Super Smash Bros Brawl; The Official DS Ultimate Review
Ah yes, Super Smash Bros Brawl. The game the world has apparently been waiting for, and the game that even after owning the game for months, I've apparently never really got round to reviewing. But never the less, is it the fantastic game of a lifetime the fans have been waiting for? Find out below!
First up, the good. There are now 35 characters in Super Smash Bros Brawl, and literally every single character the developers wanted in the game has made it. You've got Meta Knight, King Dedede (wanted since the original), Wario, Snake, Sonic the Hedgehog and Olimar to name a few new characters, many of which the makers have said they wanted in the series since either the Nintendo 64 original or Super Smash Bros Melee. The characters seem pretty well designed as well, although some older characters have been utterly destroyed in terms of usefulness (Captain Falcon went from top tier to dead last on the tier list). Could have done possibly with a few more characters however, 40 would have been a more rounded number, and a lot of people questioned why Samurai Goroh, Mewtwo, King K Rool and various other characters didn't make the playable character roster. But it's generally good on the character front, clones have been declonified/removed, and there are no complete wastes of space like Pichu was in Melee.
Stages are pretty good too. Mario Circuit, Spear Pillar, Mushroomy Kingdom, Delfino Square, Pirate Ship and various others are neat, although some stages I'm not personally fond of either because they're too gimmicky (Mario Bros, Donkey Kong), or near impossible to play on because of size (New Pork City). But all the stages look the part, all are packed with references to the games they're based off of, and they generally couldn't do a better job for most things here.
Items are fair. Assist Trophies are awesome. Final Smashes are great, and provide a neat mechanic for those with items on who want some random and rather fancy entertainment. Pokeballs seem a bit toned down though, with various Pokemon appearing way too often for my liking, but it's not too bad. The new items are quite neat as well, as are those returning from the original (for example, the Bumper item from the original game makes a long awaited return).
Presentation has no real big problems. Graphics look excellent for the most part (although the quality is slightly less for things like trophies and background details in levels. Music is amazing, with plenty of top notch remixes that in some cases even top the original versions of the song (random example; Super Mario Land Underground Level Theme goes from rather repetitive song in the original game to truly godly remix in Brawl, and it's damn well noticeable).
Did I yet mention there is plenty to do? There is, apart from multiplayer, which alone comes with near infinite options for doing everything from editing item rarity to changing the random music that plays on levels to various options for 'special brawl' that range from invisible characters to metal characters, you've got nigh on thousands of options, from the great to the somewhat near pointless. Single Player has the huge Subspace Emissary story mode (more on that in a later paragraph), Classic Mode, All Star mode and numerous Stadium mini games from fighting off hoardes of enemies (Multi Man Brawl) to hitting a Sandbag across a stadium (Homerun Contest) to even an unlockable Boss Rush with limited healing (Boss Battles). Then, if that wasn't enough, you've got Training mode and the Vault, which itself has a full blown Stage Builder (more on THAT later), a Coin Launcher Mini Game, SEVEN HUNDRED stickers to collect, 500 trophies to collect and even short demos of Nintendo games (albeit annoyingly short ones). Then, to top even this, the game even has a full Sound Test to listen to all the music and sound effects. If you honestly wanted any more options (I forgot to even mention the online play), you were probably expecting a ridiculously high amount of content no game on Earth can match. This is a setting fanatics heaven. This a collectors paradise game. This is a game for people who never want to see civilisation again, it's that damn well huge.
So what about the collectibles? Nothing missed. The trophies will take you a long time to finish (you need to beat at least three million challenges for them, and that's without those got purely by luck). Stickers are even more extreme, with collecting the stickers something that could theoretically last you until you're collecting your pension. Heck, this writer doesn't have them all, and he's been playing at least each day for about a year and a half now. One minor negative though, the game can be incredibly overwhelming after a time, and it feels very much like that game that won't freaking end. Stickers are kinda ridiculous here, you need to be a saint to collect the whole bunch. This is before the trophy stands are brought into consideration. This, for the clueless is a new addition where you get at least 50 of the trophies by throwing a trophy stand at enemies and bosses to turn them into a trophy. Fairly interesting, with the stands being random and more likely to appear on higher difficulties. Incredibly annoying though in that you have to wear down the health of tough enemies and bosses, then hope the trophy falls above ground (or maybe if you're a God, catch it in mid air as it falls). Much annoyance is to be had getting a trophy of Meta Ridley or Tabuu (the final boss) because of this addition.
But more importantly, that brings to the next point, the new story mode. This mode, called the 'Subspace Emissary' is basically a Kirby type platform/fighting game where you have to take control of numerous characters to defeat various teamed up villains and the all new Subspace Army. It's certainly an interesting mode, the levels having their own things to collect, characters to recruit to your team, and boss battles against characters from the various series represented in Smash Bros (for example, you have to fight Petey Piranha from Mario, Rayquaza from Pokemon and Porky from Earthbound in various missions). All in all, this is jolly good fun, especially with the option to play through co op with a friend. And the boss battles, which were well designed enough to actually get their own Stadium mode that works similarly to All Star mode. However, it's not without flaws, namely some enemies being incredibly annoying with rather broken design, and a plot which would have made a whole lot more sense if Sakurai hadn't had to cut out various parts due to some external reason or another. It's all in good fun though.
Also new to the game, Super Smash Bros Brawl includes a stage builder, or level editor feature. This is pretty much exactly what it says in the name, you build levels, and they can be chosen in Vs mode or Training. It's a fairly decent feature, with an okay selection of parts to use to build levels, with new stuff getting unlocked as you play through the entire game (thankfully just gotten by basically building levels). You can choose things like the background music too, which is a great idea, and there's even an option to save the stages to an SD card and send them to a friend or upload them online. Heck, there's even a free program you can get online which can edit the levels you've made with more features and no limitations whatsoever, which is great fun to use. However, it's a tad basic, lacking in quite a few of the clever gimmicks utilised by the existing stages, and you sadly can't add stuff such as scrolling stages and levels. On another note, yes, these custom levels can appear by random if you choose that option. And if you've made a whole ton of them, they will literally appear about as often as the game's actually default levels do, whether that's good or bad for your sanity. Generally a great feature, and one which works even better when you download some of the levels I've personally made and uploaded to DS Ultimate.
That is definitely not all that's in Brawl. You've also got the Masterpieces (short demos of classic video games which star the main Super Smash Bros characters in their original series), which is a decent feature, albeit one which is too limited to be much fun. You've got the ability to take snapshots, send them to people and even upload those online, and you've got the hilarious pointless and rather silly Chronicle which is just a list of Nintendo games which gets expanded as you play through the game. Finally, in case you thought that wasn't enough, you even get records kept about every little thing (how many times you've turned on the system power?), notifications (unlocked for random stuff and adding up into a whole great load of random corny messages), and even random elements in the gameplay itself (Snake's Codecs have different, distinct, fully voiced messages based on every single character in the game, Mr Resetti says different things depending on no real factors of note, and there's even a concert in the Animal Crossing stage at a certain time each week based on the system clock!)
Finally, another new addition. Nearly EVERY SINGLE THING CAN BE PLAYED IN CO OP MODE. No joke, two player nigh on everything. Two player Subspace Emissary? Possible. Two player All Star mode? Possible. A full set of special two player event matches? Exists. Heck, you can even play two player Boss Battles, Multi Man Brawl, Home Run Contest and even TARGET TEST. The point of the latter, no one really knows. But if you want your friends or family to help you out with anything, it can be done. No limitations.
So, what to rate Super Smash Bros Brawl? Well, to be bluntly honest, if I give it anything less than 90% I am completely dead in the eyes of every Nintendo fan on the planet, so I will nicely give it 100%. But this isn't just to please a crowd. This is because Super Smash Bros Brawl is the game I have literally been playing most recently, the game which brings nigh hours on hours of fun in vs matches with friends, and that game which offers more than you can even imagine. I'd have given Super Smash Bros Melee the same if the site had been around when I was playing that game, and Brawl, being even better and generally longer game deserves every bit of what it gets score wise.
Graphics: 9.5/10
Sound/Music: 10/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Pure Features and Length: Infinity/10
Overall: 10/10
