Super Smash Lamers Melee - An insult to fighting games
In the audio department, the sounds do their job. Everyone has their own voice sounds and the theme music is great. I find myself humming the tunes of Termina or Mute City often.
Like RE4, SSBM falters on its story. And yes, I do know nearly every fighter has a cheesy story and this is no exception. Nintendo character want to beat each other up? Not exactly Shakespeare here.
Here comes the large part on why I think SSBM does not work. First of all, the singleplayer is absolutely lacking. It might be fun to go on adventure mode the first five times because it's all new or nostalgic, but after doing it ten times, it feels like a chore, because you only have so many moves to work with. It lacks the depth other fighters have such as high-low attacks, power meters, etc. I'm sure people will throw me techniques such as wave dashing, but just to be fair, you have timing in other games such as guard impacting in Soul Calibur. At least that isn't some hidden skill that gives yo a massive advantage over those who don't use it.
The AI, where do I begin. Even on level 9 computers, you can easily hang out on the edges of levels and surely enough the bots will jump off to their doom. You can google these videos if you want as well. On the other hand, you have cruel melee, where the enemy beats you due to numbers, in order to make up for the pathetic AI.
So what could be the last problem after a pale singleplayer and stupid AI? This is problem that has been lurking in SSB as well - balance. When you pit Donkey Kong against Shiek, it's obvious who will win. When you pit Fox against Bowser, again you already know who will win. There is no doubt, this is the only fighting game I've played that has terrible balance.
Unlockables? You mean new characters? A large majority of them are clones. These are nearly the same copies of other characters with some slight changes. Dr. Mario? Plays like Mario, which also plays like Luigi. Ganondorf? He's like a slower, but stronger Falcon. Please get some originality Nintendo. It's starting to remind me of how badly the Mario Party Series get milked.
Another problem I had was with multiplayer, or more specifically, wave dashing. Chances are, your friends who don't have SSBM won't know how to execute this important technique. It's like knowing someone has aim-bot in CS or maphack in Starcraft, but you can't do anything about it. It's only when you DON'T use it when things are equal. Is it really fair to know the only reason you can win is because your opponent LETS you by not using wavedash?
One thing I do like about SSBM is that it has an automatic handicap system where it punishes the good players and helps the weak. A problem with this is that the characters are STILL imbalanced and that the handicap shows exactly how much you suck or own at this game. It would have been better to keep the handicap hidden, but here's something that I praise Nintendo for.
In total, while the graphics were good and the soundtrack was catchy, the plot is barely interesting and the gameplay suffers from a bland singleplayer, terrible AI and most importantly, unbalanced characters. Consider yourself warned.