Real Score: 9.9 Smash Bros Brawl is the best fighter out at this time, and is easily GOTY 2008 material.
It's been a long time coming, with 2 delays, and no release in Europe yet so far, but Super Smash Bros Brawl, for Wii is finally out, and after a full month with the game I'm ready to dish out my review.
Design:
The premise is simple. Say you and your friend get into an argument about which Nintendo character could beat the living hell out of another Nintendo character, the best way to solve this is to shut up and pop in Smash Bros (any really works) and duke it out yourselves. Super Smash Bros Brawl (From now on only called "Brawl") takes this to new heights with a whopping 35 characters (which at one time or another have appeared on a Nintendo console in the past), over 40 base stages, and more features than there are in every other fighting game COMBINED. For you solo people, there's Classic mode, which has been in every smash game, All-star mode, an un-lockable mode (no spoiler on how here), and the Subspace Emmisary mode, which is an 8 hour + adventure side scroller which will be covered later in this review. For those of you who are lonely little people who have no or very few friends around you there is the best new feature, that is WFC. Brawl is one of the most incredibly well built fighters AND the biggest piece of fan service to ever be released.
Solo:
For you solo players there's Classic mode, in which you participate in 12 fighting rounds, and two break the target rounds. It's very standard and will keep you entertained for those 'classic' cravings you may get. All-star mode pits you against all 35 characters in the game, in the order of which game came first (the characters of those games, which come 2 at a time, are random). But the big add-on here, is the new Adventure Mode: The Subspace Emmisary, which is a side scrolling platformer which is like Nintendo's version of Kingdom Hearts with all the cameos that appear in the game. The adventure, while mostly entertaining and absolutely worth playing through at least once (for the beautiful cut-scenes) does have one little disappointing aspect on it. The Great Maze (the final stage before the final boss) is a little too long and repetitive, other than that this mode is great to start your adventure in Brawl.
Multi:
This is it, the meat of the game, where everyone will spend most their time. This game just nails perfection here, tight controls, intense gameplay, and incredibly fun game options makes this game better than the last title, Melee. The WFC, which is an excellent feature, is currently not totally set yet. The games overwhelming popularity has Nintendo's servers having overloads, making getting into "with anybody" matches sometimes hard, and sometimes laggy. The one thing that I have yet to not experience is a control delay online, usually about .5 or so seconds pass between when I press a button to when my character does the move, it's easy to get used to, but makes intricate moves almost worthless at times, don't get me wrong, the online play is every bit as fun as the local multiplayer, just some improvements need to be done on it. The "friends" option uses friend codes, but instead of locked 2 minute matches, you get all the customizable options you would get in Brawl mode, which there are plenty, too many to list, just know it will take months before you've tried every combo there is.
Gameplay:
Brawl is fun, addictive, and easy to pick up. While wave dashing is longer in (mainly because wave dashing was actually a glitch in melee, and you were screwed in higher competition if you didn't know how to do it) many other intricate moves can still be done. The items are fun to get and the gameplay shifts when the Smash Ball (I call it the Smash Orb) flies overhead. A well placed Final Smash (obtained by breaking open a Smash Orb) can change the tide of the match. This game will keep people playing for YEARS to come, like melee before it.
Collectables:
What is a Smash Bros game without collectables? Even if the original title didn't have any, Melee made it a standard for future games, and Brawl is no exception. Well over 500 trophies, over 300 stickers AND over 300... yes... 300 songs to collect, makes this games re-playability great if you're a completionist who wants everything in the game. What makes trophies (and stickers) more fun to get in Brawl is the coin launcher, an arcade-ish style minigame where you shoot the coins you obtain just for playing at targets and trophies. Destroy a trophy to get it, and destroy a string of targets to either get a sticker or coin bonus. Overall collecting everything to read about the trophies and such is in itself a game.
Presentation:
This game looks gorgeous. This game is the best looking game on the Wii, and can easily hold it's own against the HD games of the PS3 and 360. While some technical things that were in Mario Galaxy are missing to Brawl (specular maps, and the like) this game has more variety in it's graphics, and only ONCE and I'm amazed, has the game dipped under 60FPS (tingle, and assist trophy gave us super spicy curry when four characters were clumped together, on a level with lots of background activity). The animations are fluid and wonderful, and the SSE Cut-scenes are amazing on all accounts.
As good as this game looks, the sound might be better, for one reason, the music. The sound effects themselves are fairly standard, but great to hear anyway. The music, with over 300 songs on the dual layer disc (the first dual layered Wii optical disc), many of which are orchestrated, or remixes of classic songs from the NES and up (even one song almost ripped from the MSX2 for the Shadow Moses stage), and all of them sound great, this is one sound track that is warranted a purchase if ever officially released.
Closing Thoughts:
If you're a fan of Nintendo, or Fighting games, or both, then this game is for you, it's nearly perfect in what it achieves, and is definitely the best fighter out at this point and time. Even if you are not a real fan of either this game is worth at least a rental to those few, everyone else, get this game, and yes, this is THE game to buy a Wii for if you haven't already.
Judgment:
Design: 10
Gameplay: 10
Solo: 9.5
Multi: 10
Collectables: 10
Presentation: 10
Overall: 9.9