Title: Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Platform: Nintendo Wii
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Sora, Nintendo
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
This observation may be way off base, but it seems that great Nintendo Wii games come straight from Nintendo itself. Is that an incorrect assumption? Not really, and here's why: to date, Nintendo has developed and published six out of 10 of the best Nintendo Wii games. This top 10, a list based on review score averages generated by the gaming press, includes Super Mario Galaxy, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Super Paper Mario and WarioWare: Smooth Moves. All Nintendo.
Of course, hats off to Capcom and RedOctane for providing a few other tasty third-party morsels such as Resident Evil 4 and Guitar Hero III. But you can't overlook how Nintendo knows how to develop a game, and it's not too shabby when it comes to gaming consoles as well. Unfortunately for the Wii, many of the other third-party publishers do not share Nintendo's innovation and quality. Thus, as stated in a review not too long ago, you'll find the Wii library littered with sub-par titles that look and feel half-baked.
Fortunately, that's not the case with the current #2 ranked game available for the Wii: Super Smash Bros. Brawl. We're not talking about sales figures here, but rather editorial reviews such as this article scoring the game 90 percent or above. Before its release, Super Smash Bros. Brawl (SSBB) was feared as over-hyped and improbable as an AAA title and that expectations were set too high and the game would ultimately disappoint its loyal followers. After all, SSBB features a bunch of cutesie little characters like Kirby, Yoshi and Diddy Kong thrown into various areas for one big slugfest. How fun could that possibly be? What's Yoshi going to do? Swallow the opponent?
Yes, and more. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is nothing short of amazing. It's awesome. It's highly addictive and has an infinite appeal to both hard-core gamers and to casual players. It's a quality title parents can trust and a huge value for the money. It offers both single-player and multiplayer games, mixing up arena brawling with side-scrolling platform action. The game looks, plays and sounds flawless in presentation and execution. SSBB offers countless hours of gaming goodness both online and offline, offering secret unlockable characters, arenas, classic demos, music and more. It's highly possible that SSBB and Super Mario Galaxy are neck and neck in the "Best Wii Game" race, as each title offers something unique that the other game lacks. Thus, it's also highly possible to say that SSBB is the best game in the Wii library thus far, depending on your taste in games.
This should not come as a surprise to any hard-core Nintendo fan. The Super Smash Bros. franchise is well known and considered as "must-haves" to the general Nintendo fan base. Moreover, with each incarnation in the series - first on the Nintendo 64 and then on the Gamecube - it seems that Nintendo learned from the critiques of its former N64 game and applied the changes to the latter. With that said, the same rule applies here with SSBB, a step up from Melee but not necessarily a complete overhaul. Simply put, you just can't go wrong with SSBB, especially when you throw in extra controllers and a few good friends.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl lives up to the hype with strong multiplayer features, colorful characters and plenty of unlockable content.
So is this the ultimate party game? Not really; not everyone likes a good ass kicking. Nevertheless, SSBB works wonders in bringing together those few good friends around the TV. But if you're one of those gamers who lives in a cave, does nothing but play games all day (you know who you are) and friends are hard to come by because your skin is deathly white from lack of sunlight exposure and your eyes bug out of your head from a lack of sleep, the virtual SSBB can always head online via the Nintendo Wi-Fi network for some awesome multiplayer fun. While the CPU can bring on the pain, there's nothing like a little human contact locally or globally.
The Wi-Fi connection has to be the single most important upgrade over the two previous versions. There's no communication between players, so parents can breathe a sigh of relief when kids load up the online love. All you do is either choose to play with friends previously registered on your friends list, or choose to play others anonymously. Either way, it's great fun, and there are plenty of variants to play in either category such as Team Battle, Team Multi-Man Brawl, Home-Run Contest and even a spectator mode to watch the fun. Of course, it feels somewhat sterile not knowing the names of your anonymous opponents, but again it's somewhat comforting knowing you won't come up against a filthy-mouthed EatzYozNutz who has nothing to do but play SSBB all day and all night.
Beyond the Wi-Fi connection, there's so much content to cover that it's ultimately impossible to thoroughly review it all. When compared to Melee on the Gamecube, SSBB doesn't really look any different graphically. In fact, the games are similar in every aspect. The only real difference, it seems, is that SSBB features more characters, levels and bonuses. Sure, the game looks sharper and more vivid on the Wii. Backgrounds and environments feel more alive and distracting, and the splendid animation breathes new life into the infamous, iconic characters. SSBB offers a longer single-player campaign, too (called The Subspace Emissary), which is 31 stages over Melee's (roughly) 12 stages. For a title that is basically a tame "fighting" game, it's immensely huge in size, and nothing but near gaming perfection.
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