, try to beat your best times or scores, or take your great talents online and have your way with people across the world. You can pause the game in any mode (from Subspace Emissary to Events to Brawls with your friends) and take a Snapshot which you can then send off to friends. If you have a funny moment captured or you have just connected Ganondorf's Warlock punch to poor little Ness at the moment of impact, take a Snapshot and send it on to your buddies.

The stage builder also adds a lot of replayability. If you are tired of playing with the pre-made stages, simply make your own! You have a selection of pieces that you can put on either a small, medium, or large grid. You can give the stage a background song that you've unlocked, and even test the stage in mid construction to make sure it is playable (this is the best feature by far), and if it is, save it to your console or SD card. You cannot use custom stages online, but you can send them to your friends for them to play locally on their machine, or put them on an SD card to bring to a friend's if their Wii doesn't have an internet connection.

Finally, you can use the replay function. Any match that is under three minutes can be saved and sent to Nintendo. Nintendo will pick the best replays of fights, snapshots, and stages and give a single of each out each day so players can take them and see your greatness. The downloded snapshots, replays, and stages are deleted at the end of each day so new picks can be made the next day.

Replayability Score: 9.5/10

Final Thoughts
If you enjoyed past Smash Brothers games, you should surely like this one. I am very impressed with everything, even the laggy online play. I'll sum it up to this list:

Pros:
+ 35 characters to use, many stages (including the ability to make your own), over 300 music tracks, and just a bunch of unlockables
+ The single player Subspace Emissary mode is very cinematic and fun
+ The graphics, character models, and lighting effects, especially the cinema scenes in the Subspace Emissary, are incredible
+ The AI fights nearly like human players
+ The game will simply never get old, there is so much that one can do
+ The gameplay. Period.
+ Meta Knight is awesome
+ There's an onlike mode so you can battle friends and people around the globe

Cons:
- Online play can be a bit laggy, especially playing against random people not from your friend list
- Subspace Emissary was a bit short, and some of the levels are quite repetitive
- Boss fights (with a few exceptions) are quite boring and bland
- Ganondorf cannot use his sword (comon, you know that sucks :)

Overall Score: 9.4
Rounded: 9

Buy/Rend/Even Bother: Buy
If you have a Wii, get this game. Really, you won't be disappointed. If you didn't like Melee, give it a try, as it does have a few changes. The game is so engulfed in Nintendo's rich history (just really cool to see all of it), and it really is quite flawless. Enjoy everyone!

~Gamerman555
Super Smash Bros. Brawl - Nintendo (Wii)

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/05/08

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