Super Smash Bros: Brawl Review (WII)

BRAWL!!!!

For those of you that have played a Super Smash Bros game you will know what they are like, fast, chaotic and a ton of fun to play.
Here’s a review for the latest Super Smash Bros game for the Nintendo Wii – Super Smash Bros: Brawl.

If you have ever played any of the other Smash games you realise that you never actually got a storyline out of any of the previous games. It was just fighting, over and over again. Super Smash Brothers: Brawl has a campaign mode for players to go through called “The Subspace Emissionary” (Try saying that 10 times over).

This new campaign mode is surprisingly long to play through, it can take up a good 8-10 hours to beat. Through those hours of chaotic brawling you will unlock all kinds of different goodies. The best unlockable that you will be looking out for are the unlockable characters you can get. There are also numerous ways to get these characters, you can simply play through “The Subspace Emissionary” or just play a certain amount of classic brawls. There are more ways to unlock them too, achieving certain things in matches can unlock things.

When you play through the campaign mode you get to watch many cut scenes which look fantastic, especially as it is the same graphics engine that is used whilst playing the actual game. You will see tons of characters interacting with one another as the speechless story unfolds. Even though the campaign has no speech in it at all you still know what is going on, the cut scenes are well thought out and composed perfectly. The levels you play through can range from straight up brawling to jumping on and around platforms to proceed to the next area. Its all done well and an enjoyable experience.

Super Smash Bros games have their own style of game play that people have grown to love. and it’s a pretty steep learning curve when trying to master the game for yourself. You will often lose track of where your character is during a brawl as the action is just so intense and chaotic. Most people will be happy just button mashing their way to victory, sadly that isn’t the case. In order to play this game well you will have to learn to time and execute certain moves in order to smash your opponent off the edge of the stage. Trying to perfect these moves can be annoying in battle but it will surely lead you to victory after practising for a while.

Items called “Smash Balls” are added to this game. If you manage to melee attack the ball enough whilst it’s floating around the entire stage you will earn a huge special move. This special move will literally destroy anyone within its reach, direction or aim. These moves are truly spectacular to see and make the game even more hectic.

New characters are welcomed to the franchise such as Snake from the Metal Gear Solid games

Whilst playing through battles you will still be given crazy weapons to play with just like the other Super Smash Bros games. Projectiles, melee weapons and a few guns. All these weapons add to the whole fantastic experience. There is some environment interaction on some stages. You will find waterfalls, collapsing bridges and many background moving stages.

Smash wouldn’t be anything special if it never had its awesome cast of characters to play as. You will get most of the familiar characters to play with like Mario, Pikachu, Kirby, Link and many more characters that have been in the previous games. Super Smash Bros: BrawlNew characters are welcomed to the franchise such as Snake from the Metal Gear Solid games, he uses all kinds of weaponry in battle like grenades, homing rocket launchers – he is one of my favourite characters to play as. Sonic the Hedgehog makes an appearance in this game too. He is obviously fast, he can do pretty cool aerial moves too. His special move is my favourite out of every character on the game. I will not spoil it too much, lets just say it includes the colour gold. (If you can work that out). There are many more characters including Diddy Kong, Pit, Wario and Lucario from pokemon.

The game is graphically beautiful, especially for the Wii. All the characters look excellent, they are all highly detailed and look exactly how you have always known them to look. You get the option to change what colour their suits are too. Character animations in the game are also excellent, they are fluent and stylish. This game has some of the best character animations I have ever seen, all their movements look really good. Each stage you fight on is immense in many ways. As I mentioned earlier about the interactive moving stages these all look amazing to the eye. The background within each stage always look well rendered and some of them have a very artistic hint to them. This game is definitely one of the prettiest games going for the Nintendo Wii.

Super Smash Bros: BrawlAnother great feature to the game includes the ability to play against other Smash brawlers over Wi-Fi. Players all over the globe can connect with one another and battle it out online. This definitely adds to the game’s lasting appeal to players.

When playing online you will be asked whether you would like to play with friends on your Wii or with people around the globe. I had too much hassle when trying to connect with friends so I just play with other random gamers. Playing online is a great amount of fun in my opinion but some gamers may become some what frustrated from time to time as many other players are insanely good at this game. I found myself constantly being smashed off of the stage within a short amount of time. This is where you will need to practice if you want to bring your game online, practice makes perfect. All unlockable characters can be used online and the same for any stages you have unlocked.

At the end of it all what you have here is a great package. There is just so much to do within the game and you will be playing it for hours. Tons of things to unlock, mini-games, characters, stages and even soundtracks. Personally I think that the Super Smash Bros franchise never fails to give its fans what they want and hopefully will continue to do so. I also hope that Nintendo keep up the amazing visuals in any other installment to the franchise.

I recommend this game to any person that owns a Nintendo Wii, you will not be let down.

BRAWL!

Nathan Cochrane

The Good: Fantastic visuals, great character animations, gameplay is simple and fun, play online.
The Bad: Online matches slightly lag at times.


Super Smash Bros: Brawl Super Smash Bros: Brawl Super Smash Bros: Brawl Super Smash Bros: Brawl Super Smash Bros: Brawl 


Gold Y AwardGold Y Award
4.5 4.5 / 5

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.