Kasey

User Score
10

Presentation - 10
Gameplay - 10
Value - 10

     Ok....let's face it.  I am absolutely hooked on Super Smash Bros. Brawl.  I will be playing this game for years.  There is so much content in this game, I cannot cover it a

ll, so let me at least start by giving you some numbers and lists of things, shall we?

First off, there are a lot of characters.  35 to be exact.  21 are available at the start of the game, and I will list them here.

Mario, Donkey Kong, Fox, Pikachu, Captain Falcon, Kirby, King Dedede, Meta Knight, Pit, the Pokemon Trainer, Wario, Bowser, Samus Aran, Lucas, Link, Zelda, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Diddy Kong, Ike, and the Ice Climbers.

There are also 14 unlockable characters, but I'm not going to spoil them for those of you who haven't finished unlocking them yet. 

There is a plethora of items to use, ranging from pokeballs to assist trophies, to the legendary Smash Ball, which give each character their own incredible power to use against all the others, called the "Final Smash attack."

The single player mode, in my opinion, is not the focal point in the game, but is still excellent.  It is lacking in depth, but considering that most fighting games don't have much of a story mode at all (especially ones with this much content), the story mode is fun in a classical way, with no real innovation to boot.

The game controls like all the other Super Smash Bros. games, and is solid and intuitive in its functionality.  The framerate, no matter which mode you are in, runs at a solid 60 frames per second, with only noticability of lag in online modes with random people who are farther away.

Speaking of which, the online mode was sort of a dissapointment.  There is no voice chat, only a meager four sayings that you use by using your taunts, gibing you very limited things you can say.  In addition, you can only use these with friends.  With random people, no communication is available at all, making this a bit disappointing.  Also, there isn't an online leaderboard anywhere, meaning that online brawls, while fun, are sort of pointless, because there isn't any record of it (even the game doesn't save records for online matches with anyone; only with friends).  The spectator mode was a nice touch, however, with the possibility of simply watching someone else's match and betting coins with other people to see who would win the match.  While a nice addition, it wasn't really enough for me to give a perfect score for online.  However, the rest of the game is absolutely flawless, to the point where my online score is almost completely ignored.  This game is complete genius.

The stages are another example of the game's genius; there are 29 to start with, and 12 unlockable ones, making a total of 41 to boast.  A surprising and fun inclusion of a stage builder keeps the replay value up really high.  Unfortunately, the Stage Builder, while fun, is shallow and doesn't really offer as many things to make your stages come to life, except the occasional cage or spike trap to throw off opponents.  There are about 30 items to use (after unlocking them all) in the stage builder.

Completionists will love this game to death; there are 544 trophies in all, most of which being collected in a coin launcher, where you shoot coins you earn while playing the game at various trophies and other targets to collect them, but there are some unlockable ones via other challenges (about 75 of them are challenge trophies).  There are also 710 stickers for you to collect, each with their various designs, and they can be attached to the bottom of each character's trophy stand to power the character up in the story mode.  These can be obtained by simply playing the game; even in multiplayer, people will randomly encounter stickers while fighting.  It will take months to complete and grab all the collectibles.

The soundtrack is, bar none, the best in any video game to date.  By far.  There is simply no comparison to the 258 completely orchestrated masterpieces of music in the game, varying from nintendo remixes to newly created tracks, to the original version of songs that may have not been heard in another video game for years.  there simply is no comparison.

Single player, unlike most fighting games, is really a lot of fun.  There is the adventure mode, which I mentioned earlier, which will take about 10 hours.  If you are a completionist like myself, it may take you much longer (it took me about 24 hours to obtain 100% in the adventure mode).  There is the event matches section, which has you battling 41 different events with their own fighting situations, along with 21 additional co-op ones, for a total of 61 events.  There is also the standard "Classic" mode, like in every other game, target smash practice, a sandbag hitting contest, a runthrough of all the bosses in the adventure mode, an unlockable All-Star mode where you have to fight every single character, and the multi-man brawls, where you must defeat certain numbers of ultralight characters like 10 or 100 in order to unlock things, as well as a 15 minute one, and an endless one that allows you to kill your enemies until they kill you, totaling the number of kills you have at the end. 

The multiplayer mode is as fleshed out and amazing as it's always been, even more so with the 35 characters, 41 stages, 49 different items, and total customization of the entire experience, including rules, damage ratios, whether to time a match or make it life-based, and more.

Overall, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is simply, in my opinion, the best game released for the Wii so far.  For me, that means it is the best game released ever.  To me, there simply is no comparison.