"Super Smash Brothers Melee is a rock-solid game
Pros:
- Huge nostalgia factor
- Looks, sounds, and moves great
- Deceptively simple
- Lots of challenges to fight through
- Characters to unlock
Cons:
- Variety of arenas isn’t very good
- Sometimes the panned out camera turns your character into an ant
Normally any game that lets me beat up Pikachu would get a perfect score. Pokemon, as a franchise, grates on my nerves; so being able to smack Pikachu back to where ever he came from is good for my psychological well being. The only reason Super Smash Brothers Melee doesn’t achieve gaming nirvana is for two reasons: the variety of arenas isn’t extensive and sometimes the camera pans so far out it reduces your character to the size of an ant. Otherwise, you’re looking at great game – go out and buy it, now.
For the most part, Melee can be summarized as: A fighting game starring cute, cuddly Nintendo characters beating the holy-hell out of each other – even ganging up on each other. The roster of available fighters is good, each with their own familiar attributes: Mario is well rounded and can shoot bouncing fireballs; Bowser’s a hulking mass of spikes and moves slowly; Link can make chopped liver of just about anything; and Donkey Kong resembles a simian wrestler with a wicked windmill punch. The initial roster of characters is good and there unlockable characters to access.
There are two main modes of play: the traditional tournament ladder and adventure mode. (There are also other distractions such as the Challenge mode where you fight through a single scenario such as fighting Pikachu in the Pokemon arena). Tournament mode tasks you with fighting against any number of opponents to carry on and reach the final arena. This is a fine mode but more fun – especially for the single-player players – is the adventure mode, which is practically a walk down memory lane. Adventure mode puts you in classic Nintendo environments from the worlds of Mario, Zelda, and even F-Zero. Basically, you hop through a section then engage in mortal combat and carry on to the next section. Some sections you don’t even have to fight – at the start of the F-Zero stage all you have to do is dodge the cars. But fighting still makes up 80% of adventure mode.