Going into this I feared Halo had managed to split from one of my favorite games. Thank God that turned out false.
Super Smash Brothers has always been one of my favortie games and easily my favorite fighting game. I've loved it ever since the N64 and have boughten every Nintendo console that has come out afterwards purely for this game. Unfortunately, Nintendo kept me waiting a while for this latest installment (7 YEARS !), and, like any other spitefull pr!ck, I hopped the fence to find a pasture that actually had some grass in it.
Coming back, I was afraid that I'd find myself no longer liking SSB and was almost hesitant to drop fifty bucks of my own money for it. Fortunately this game still hast it and I still like "it". While it doesn't have that ability to keep me from playing any other games it's superbly done and trumps all it's predecessors.
Good
---Superb Gameplay: With fighters, the meat of them is always in the gameplay and SSBB is no exception. It's always been known for it's fast-paced and frantic style of fighting that few other games have. With a larger list of items that pack an even larger punch, SSBB is virtually in a class of games all its own.
At first I was afraid they were going to try to implement a bunch of awkward motion sensitive controls with the Wii remote but they didn't, and thank God for that. Once contemplated for a moment, the controls are actually quite simple. Two buttons (A/B) do two types of attacks (Generic/Character specialties) and each attack has four variants that are controled by whichever direction you push the analogue stick. C is jump and Z is shield. This makes the button combos easy to learn and most people can pick the game up and be brawling fairly fleuntly in an hour or two. That's not to say that there isn't skill. If you're a serious gamer, you'll find that becoming a master at SSBB is actually quite hard. This makes the game suitable for most skill levels.
---Wide List of Characters: This game has nearly forty characters in it. Most are from the Nintendo world with the exception mainly being Snake from Metal Gear Solid. While most are highly recognizable (Mario, DK, Pikachu, etc.) a few aren't. It's easy to tell that Nintendo wanted to cover everything they could. They even put some wierd ones such as Ice Climbers, Ness, and (a personal favorite) Captain Olimar from the Pikmin games (which I also endorse). Each character is also very unique and has it's own strengths and weaknesses. Olimar for example can keep even the fastest enemy busy with the (up to) six Pikmin that he commands. He also has a variety of different smash attacks, depending on what type of Pikmin he throws. However, if you kill his Pikmin and don't give him the chance to pull more from the ground (he can pull them from anywhere) he can't smash, he can't grab, and he has no tertiary recovery jump. Things like this help keep the game fresh, as no two characters are alike and you'll want to try all of them.
---Oniline Play: The dang thing actually has Wi-Fi ! If you're finished whipping everybody in your neighborhood you can go onto the internet and play three other people in the standard brawl or you can team up for matches of 2v2. You can also keep a friends list of people you enjoyed playing with. This solved one of the main reasons SSBM got boring. With few people to play with, I eventually got tired of fight CPUs. With Wi-Fi, SSBB is sure to keep me occupied much longer.
Bad
---Controls: While the controls for the most par deserve nothing bu praise, I'm going to nit pick this one little bit. Sometimes they seem unresponsive or (mostly referring to the joy stick) they don't do what they tell you to. Often times I'll tell Olimar to fall down the the bottom platform, he'll crouch, then I'll have to tell him to uncrouch and crouch again before he falls down. Then other times he'll fall down on the first try or when I'm trying to call all my Pikmin back. Other times I say UP B and it'll do the RIGHT B move. Stuff like this really irks me and while it happens in all games, it seems to happen in the SSB games a lot more. Not to mention it's not fun when it does in a game as frantic and adrenaline pumping as SSB.
---Power Items: There seems to be much more of an emphasis on power items and the occur so frequently that it doesn't even make sense. Especially the three piece one and the final smash power up. Often times it turns into a race to whoever can get to them, and often times it's just luck as to whoever is closer; you might as well throw skill out the window. As great as this game is, it really gets drug down by this. Thank God the game gives you the option to remove them.
All in all, the game is great. If you have a Wii and don't buy it then you've just wasted $250.