"A slow-paced game that isn't much fun."

Super Smash Brothers: Brawl was one of the most anticipated game of the year for the Nintendo Wii console. It's the third installment of the Super Smash Bros. serie, a very popular fighting game serie featuring many Nintendo characters from various games, such as Zelda, Mario or Metroid. The game allows up to four players to fight simultaneously in fun arenas full of special items and interesting surprises. Or at least, that's what I wanted to believe. Having never owned a Smash game before, I've decided to buy this game, since it was heavily hyped and had good reviews. And I started playing it. It was kind of fun at first, but after a couple of hours, I grew tired of it, finding the game to be very repetitive, slow and totally unworthy of the massive hype it received. I will now rate every aspects of the game, and explain why the game didn't appeal to me.

STORY: 3/10

The single-player mode, SubSpace Emissary, features a story where the various Nintendo protagonists(Mario, Link, Samus, etc...) are fighting the various antagonists(Bowser, Ganon, Wario, etc...) who are trying to turn peoples into statues for some reasons that aren't clearly explained. Other than the lack of originality(heroes saving the world from bad guys...), the story features no voices, no text, nothing to explain what's going on, and seems to serve little purpose besides introducing the various playable characters in the game. While I didn't expect a fighting game to have a story as deep as an RPG, many fighting games have good character backgrounds and cool stories, like King of Fighters or Fatal Fury. They're not the focus of the game, but they explain quite a lot. Here, you get none of this. The story is nothing more than an introduction to the playable characters.

GRAPHICS: 6/10

The graphics in this game were nothing special. The whole game plays like a 2D platformer, rendered using a semi-3D engine, and also features animated cut-scenes while playing the story mode. However, by today's standards, the graphics were nothing special. The semi-3D graphics are nothing that have never been done before on previous consoles, and the animated cut-scenes, while nice to look at, aren't anything special. In other words, the graphics feels outdated by today's standards. I've read many reviews of the Wii claiming it's not the greatest system for graphics, but still, looking at some other games like Twilight Princess, I believe the graphics could have been better.

AUDIO: 9/10

Probably the best part of the game, the musics in this game are very fun to listen to. Most of them are remix of musics from various Nintendo games, and a lot of them feels very nostalgic. The sounds of the characters are fun too, and most of them you've heard before in previous games, such as the sound that plays when you discover a treasure in Zelda, or the sound of the character growing when eating a super mushroom. The only songs that were disappointing were the new ones introduced for Brawl that didn't come from other games, such as the Brawl theme song. But overall, the audio is very well done, and brings a very cool nostalgic feel to the game.

GAMEPLAY: 3/10

This is what breaks the game, in my opinion. I know many peoples actually like this game a lot, but I'm not one of them. First of all, the single-player mode, Sub-Space emissary. It plays pretty much like a standard 2D platformer, and it plays a lot like Kirby Superstar....except much slower, and much more repetitive. In fact, the main problem with the single-player is how repetitive it is. During the first stages, Primid enemies appears, and you have to fight your way through them. Then you get to the next stage, and face more Primids. And the next stage after, more Primids....and more Primids....and more again. Occasionally, you'll meet a few other enemies, including some coming from older Mario games, but overall, the enemies variety is very small, and you'll fight the same enemies over and over again. Another thing that's annoying is that from stages to stages, the character you play as keeps changing, so you never get the time to familiarize yourself with the particular gameplay of each characters, which won't help you when you start playing against other peoples. In addition to that, every characters that can be unlocked in the single-player mode can be unlocked by doing a lot of standard battles, making the single-player totally optional, and pointless.

Secondly, the characters. Every characters are different, and there's a good number of them. Some are heavier, faster, stronger, and they each have their unique moves, giving the player a good variety of characters to play with. However, the motion for all these attacks are all the same for every characters, meaning that once you learn to use the controls well, you can easily adapt your style to every characters in the game, unlike many fighting games where each characters have unique motions and styles, and provides a truly different gameplay. Some characters are really fun, like Zelda who has two mode and two different play styles, or the Pokemon Trainer which is basically three characters in one. But others, like Ike and Marth or Mario and Luigi, feels like pretty much the same character. Sure, there's some differences, but since it's all the same controls, you'll have no problems mastering Luigi once you master Mario.

So what about the standard, multi-player Brawl matches then? After all, this is what the game is all about. Well, it could have been much better. During the battle between up to 4 players and/or CPUs, items will fall on the battlefield, and allows you to do special moves, become invincible, recover health, etc... While this feature definitly makes Brawl unique, it can also break it. For example, ultimate attacks, called Final Smashes, aren't activated by filling a special gauge like most fighting games, but rather by getting an item that randomly appears on the field. So whether or not you can perform your ultimate move becomes a matter of luck, and you could have a good player lose to a beginner only because the beginner was lucky enough to get an item that is too powerful, and kills the better player without even trying. Now, you can actually disable these items. But if you disable them, you lose one of the aspects that makes Brawl stand out from the other 2D fighters.

Finally, I now come down to my biggest gripe about the gameplay, and it affects both single-player and multi-player: the slow pacing. This game is slow, and the fights lacks intensity. When you hit your enemies, you don't feel like you're giving impact. You don't feel like the battle is intense. We all know Samus's beam is fast and powerful. We all know Link can swing his sword fast and unleash powerful spin attacks. But here, Samus beam is slow, Link's slashes lacks intensity, and that's true for every characters. Everything is in slow-motion, jumping feels like you're in a low-gravity room, making the gameplay quite boring after a short while.

Overall, I think the game is very repetitive and slow. Once you master the controls, you'll be able to play every characters in a similar way, and there won't be much for you left to learn. And if you activate items, games becomes a matter of luck instead of skill.

ONLINE: 1/10

The online play is terrible. Simply, terrible. In most online games, players are in a chat-room and can create games that other peoples can see and join at will, making it simple and easy to find a game, or just chat with other players. Here, you have no chat rooms, instead having the Friends Code system, which is very annoying. You must register every persons you wish to play with, but to get actual codes, you must first obtain them by chatting on gaming forums, such as GameFAQ's Brawl board. But by the time you ask for joining a game, another player will have posted before you, meaning that you've got to learn how to type fast if you ever want to play online. And of course, you can't play if your so-called "friends" are off-line, making this system extremely inefficient, and only useful if you play with your actual real friends(which you can instead invite at your home to play).

But Nintendo had a solution: let's add an option to join any random online matches in the world! Well, sadly, I have yet to get this option to work at all. I connected my Wi-Fi properly, tested it, and it was working fine. So I try to find a game to join.....and I waited....waited....no one came. No games to join, no players joining my game. I tried it again later on, and same thing. I've never gotten this feature to work, and I tried it on different days at different hours. I was extremely disappointed, as it greatly affected the replay value of the game.

Finally, the game features a level editor where you can create your own Brawl arenas! Sounds fun, right? Well, it is, until you learn that you cannot play your levels online. So this cool, challenging level you created will forever remain a secret between you and your friends, and you'll never get to share it with anyone else.

REPLAY VALUE: 4/10

The single-player mode is extremely repetitive, and if you complete it once, I see no reasons to playing through it twice. All characters plays pretty much the same, so once you master the controls, there isn't much more to learn. You can always play with your friends, but let's face it, you don't get to play with your friends whenever you want. Online play is difficult to get to work, and you cannot use your own levels, so you'll get tired of online play pretty quickly.

FINAL SCORE: 4/10

In my opinion, this game was overhyped. I know many players likes it, probably because most players also played the previous games and got used to the gameplay, but I'm not one of them.

Buy or rent? I'd say rent it first, you might like it, especially if you can play with friends, but think twice before buying it, because you might find it very repetitive and boring after playing for a while.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 04/17/08

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