Super Smash Bros. Brawl - Wii

Dear Smash Brothers, what a long time its been since your debut, you were such a cute little game. I was a mere 7 years old at that time, oh the excitement you brought me. I tried to rent you every weekend, i hoped, i prayed, that some some one with a better playing ability then me had rented you previous, who had unlocked all of the characters which i loved. Then came Melee, you were growing up right before our eyes. This time you expanded on your already impressive list characters with more of my favorites, alas with the use of game discs it was sadely impossible for me to piggy back on someone elses acomplishments, so i grew up a little bit my self, and learned how to unlock some characters. it was in melee that i perfected my fighting style, i called it "death from above", i took link or young link jumped over you and droped bombs on your head , until you were at close to 90% and then came down upon you with my sword, and watched you flyout of the level while i took a well deserved swig of lon-lon milk. Now we come to where you are now, Brawl, and it apears your going through a midlife crises of sorts, you have all of a sudden reverted your game play to childlike standards. why oh why SSB why!

 Gameplay

Do you like pressing the 'A' button?! yeah, what about the 'B' button?!? yeah, well how about pressing them over and over and over again!! Now to be fair, SSB never had the most sofisticated gameplay on the planet, infact there was tons of 'A' and 'B' button mashing sessions, but the gameplay could be either incredibly difficult or stupidly easy depending on your level of play, and it really leveled out the playing field. I remeber play with a little cousin of mine who almost beat me pressing the A button over and over and over again. As always you have the core types of attacks on the 'A' buttton, up, down, left and right produce up, down, left and right attacks, simple enough but advancing further on that point are the smashes smash up, down, left and right, this is where the game started to get awkward, for me anyway, i found smashes difficult at best to pull off, but i am willing to chalk that one up to being a noob to brawl. second you have the secondary attacks that are unique to each character, the point of them i always thought was to surprise your apponent with them, and to get the health up so its easier to smash them away later. You have a few basic types of these, just pressing 'B' with any character will generally get you a basic launch of projectile, link, has a bow, fox has gun, mario has fire power (i call it pok-pok), etc. occasionally you will get a sword swing or super punch, but generally you shoot somthing. Then if you press 'B' down you get some way of dodging these projectiles, mario has a blanket, fox has a shield, falco now throws his sheild, but on the hole same basic examples, but again as with all he game play there is variation in the characters, and somtimes you get a bomb, somtimes a super kick etc. then theres Up B which helps you get back onto the platform after you have fallen, then there is side 'B' which generally gets you from point 'A' to point 'B' side to side fast, again with a bit of variation between the characters, the most humouros is when peach uses toad as a human shield, but other wise same basic stuff.

And now we come to my problems. I swear the Up 'B' system is broken infact, i am pretty sure I have died more times in the past 2-days because of it then i had in all my time playing melee, you never seem to up where you want and even when you do end up at your desired destination, occasionally you don't even grab on to the edge, which is a huge step down from how it used to be. Next the is the reliancy on the 'B' button with some character, such as pit its more benificial to use the 'B' then the 'A' button, And this is when fights start to become gong shows. Here is how the game appears to work, stand really close to your apponent and Jam the buttons, good luck getting a smash off, its almost impossible when your like that... Dont though worry brawl has rendered smashes obselete any way, now there are these glowing balls of rainbow that occasionaly grace the battlefield with their presence, (ladies and gentle men the skill has left the building) and then every one changes focus from killing the other player to killing the rainbow, If you happen to be lucky (its bolded because thats all it is, luck) enough to break it you get a super power, press 'B' and BAM! your opponent is down a life. this unique idea works really well if you suck and your opponent doesn't. Another item is this little crystal that unleashes a NPC that beats the crap out of your opponent for you, this is good for laughs in real life as you can watch them curse out loud as a jelly fish type object, that looks kinda like the boss of that big fish in ocariana of time kills them at least once twice if your lucky. there are also these little artifact type things that let you shoot some wing thingy at your opponent at which point if you hit them they instantly die.

for gameplay im gonna have scold Brawl for making the game to easy in some places but impossibly difficult in others.

Characters

Rember how innovative, and cheap, the ice climbers were, i never liked them but i new some people who did and they were pretty good at the game, but the fact is their broken in brawl, the pink one will die for no reason at all, just walk off the edge or somthing stupid like that. Most of the classic the characters are Back, but theres also some new ones. You now have Wario, Pit, Snake, Diddy, Ike, toon link, poke trainer, lucario, wolf, and metaknight ( I am probably forgeting some one). if you can tell me who half of these characters are and where there from i will give you a prize, chalk it up to not being super insane about nintendo, but i couldnt tell where some of these guys of from (I invite you all to question my credibility). now i dont have all the characters i am missing a few but i got the jist on the new commers. I find them broken, metaknight (i was informed by my brother is from kirby) is kinda useless, i have only ever been able to make him do the same attack over and over again, oh and his Up B attack is almost worse then every one else. you can get a robot named R.O.B who is more awkward then Mr. game and watch. We have olimar from picman who walks around with his coloured friends hitting people with, them, he is one of the better newbies, along with snake who is exactly what i expect from smash bros character, Diddy kong who is again a great character, and poke trainer who i didnt expect much from but is a pleasant surprise.

Im gonna congratulate Brawl on keeping the classics the same the same and not tweaking them much, because that could have ruined them, and i also want to congratulate them for the good new characters. I am gonna scold them though for getting rid of mewtwo replacing him with lucario, and also putting stupid new characters in like metaknight and R.O.B. 

Levels

This will be short cause i wanna finnish this up and go ride my bike. The new ones except for the wario ware one stink, they got rid of some classics from melee and replaced them with some stinkers. Remember the unique interaction that melee had between the characters and the enviroment, well you can throw that right out the window cause the only time you will find them is on the ones they kept from melee, and the wario ware level, while there is some destructable stuff on the levels its pointless and rather contrived.

Scolded for replacing good maps with bad maps, and getting rid of character enviroment interaction.

Single player

Even with one of the FF writers it still sucked, the levels are bland and you will find your self doing the same thing over and over and over,  jumping and pressing the 'a' button, and you  WILL do that alot, and it WILL get boring but if you want sonic and a few other characters you WILL do it and pretend to like it. it tends to be very childish and instead of growing with the audience it orignally gained 9 years ago it jumped all the back down to the ten 11 year old range.

Scolded for being lame and boring and having a cutscene every 5mins.

Overall

I may have been tough on it but i certainly didn't hate it, just the single player, most of the new characters, and the levels. i certainly recomend that you give it a chance if your on the bubble of wether or not buy it. go give it a rent if you like you can certainly come yell at me in caps about how stupid i am. The way i feel though it was a step back for the game in being mentioned among serious fighting games, and the childish feel to the whole thing might possibly turn a few long time smash bros fans off, it definetly does have redeeming qualities too it, just not enough for me to start playing my WII more.