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Wii Review by Tom Bramwell
Page 1
Doing so, and double-jumping, are two basic but important actions, and you can also block, grab, attack and execute specials once you've found your way around the controls. Specials are usually derived from familiar traits, so Mario's uppercut bounces an enemy for coins, Link can throw bombs and shoot arrows, Pikachu electrocutes and Yoshi can throw eggs. New characters are the same - Pit from Kid Icarus can take off and flap around, for instance, and the Pokémon Trainer can switch between a trio of Pokémon - Charizard, Ivysaur and Squirtle. Olimar is particularly eye-catching, using an army of pikmin to engage.
Also prevalent in combat are power-ups, including the SNES Superscope, which can be fired like a gun, and more functional alternatives like baseball bats and health tomatoes. Others allow you to breathe fire, swing laser-swords, or run around madly with a hammer, and then there are assist-trophies that reinforce you with other non-playable characters like Tingle. Most potentially divisive of the new ones is the Smash Ball, which is basically a finishing move, called a Final Smash, wrapped up in a floating rainbow bubble. Everybody makes for this when it appears, and for good reason. Fox McCloud turns into a Landmaster tank and starts steamrollering everyone, Bowser turns into Giga Bowser, and Pikachu evolves into a floating ball of electric energy. Olimar's Final Smash is my favourite, and hence I won't spoil.
All of this Nintendonanism takes place on stages just as frequently engineered to compliment their source material: there's a WarioWare level where your surroundings rotate through configurations derived from the original game's short, sharp bursts of quirky and diverse gameplay; a PictoChat level where the platforms beneath your feet are ever-changing illustrations (oddly not a nest of penises); a volcanic Metroid level where you have to hide in shelters that pop up on random platforms so an occasional screen-filling wave of lava doesn't murder you; an F-Zero racetrack where you get knocked around by hovercars; and many others, including a few from the Cube Smash Bros. game, Melee.
Not exactly an unusual sight, this sort of thing.
Moving platforms and stage-specific gimmicks are fewer than they were there, but initially the complexity and dynamism of all this still adds to that feeling of disorientation, especially for newcomers. But just as the strengths of the fight mechanics emerge after an hour of play, so like a good racing game you improve in your response to each stage as you learn its behaviour. This is particularly important in a game where keeping the ground beneath your feet is second only to separating the other players from the ground beneath theirs.
Balance is pretty much everything, and for the developers, too. Watching Ike perform an uppercut, release his sword, leap into the air and then grab it to slam back down into his still-dazed enemy's head surely has little place in a game where Lucas responds by directing a lightning ball around the level with the analogue stick, as Princess Peach floats by overhead and Meta Knight buzzes around, cute as a button, flapping his cape and trying to catch people in it. Except somehow it all fits. It's not the perfect blend, but it works consistently enough to produce fair battles in most cases. Indeed, if there's a flaw it's perhaps that there's a bit of uniformity among certain characters, although not many. Even Final Smashes are double-edged - Fox's Landmaster may be powerful, but it's also rather difficult to save if it tumbles off the edge, forcing caution, and other moves, like Meta Knight's, are only effective if they're used in specific ways.
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18 March, 2008 [31]
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I imported this and got the amazingly-useful-sounding codejunkies Freeloader, which doesn't work for me (and a few others) despite having a new Wii and the same firmware and whatelse as others it does work for, so don't let that put you off. Just don't order from codejunkies directly would be my advice, abysmal service in my experience, and the returns process is taking a....... long..... time....
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Zsinj, have you tried booting your freeloader into alternative boot mode? That's where you stick it in once, it does the funny screen wipe thing twice, then you eject it and put it back in for another two screen wipes, then try smash bros?
Worth a try. As for Brawl - It's got a few minor annoyances but other than that, it gets a 10 from me! |
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monkie_king
27/03/08 @ 14:36
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"What? A mario game featuring mario?"
What? A retarded commenter making a retarded comment? |
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I'm still not sure about this one. I mean, I love the Nintendo characters and all that; I just don't really like playing beat 'em ups that much. Soul Calibur II was the last one I bought and I pretty much went through the story mode once and haven't played it since.
If I'm playing multi-player I'm far, far more likely to get out Wii Sports or (soon) Mario Kart. In a way, it's mainly the fact this has gone down so spectacularly well in the US and Japan that has me interested. |
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When will somebody make a brawl style game with a roster of non Nintendo characters.
The headline characters are great, but a lot of the lesser ones feel like they are scraping the barrel. I would love to see a truely multiformat Brawl style game with charcters from all of Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Namco, Capcom, Konami, Sega ect. i know it will never happen, but heres to dreaming |
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gingerlink
27/03/08 @ 14:49
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@zsinj
I had the same problem, but listen to viper_h, because that worked for me, it gives the alternative method in the manual, I tried it (why would it make a difference inserting it twice I thought), then it worked fine. Well, when I say fine, I mean in black and white until I routed it through my DVD recorder to sort out the signal incompatability... Didn't have any control difficulties, especially if you edit it a bit for yourself (stupid tap jump that's been annoying me since melee), also, I have no idea what they mean about inconsistencies in the cutscenes... @myiagros Give is a few more years and there might be another smash bros. like that, just without the top sony and microsoft characters, unless they're really desperate. |
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MoGamer2006
27/03/08 @ 14:54
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@Rash'
I think you should man up and grow a pair. If 'your girl' and family find your hobby so juvenile (and you're so insecure that you let their comments affect you) then I doubt it matters whether your playing Mario or a space marine - to them, either way you're still 'playing games' (with all the juvenile connotations those words have). |
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GingerNathan
27/03/08 @ 15:02
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Where's the Wii's Pro Evo review?, the game's out tomorrow. Reviewing that is far more important then the dateless Brawl, regardless how good it is.
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thedaveeyres
27/03/08 @ 15:04
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Is this review written in English?
What, or indeed who, the hell is Subspace Emissary? |
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rhubarbandcustard
27/03/08 @ 15:06
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In 2008 a 2D beat-em-up deserves no more than a 3 out of 10. Are people seriously going to spend Ł30 on this?!
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Muddtallica
27/03/08 @ 15:14
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Rash': Whilst I wouldn't take MoGamer2006's slightly harsh tone, I think he's right; exactly which games do you have in mind as somehow looking more legitimate to non-gamers? Only in my experience, a person who fundamentally disapproves of videogame culture will perceive a testosterone-soaked alien-killing shooter or a tech-head racer as being every bit as sad and geeky as a cartoon platformer, just in a different way. Unless you're willing to forgo any and all "gamers' games" and stick exclusively to outsider-friendly fare like Wii Sports and Lost: The Videogame, then you should probably start forgetting what other people think and just buy games that actually interest you for their content, rather than their image.
Anyways, good read, that review. I'm unlikely to bother waiting much longer for the UK release, so I might just bite the bullet, buy the Freeloader and import the US version, which I will then play and play forever, in the same way I've been playing Melee since I bought it with my Cube seven years ago. Best value-for-money series of games ever. |
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thedaveeyres
27/03/08 @ 15:17
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I've re-read the review and vast swathes of it still make little sense. Maybe it's because I've never played a SSB game before but that's no excuse for really poor writing. :(
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