Words: TnM

Pix: Courtesy of Nintendo

After months of waiting, Nintendo have finally unleashed Super Smash Bros Brawl in Europe. Time to see of it was worth the wait.

For anyone unfamiliar with the series, Smash Brothers is a beat-em-up with a difference. To score KO’s, you have to launch your opponent off the top, bottom or sides of the screen. Instead of a health bar, each character has a percentage score, which gets higher and higher as they take damage. The higher the percentage, the further the character will fly when hit.  Oh, and you will be fighting the likes of Pikachu, Donkey Kong and Princess Peach.

The controls you use to dish out the damage are simple on the surface, but spend some time to dig a little deeper and there is a massive amount of strategy and complexity to take advantage of. You essentially have two buttons and a control stick to attack with. You can play with the Wii remote (held on it’s side like a NES pad), a Wii remote with a nunchuck, a classic controller, or a GameCube pad, the favourite of most players. The A button is your standard attack, which is combined with the control stick to attack in any direction. The B button with the control stick executes your four special attacks, which are (more or less) exclusive to each character.  For example, B on its own with Mario shoots fireballs, while with Link you can hold it to charge an arrow, or use it with Kirby to suck in your enemies to steal their attacks. As well as the attack buttons, you can press Y (or up on the control stick) to jump, R to shield and Z to grab enemies. To launch your opponents off the screen you can hit them with a smash attack by slamming A and the control stick together. While at first glance it may look like a button bashing game, it takes time to master every characters various moves and exploit the weaknesses in others.

Speaking of characters, this game is overflowing with them. The old Nintendo favourites from the Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong series return, along with new faces like Wario, Meta Knight from the Kirby series and Pokémon Trainer.  Also, for the first time, two non-Nintendo characters join in the shape of Snake (of Metal Gear Solid fame) and Sonic. In all there are thirty five characters, although some are little more than clones.  For example, from Lylat Wars are Fox, Falco and Wolf, but they all play the same, other than a slight difference in things like their gun’s fire rate and their jump height. There is still plenty of variation overall though and everyone will find a character that suits the way they play.

To aid you in battle are numerous weapons and items that range from guns and swords to a baseball bat for launching foes and food to replenish health. The two biggest additions to this game are Assist Trophies and Smash Balls. The Assist Trophy unleashes a random character to attack your foes. These include Lakitu from Mario who drops spiny shells on your enemies, Shadow The Hedgehog who unleashes a massive fiery attack, and a Nintendog that obscures part of the screen. Smash Balls contain massive special moves that can turn the tide of a battle. When they appear they float around the screen at random, while you and your enemies attack them to try to break them open. Once you do you press B to unleash a spectacular attack that almost always results in a KO. Some are more powerful than others, but this usually balances with the overall strength of the character.

Adding to the chaos are the stages that you fight in. Themed around all the games the characters come from, the stages are more than just places to fight.  You will find yourself dodging laser fire, climbing waterfalls and hiding from waves of lava, while still trying to score KOs from your opponents.

While predominantly a multiplayer title, this version of the game has a far more robust single player mode than its predecessor.  In the oddly titled ‘Subspace Emissary’, you battle through numerous platform style levels fighting an assortment of enemies and bosses.  While it is a fun diversion from the standard fights of the other game modes, it seems strange that Nintendo felt the need to create a whole new selection of bad guys who are mostly forgettable, when they have such an extensive back catalogue of games to choose from. After all, this game is all about the meeting of franchises, but it all seems a bit odd when you are fighting against obscure purple robots in a Metroid themed level with Pokémon music playing.

The game also features a classic mode where you battle characters in sequence like beat-em-ups of old, a number of event matches that drop you in a certain situation with specific objectives, plus some mini games thrown in for good measure, many of which you can play in co-op two player.

When you find yourself invincible to the efforts of the computer controlled players, you can take the game online to get your ass kicked all over again.  You have the choice of playing against friends or random people around the world, both of which work intermittently. The problem is, Nintendo have no central servers for the game, instead having the Wiis talk to each other over a peer to peer network.  So if you are in a four player game and one person has a bad internet connection or even a crappy router, the game will slow down for everyone else in the match.  Luckily, me and Mav are both blessed with decent connections so we were able to have a good few matches online with pretty satisfying results. But as soon as you try to play against random people around the world, you are entering a minefield of slowdown. Also, with Nintendo constantly protecting us from lonely men with ulterior motives, we can’t speak to people we are playing against or even see their names. You can, however, assign short text messages to your taunts, but these too are censored for anything even mildly offensive. Me and Mav eventually turned to Skype to fulfil our trash talking needs.

Offline, though, Smash Bros is a fantastic game. Multiplayer gaming doesn’t get any better than this, and there is even a decent single player campaign that will take you over eight hours to get through. If you are a Nintendo fan in any way, then don’t hesitate to get this game. There are literally hundreds of references to games from Nintendo’s history, not to mention demos of the original games the characters come from. Grab some friends, some alcoholic beverages of your choice and a copy of Smash Brothers and you can’t go wrong.

5 out of 5

-     Sonic vs Mario
-     Hit Kirby for home-runs
-     Shoot Pikachu in the face
-     Fight inside a DS
-     Kick ass with Princess Peach