Brawl is da far the most mixed-quality game I’ve played this year. Many good points, many bad points.
GAMEPLAY
Pretty much the same as Melee (the prequel), with the exception of the Smash Ball; which allows a character to perform an incredibly powerful attack, which often results in a 1-hit-kill. Another new feature is the Assist Trophies. They function exactly the same as pokeballs: a character comes out and either assists o annoys you. Assist Trophies can be anything from Waluigi to Nintendog.
I don’t know quite what it is, but Brawl takes some getting used to if you’re used to playing Melee.
STORY (Sub spazio Emissary)
A fantastic achievement da Nintendo, they somehow managed to tell a whole story without using a single word (apart from introducing each character da name). The only problem I have with the SSE is that it can get kind of repetitive, and the maze near the end of SSE was the Water Temple of Brawl: “where do I go? So many different directions, I defeated a boss, what did that achieve? Nothing I can see, I’m completely lost, <pauses game> I have a map???? Well that makes things a bit easier. Right, I’ve covered almost every single room and I still can’t find a way out, oh! I’m supposed to defeat all the bosses to get into that weird room! Ah, finally done that, now a whole load più bosses have appeared! I’ve done that, now I have to go all the way back to that weird room! DONE! <uber relief>”... anywho, not the most pleasant experience in gaming history, but certainly makes te feel good when you’ve completed that part. An interesting part of the SSE is that te can collect stickers to power up your characters; gives the game a slightly RPG feel, which I like.
CUTSCENES
The SSE is quite a long story mode with plenty of cutscenes of which are very amusing; one of these is where Mario thinks Link killed pesca, peach and he completely rages out. Another being the time when Mr Game & Watch was offered tè da Peach, and gradually he becomes a complete metrosexual. It’s good to finally see Link in Wii graphics, even though he got nowhere near as much attention as us Zelda fan would have hoped for. Wasn’t too happy with the length of the cutscenes, they were a little bit short.
LEVELS
Fun and event-full. One that I particularly enjoyed was “Mushroomy Kingdom”; which is based on one of the early Super Mario levels. The camera slowly scrolls across the level at just the right speed allowing te to Brawl in many areas, while not rushing through it like... one of the other levels, I forgot what it’s called.
UNLOCKABLE STUFF
A nice feature to Brawl: if te find one aspect of the game too hard (e.g. SSE) te can just complete a different part of the game. For example, to get Sonic (oh, it’s hardly a spoiler, he’s on the back of the box) te can either (correct me if I’m wrong) complete Classic Mode with 10 characters, complete SSE o fight 100 Brawl matches (I think). This is useful for those who just want to muck around with their Friends (Vs mode), but still want to unlock stuff.
LEVEL MAKER
Crap. Unbelievably crap, being the only way I can think of describing the level maker on Brawl. When the people of The Brawl Spot heard there would be a level maker we were jumping up and down with joy, thinking about all the many features we could add into our levels. My gosh, if only we knew how simple and pathetic it would be. Your choices of parts are: ice blocks, falling blocks, normal blocks, 3 different slopes, 2 different pass-through-able paths, (and a pernice in a pera, corpo a pera treeeee......), spikes, conveyor belts, mushrooms and other boring stuff to climb over. I know I sound a bit fussy but honestly, the choice seems a lot bigger when te lista it out like that. te only get three themes which aren’t at all related to any Nintendo games (even though it’s freakin’ Super Smash Bros).
This feature seriously sucks DK balls.
CHARACTER ROSTER (this will contain spoilers)
Mario
They ruined the character da adding a useless weapon which only appeared in his first appearance on the GameCube. Final Smash is a lot harder to use than made out in the trailers.
Luigi
Very funny and good fun to Brawl with. Final Smash is hilarious and powerful.
Peach
A rubbish character that is made even worse da her pathetic Final Smash (putting everyone to sleep for a few secondi while she runs around trying to eat all the fruit)
Bowser
A decent character, even if he is a little bit slow. Final Smash is Giga Bowser transformation. Haven’t actually used it yet but I’ve had my arse kicked da it plenty of times.
Wario
Not as crude as the trailer made him out to be. Only one fart sposta as far as I can tell. Very strong and silly attacks, including sticking an opponents head in his mouth. He has two sets of outfits: his più recente one which he wears in Warioware, and his retro one which he wore in the first Mario games and continues to wear in Mario Party games. His Final Smash is Warioman, which is a più powerful version of Wario.
Link
Fantastic and better than ever. Remains my favourite character in joint first with Ike. His bow and Arrow have been buffed and his ^+B attack can now be charged. His Final Smash is.... Triforce Smash? No, I’m not spoofing The Hulk. Anywho, his Final Smash is very powerful and makes Link one of the best characters to play as on Brawl.
Zelda/Sheik
It’s hard to get used to transitioning between a percentage upper (Sheik) and a launcher (Zelda) but if te get used to the combination you’ll be quite the Brawler.
Ganondorf
He’s still a clone-character of Captain Falcon. I’m sure that Nintendo are actually teasing us about this because one of Ganondorf’s taunts is where he pulls out the sword he uses in Twilight Princess, laughs at it and puts it away. WHAT THE HECK ARE te DOING??? What they could have done is replaced some of his Captain falco, falcon moves with sword moves, but nope; they’re too darn lazy.
Toon Link
A replacement of Young Link (from Melee). A good idea, but they made him way too similar to TP Link, even their Final Smashes are the same. One più complaint, his head is way, WAY too big for his body.
R.O.B.
- Excuse for a character
- Fills up spazio in character roster
- Crappy Final Smash
- I hate him
Olimar
Um, why? Why did they add him into Brawl when he hasn’t been in a game for years (I ask the same domanda for Captain falco, falcon and all those who don’t seem to have been in a game for quite a while and don’t seem to be making a comeback anytime soon). He isn’t that great, in fact he’s rather annoying. His Final Smash is powerful, but he’s a real pain.
Ice Climber
Honestly I can’t think of much to say about them. They’re good, but if one gets killed then you’re a little stuffed. Final Smash is good on small levels.
Kirby
Great as he ever was. His Final Smash is a tad odd, but very good.
Meta Knight
Darn ye, Nintendo; te have butchered a wonderful character. In the Kirby games he is amazingly powerful. In Brawl it is almost impossible to launch someone of the screen with Meta Knight because all they gave him were stupid slashing percentage-upper moves. Complete disappointment; his Final Smash isn’t much good either.
King Dedede
Yet another piece of evidence to mostra Nintendo is lazy. King Dedede’s sposta set is a combination of Bowser’s and Kirby’s sposta sets. Final smash is funny but not that powerful.
Marth
An excellent sposta set; good combos, a counter and good smash moves. Glad they kept him.
Ike
Roy’s replacement, and rightfully so. Ike is a slow and più powerful version of Marth, but this clone is actually worth keeping. If te time his moves right and use his counter appropriately te can get past his lack of speed. Final Smash is very cool and powerful
Ness
Ness really makes te feel pathetic, seeing as he’s a little kid and he can still kick everyone’s arse. Seriously, the only thing that could anger me più that his inclusion to Brawl is if Baby Mario joined the Brawl. Yes, he’s a powerful character.... but he’s still very annoying.
Lucas
Identical to Ness in almost every way. The only difference I’ve noticed is their move’s speed and power.
Pikachu
No matter how much I despise being beaten up da a spazzy yellow mouse, he’s still a valued character. Strong moves and good speed, combined with good recovery moves and an excellent Final Smash.
Jigglepuff
Someone please explain to me why this piece of crap has made it to the third game. I congratulate anyone who has actually managed to win più than two matches in a row with this ridiculous rosa ball (no offence to Kirby). Reasonably powerful moves which te actually have to be touching the other character to use because it’s range is so poor; Jigglepuff gets knocked off the screen ridiculously easy, even from breaking it’s shield. Final Smash is funny but not very effective on bigger stages.
Pokemon Trainer
Not as powerful as I thought. This character would have been good if its moves hadn’t been severely weakened for some very odd reason I do not know of. Pokemon Trainer uses and alternates between three Pokemon: Squirtle, Ivysaur and Charizard. Final Smash is ok, but has a habit of knocking an opponent upwards so they don’t get a constant blast of the beam that is used during the Final Smash.
Lucario
A replacement of Mewtwo. He’s a lot quicker than Mewtwo was, and a lot più fun to use because he doesn’t get knocked off all the time. Final Smash is excellent.
Sonic
Fast, good smashes and perfect for beginners; stupidly enough he’s one of the unlockable characters, and a hard one to unlock I might add.
Snake
Has some good moves, but very slow. Final Smash is good.
Fox
A good character, glad they didn’t make any stupid changes to him. His Final Smash is quite good.
Falco
Exactly the same as volpe except slowed down, powered up (slightly) and his V+B has been ruined. I expected his Final Smash to involve his spacecraft in some way but it’s the same as Fox.
Wolf
Seriously? Three versions of Fox? lupo is a good clone, but I think they should have left out Falco, o at least made him a bit different. lupo is a più powerful version of volpe (with the same speed), but he’s rather difficult to use.
DUBBING (English)
Dreadful. In fact, painfully bad dubbing. Few words are uttered in Brawl, but when they are spoken, they are pumped with cheesiness and stupid phrases (when Lucario does his Final Smash, he says “Watch the power”, when Sonic does his Final Smash he says “Now I’ll mostra you!” in a ridiculous voice).
I’d actually prefer it if they didn’t have dubbing for Brawl, the Japanese voices sounded so much better.
ERRORS
About a week fa my Wii seemed to have forgotten how to load up Brawl. I went and asked my friend who works at a video game store and he says that the way Brawl was programmed means that it is più prone to errors like that. The thing is, that was about four days fa and Brawl still isn’t working.
ONLINE GAMEPLAY
te can only play a customizable match against people who have registered your Brawl code. Either that o te can play a two-minute (team o non-team) default match against anyone round the world.
Yes, this is third game I’ve reviewed which Nintendo has chosen to suit up in the chicken costume and take a completely wimpy approach to online play. I actually read on the official site that they chose to leave out the hardcore-gamer features because they didn’t want to intimidate casual gamers. Here’s my message to casual gamers who are intimidated da that stuff: GROW A PAIR!
OTHER NOTES
This review was cut short when my Brawl disc stopped working; therefore I can no longer check if I made a mistake o missed a bit of information. This is also the reason why I can’t review DK, Diddy Kong and some of the other characters I missed.
I’ve written a separate articolo listing all the things I would hope to be in a sequel to Brawl (haven’t uploaded it yet).
I seriously regret getting so hyped up about this game.
The length of time it should take te to get all the characters is about.... 4 days (all day).
Sonic doesn’t have any alternate colours, He only has different shades of blue.
SUM-UP
Brawl is a great game, well.... half of it. It seems they just gave up with the game part way through and decided to do exactly what they did with Mario Kart Wii, pompa it full of crappy characters and skip out the fun online stuff. Still, it’s the best Wii game I’ve bought so far.... go buy it.
GAMEPLAY
Pretty much the same as Melee (the prequel), with the exception of the Smash Ball; which allows a character to perform an incredibly powerful attack, which often results in a 1-hit-kill. Another new feature is the Assist Trophies. They function exactly the same as pokeballs: a character comes out and either assists o annoys you. Assist Trophies can be anything from Waluigi to Nintendog.
I don’t know quite what it is, but Brawl takes some getting used to if you’re used to playing Melee.
STORY (Sub spazio Emissary)
A fantastic achievement da Nintendo, they somehow managed to tell a whole story without using a single word (apart from introducing each character da name). The only problem I have with the SSE is that it can get kind of repetitive, and the maze near the end of SSE was the Water Temple of Brawl: “where do I go? So many different directions, I defeated a boss, what did that achieve? Nothing I can see, I’m completely lost, <pauses game> I have a map???? Well that makes things a bit easier. Right, I’ve covered almost every single room and I still can’t find a way out, oh! I’m supposed to defeat all the bosses to get into that weird room! Ah, finally done that, now a whole load più bosses have appeared! I’ve done that, now I have to go all the way back to that weird room! DONE! <uber relief>”... anywho, not the most pleasant experience in gaming history, but certainly makes te feel good when you’ve completed that part. An interesting part of the SSE is that te can collect stickers to power up your characters; gives the game a slightly RPG feel, which I like.
CUTSCENES
The SSE is quite a long story mode with plenty of cutscenes of which are very amusing; one of these is where Mario thinks Link killed pesca, peach and he completely rages out. Another being the time when Mr Game & Watch was offered tè da Peach, and gradually he becomes a complete metrosexual. It’s good to finally see Link in Wii graphics, even though he got nowhere near as much attention as us Zelda fan would have hoped for. Wasn’t too happy with the length of the cutscenes, they were a little bit short.
LEVELS
Fun and event-full. One that I particularly enjoyed was “Mushroomy Kingdom”; which is based on one of the early Super Mario levels. The camera slowly scrolls across the level at just the right speed allowing te to Brawl in many areas, while not rushing through it like... one of the other levels, I forgot what it’s called.
UNLOCKABLE STUFF
A nice feature to Brawl: if te find one aspect of the game too hard (e.g. SSE) te can just complete a different part of the game. For example, to get Sonic (oh, it’s hardly a spoiler, he’s on the back of the box) te can either (correct me if I’m wrong) complete Classic Mode with 10 characters, complete SSE o fight 100 Brawl matches (I think). This is useful for those who just want to muck around with their Friends (Vs mode), but still want to unlock stuff.
LEVEL MAKER
Crap. Unbelievably crap, being the only way I can think of describing the level maker on Brawl. When the people of The Brawl Spot heard there would be a level maker we were jumping up and down with joy, thinking about all the many features we could add into our levels. My gosh, if only we knew how simple and pathetic it would be. Your choices of parts are: ice blocks, falling blocks, normal blocks, 3 different slopes, 2 different pass-through-able paths, (and a pernice in a pera, corpo a pera treeeee......), spikes, conveyor belts, mushrooms and other boring stuff to climb over. I know I sound a bit fussy but honestly, the choice seems a lot bigger when te lista it out like that. te only get three themes which aren’t at all related to any Nintendo games (even though it’s freakin’ Super Smash Bros).
This feature seriously sucks DK balls.
CHARACTER ROSTER (this will contain spoilers)
Mario
They ruined the character da adding a useless weapon which only appeared in his first appearance on the GameCube. Final Smash is a lot harder to use than made out in the trailers.
Luigi
Very funny and good fun to Brawl with. Final Smash is hilarious and powerful.
Peach
A rubbish character that is made even worse da her pathetic Final Smash (putting everyone to sleep for a few secondi while she runs around trying to eat all the fruit)
Bowser
A decent character, even if he is a little bit slow. Final Smash is Giga Bowser transformation. Haven’t actually used it yet but I’ve had my arse kicked da it plenty of times.
Wario
Not as crude as the trailer made him out to be. Only one fart sposta as far as I can tell. Very strong and silly attacks, including sticking an opponents head in his mouth. He has two sets of outfits: his più recente one which he wears in Warioware, and his retro one which he wore in the first Mario games and continues to wear in Mario Party games. His Final Smash is Warioman, which is a più powerful version of Wario.
Link
Fantastic and better than ever. Remains my favourite character in joint first with Ike. His bow and Arrow have been buffed and his ^+B attack can now be charged. His Final Smash is.... Triforce Smash? No, I’m not spoofing The Hulk. Anywho, his Final Smash is very powerful and makes Link one of the best characters to play as on Brawl.
Zelda/Sheik
It’s hard to get used to transitioning between a percentage upper (Sheik) and a launcher (Zelda) but if te get used to the combination you’ll be quite the Brawler.
Ganondorf
He’s still a clone-character of Captain Falcon. I’m sure that Nintendo are actually teasing us about this because one of Ganondorf’s taunts is where he pulls out the sword he uses in Twilight Princess, laughs at it and puts it away. WHAT THE HECK ARE te DOING??? What they could have done is replaced some of his Captain falco, falcon moves with sword moves, but nope; they’re too darn lazy.
Toon Link
A replacement of Young Link (from Melee). A good idea, but they made him way too similar to TP Link, even their Final Smashes are the same. One più complaint, his head is way, WAY too big for his body.
R.O.B.
- Excuse for a character
- Fills up spazio in character roster
- Crappy Final Smash
- I hate him
Olimar
Um, why? Why did they add him into Brawl when he hasn’t been in a game for years (I ask the same domanda for Captain falco, falcon and all those who don’t seem to have been in a game for quite a while and don’t seem to be making a comeback anytime soon). He isn’t that great, in fact he’s rather annoying. His Final Smash is powerful, but he’s a real pain.
Ice Climber
Honestly I can’t think of much to say about them. They’re good, but if one gets killed then you’re a little stuffed. Final Smash is good on small levels.
Kirby
Great as he ever was. His Final Smash is a tad odd, but very good.
Meta Knight
Darn ye, Nintendo; te have butchered a wonderful character. In the Kirby games he is amazingly powerful. In Brawl it is almost impossible to launch someone of the screen with Meta Knight because all they gave him were stupid slashing percentage-upper moves. Complete disappointment; his Final Smash isn’t much good either.
King Dedede
Yet another piece of evidence to mostra Nintendo is lazy. King Dedede’s sposta set is a combination of Bowser’s and Kirby’s sposta sets. Final smash is funny but not that powerful.
Marth
An excellent sposta set; good combos, a counter and good smash moves. Glad they kept him.
Ike
Roy’s replacement, and rightfully so. Ike is a slow and più powerful version of Marth, but this clone is actually worth keeping. If te time his moves right and use his counter appropriately te can get past his lack of speed. Final Smash is very cool and powerful
Ness
Ness really makes te feel pathetic, seeing as he’s a little kid and he can still kick everyone’s arse. Seriously, the only thing that could anger me più that his inclusion to Brawl is if Baby Mario joined the Brawl. Yes, he’s a powerful character.... but he’s still very annoying.
Lucas
Identical to Ness in almost every way. The only difference I’ve noticed is their move’s speed and power.
Pikachu
No matter how much I despise being beaten up da a spazzy yellow mouse, he’s still a valued character. Strong moves and good speed, combined with good recovery moves and an excellent Final Smash.
Jigglepuff
Someone please explain to me why this piece of crap has made it to the third game. I congratulate anyone who has actually managed to win più than two matches in a row with this ridiculous rosa ball (no offence to Kirby). Reasonably powerful moves which te actually have to be touching the other character to use because it’s range is so poor; Jigglepuff gets knocked off the screen ridiculously easy, even from breaking it’s shield. Final Smash is funny but not very effective on bigger stages.
Pokemon Trainer
Not as powerful as I thought. This character would have been good if its moves hadn’t been severely weakened for some very odd reason I do not know of. Pokemon Trainer uses and alternates between three Pokemon: Squirtle, Ivysaur and Charizard. Final Smash is ok, but has a habit of knocking an opponent upwards so they don’t get a constant blast of the beam that is used during the Final Smash.
Lucario
A replacement of Mewtwo. He’s a lot quicker than Mewtwo was, and a lot più fun to use because he doesn’t get knocked off all the time. Final Smash is excellent.
Sonic
Fast, good smashes and perfect for beginners; stupidly enough he’s one of the unlockable characters, and a hard one to unlock I might add.
Snake
Has some good moves, but very slow. Final Smash is good.
Fox
A good character, glad they didn’t make any stupid changes to him. His Final Smash is quite good.
Falco
Exactly the same as volpe except slowed down, powered up (slightly) and his V+B has been ruined. I expected his Final Smash to involve his spacecraft in some way but it’s the same as Fox.
Wolf
Seriously? Three versions of Fox? lupo is a good clone, but I think they should have left out Falco, o at least made him a bit different. lupo is a più powerful version of volpe (with the same speed), but he’s rather difficult to use.
DUBBING (English)
Dreadful. In fact, painfully bad dubbing. Few words are uttered in Brawl, but when they are spoken, they are pumped with cheesiness and stupid phrases (when Lucario does his Final Smash, he says “Watch the power”, when Sonic does his Final Smash he says “Now I’ll mostra you!” in a ridiculous voice).
I’d actually prefer it if they didn’t have dubbing for Brawl, the Japanese voices sounded so much better.
ERRORS
About a week fa my Wii seemed to have forgotten how to load up Brawl. I went and asked my friend who works at a video game store and he says that the way Brawl was programmed means that it is più prone to errors like that. The thing is, that was about four days fa and Brawl still isn’t working.
ONLINE GAMEPLAY
te can only play a customizable match against people who have registered your Brawl code. Either that o te can play a two-minute (team o non-team) default match against anyone round the world.
Yes, this is third game I’ve reviewed which Nintendo has chosen to suit up in the chicken costume and take a completely wimpy approach to online play. I actually read on the official site that they chose to leave out the hardcore-gamer features because they didn’t want to intimidate casual gamers. Here’s my message to casual gamers who are intimidated da that stuff: GROW A PAIR!
OTHER NOTES
This review was cut short when my Brawl disc stopped working; therefore I can no longer check if I made a mistake o missed a bit of information. This is also the reason why I can’t review DK, Diddy Kong and some of the other characters I missed.
I’ve written a separate articolo listing all the things I would hope to be in a sequel to Brawl (haven’t uploaded it yet).
I seriously regret getting so hyped up about this game.
The length of time it should take te to get all the characters is about.... 4 days (all day).
Sonic doesn’t have any alternate colours, He only has different shades of blue.
SUM-UP
Brawl is a great game, well.... half of it. It seems they just gave up with the game part way through and decided to do exactly what they did with Mario Kart Wii, pompa it full of crappy characters and skip out the fun online stuff. Still, it’s the best Wii game I’ve bought so far.... go buy it.
