=D pure gold

Sadly i don’t have a wii but i did get a chance to play this at a friends house for an entire day. I must say it definately did live up to the hype. Lots of stuff to do and practically everything can be done with more than one player. Subspace emissary is a lot longer than i expected it to be (although i didn’t find it all that fun, but it still is a nice “story” feature to have with the game). My favorite control scheme is the gamecube controller but thats probably just because its what im used to. My favorite new characters in the game are Pokemon Trainer and Metaknight they each “feel” like a brand new character and not like a rip off of a different character with a different move set (if that made any sense at all?). Overall i think its a terrific game , hands down the best game so far this year and i can’t wait till i get a wii and buy it.

Using the nunchuk and wiimote seems odd at the first but gets better after a while. I’ve only done Versus so far but I’m quite happy with it.

One thing I liked is that all of the newcomers feel great to play with, they go with the game perfectly, especially pit and diddy.

It is simply amazing.
It is the best of Smash Bros 64 + Melee. I was planning on using a wavebird, but I decided to try out the classic control instead, which I have really gotten use to. Online play was a bit laggy with some of my friends, but with others it worked nicely. My favourite characters so far seem to be Wario and R.O.B. This game has definitely lived up to the hype that I’ve had for this past year, and I know I’ll be playing it for years to come.

Incredible. It’s like everything but with much more.

I’ve played for about 3 hours, trying to figure out what to do first… Even played an on-line match with my brother over the phone.

One thing though… I’ll dust off by GameCube pad because I woke up this morning with my left thumb hurting.

So far, loving it. Picked it up at midnight Sunday morning, and spent until about 2AM playing online matches with a friend in town who had done the same. Then played some more online with a friend from college who lives across the state, later on Sunday. Both matches were lag-free and worked great.

If I have a complaint, it’s that Nintendo stubbornly refuses to let us actually communicate with the friends we’re playing with - having to talk on the cell phone / Skype while playing is a real pain when you consider how long XBox Live games have had integrated voice chat. Aside from that, though, it’s fantastic and a very easy purchase to justify. I’ll get my money’s worth and then some.

Well since I played it at a friends house, even though it was my own copy of Brawl >_>, he didn’t have any Gamecube controllers so I was doomed to use either a Wii controller by itself, or Wii + Nunchuck. I must say, I was a little confused a bit with the wii controller itself. I think it has some potential as it can easily differentiate between smash attacks and tilts but it is somewhat confusing at first. The Wii controller plus Nunchuck was the one I used for most of the time. This configuration was, I think the best out of the wii controls that I have tried out so far. Annoyingly enough, the jump button felt a little weird since I’m used to using gamecube controllers and jumping with the X or Y button, I changed the down button on the Wii controller to jump which made things much more familiar and easier to control. Even saying that, it seems a little awkward not having a B button. The missing B button makes it a little confusing to use moves cause I still couldn’t remember to use the B button on the back of the Wiimote, often causing in many deaths >_>…

But ya, I also played the Japanese version with the Gamecube controller and I definitely feel that it was much more comfortable with the Gamecube conrtoller It just feels more familiar and easier to control that way, but thats just me.

Subspace Emissary was an interesting sort of little side quest I guess you could say… though it’s still somewhat annoying at the same time. The game sort of demands you to use pretty much every single character and a nag that I have with this mode is that when you have two or more characters to choose from, both peopel can’t choose the same character. So, if you’re playing with someone else, you might have to yield to their suggestion and pick a character that you would rather not play as…. Which happens a little too often with me ;-;

Versus mode, is crazy as usual. The only really gripes I have about this is the loading times. The loading times are obnoxiously long at times, while sometimes they’re really short . It doesn’t really make any discretion and sometimes taking 20 seconds or 5 seconds to load battles. I didn’t have the time to unlock all the characters yet, but from the characters that I have played, I have enjoyed all of them

IN general, Brawl is AWESOME
So you should definately get it ^^

Oh and one thing that really pisses me off is the lack of the language change…

Pit’s Foward B is so much more annoying in the Japanese version (voice wise)…. It’s just so much fun to spam the Foward B and annoy people…

i didnt go outside yesterday.

I haven’t had a chance to play it yet even though I picked it up yesterday. Funny story actually.

I had pre-ordered at Gamestop in the Maine Mall here in South Portland months ago. Decided not to do the tourney thing and showed up on Sunday afternoon to pick up my copy. Clerk threw copy into my bag and I went home. Watched some NBA until the late evening. Finally opened up the bag and realized that there was no shrinkwrap around the game.

* Red Flags *

Snapped open the case and what do I see inside? Super Smash Bros. Melee disc.

Needless to say I was pissed. I stewed about it last night and had to wait until Gamestop opened this morning. Ducked out of this boring office job, only to see a hand-written sign on the door of Gamestop, “Our power is out. We are currently closed until further notice.”

I stood there tapping on the glass while the clerks kept pointing to the sign. Finally they came forward and asked what was the problem. I flipped open the case and asked them if they could tell me what the problem was. Sure enough they picked up on it and explained to me how they were playing Melee during the tourney and it must have gotten mixed into my case by accident. They apologized and didn’t even hassle me with filling out any return paperwork.

So right now the game is sitting in my car begging to be played as soon as I can punch out. I only hope that my Wii doesn’t have problems with it otherwise I might lose it.

I played it for a good 1.5 hrs. And it feels VERY OVERWHELMING!!! so many new characters, so little time to practice and destroy everyone. There’s so much crap to do in this game. I want to do it all, and I have enjoyed it. It does feel very melee/64-ish, which is good. So time to put at least another 100 hrs into this game with some buddies. I’ll be back to update in 3 years!

ITS AMAZING!!!

I cant put it down!

“amazing”

why is mario angry?

I told myself I was going to try and learn it with the Wiimote scheme, but after a couple minutes I wanted that old familiar feeling back, and I plugged in the Wavebird. The Wiimote scheme might be great, but I think I’m just way too comfortable with the Gamecube controller to ever give it a fair shot. The game, meanwhile, is great so far. It’s like reuniting with an old friend.

I love it.

It’s just one long love letter from Nintendo to us. The kind that gets better and better the more you play it. I played for like three hours after midnight, and yet I still had to make myself stop (the late night, plus the walk in almost-blizzard conditions to and from there were making me feel like I was gonna pass out).

The amount of content is staggering…I love even playing a Vs match online against my friends (which works *great* by the way) and finding a record with say…’Golden Sun Boss Battle Theme’ or something. And the coin collector is an awesome addition, so much better than the lottery approach used before (and far more fun). I also have to say that I like Subspace Emmisary. Maybe you can’t always use what character you want, but that’s not the point for me. It seems like more of a proper adventure, and an adventure using all these Nintendo characters is fine by me (Fox and Diddy make a suprisingly good team).

Oh yeah, also, I though I would prefer Gamecube or Classic, but actually Nunchuk/Wiimote is becoming my scheme of choice (with a few modifications of course).

I don’t mean to piddle in the punch, but the worst part about Brawl is no confirmed EU release date yet… I just started to trust Nintendo again after they become all popular with the Wii… but nope! Screwed us over on Brawl..

Still… one month away for Mario Kart Wii!! wooo… who am I kidding… I just want Brawl

Pretty muche everything I thought it wuold be, AWESOME.

The only thing I could critize is that in SUbspace Emmisary, there are g moment where you are on a platform or launcher, and it sends you off screen, and kills you and the game gives you NO indication that you have to get off it/ not use it. Suprisingly bad level design for an otherwise great game.

Amazinging! playing with the Final Smashes is much more fun than i thought it would be .

Solo play: Pretty fun. I don’t mind trying classic mode with all the characters to unlock stuff. It gets me to try other characters I’d probably never try. SSE is amazing for it’s insane story line which is as chaotic as the matches themselves.

Group play: Not much going on in here for me since my playing comes through the online.

Online: Pretty simple overall, but it works. I probably wouldn’t have gotten Brawl if it weren’t for online and the ability to just always play against another person. All games I did with friends had zero lag and only one match with a random person gave me lag.

Overall? The game is pretty amazing. Plenty of unlockables, new material, and fun to be had all around.

This game ate my life.

From the perspective of a very technical competitive Melee player:

The game is incredibly fun. All the characters, stages, the amazing soundtrack, and just about everything. But the game mechanics took a huge hit, in my opinion. A lot of little things that made Melee such a great and deep fighter are no longer there.

The game is much more balanced than Melee. That is one huge relief. But with balancing, comes sacrifice. Captain Falcon, for one, got nerfed. BADLY. I’ve heard people say this who had the Japanese version, and even I was skeptical of the new Falcon being bad, but he truly is garbage compared to the Melee version. This bothers me a lot because I main Falcon and Melee; he is one of my favorite characters in the game. Only real pet peeve thus far with transitions from Melee to Brawl.

Also! Pit and Metaknight. Huh? They went and made a really great, balanced game… and included two quite unbalanced characters. They’re not unbeatable, but they are both way too good. Great aerial game for the both of them, and both are very fast. Not sure how good they’ll be in the upcoming months, but they’ll surely be very high, if not top, of the Brawl tier list. Disappointing that they’re so good, but in the entire scheme of things they’re not that overpowered compared to the rest of the roster. Plus, this is based on 12+ hours of play, so I hope I’m wrong.

As a game… Brawl gets an A+ from me. The good outweighs the bad!

I was one of the unlucky people who had to send their Wii in. I’m blaming my cat, Emi, for this.

I really like it!

I know that people have been saying that SUb SPace isn’t really good. But I love it! My brother and me played through it in co-op and it’s really fun when you play with someone else.

I love pretty much everything about it. The only things I dislike are not really a problem. Like where is the Red Shells and why can’t I throw the screw attack?
Also each character doesn’t have its own target level and Lucario isn’t the way I thought he’d be.

And As for stuff that’s missing. Saffron city stage from 64. And Midna playable.

Overall I’m happy.

I still need to get it!

:( don’t have it yet. Went to a midnight gamestop release only to be told that I couldn’t purchase it because I didn’t preorder. Actually I had, but after the second delay I used it to buy something else. I even got the phone call from Gamestop reminding me about the release party for freaks sake! With my scheduled playtime on Sunday morning written off, and this being finals week, I’ll have to wait to the weekend.

How i miss Peach’s forward throw…

Hah only real disappointment is no announcer going SUPER SMASH BROTHERS BRAWL! at the title screen

“Pit’s Foward B is so much more annoying in the Japanese version (voice wise)…. It’s just so much fun to spam the Foward B and annoy people…” Ha! They changed that? His Japanese voice is great there, because it really makes you want to smash his face all the more.

It’s a solid game, yeah. I tried two-person Japan-America match with a friend on the American release day and the lag was unbearable. Anyone else tried such a match yet?

yeah reading all this makes me want to punch some nintendo exec in the balls, jhonny cage style, goddam living in europe sucks loch ness monster balls

can’t comment right now got to smash.

me and lucas kill EVERYTHING

They messed with my favorite char’s stats, subspace is sub-par, classic is just classic, the level editor’s bunk.
Gameplay is slower than Melee and it’s fps is pretty choppy at times.
nothing really wows me like melee did after 64.
it’s not the same and for me not as good.
I for one won’t eat this overdue fanboy garbage.
back to killer instinct.

Fantastic Fantastic Fantastic. Everything about this game is amazing. The Subspace Emissary is a lot more fun than it seems to get credit for and all of the characters control better than they did in previous installments. The only problems that i have with this game (they are just little annoyances) are the Wiimote-Nunchuck combination, which makes it near impossible to do smash attacks, and that i’m not able to play it in my brain, since there isn’t enough alone time with the TV to satisfy my thirst for Smash.

15 page paper, 2 projects, and finals are all that stand between me and brawl. Two weeks…

Someone up there mentioned that the biggest omission was the lack of Saffron City. I totally agree. In fact, one of the first things I did was try to recreate it in Stage Builder. I think I did a kind of decent job. Kind of. But there’s no way to make that door where the pokemon pop out. So sad.

I love the game, but Marth’s recovery time and reach got reduced drastically. I have to get used to him all over again. He’s a lot slower, too. I used to be able to pull off moves in a combo-like succession, but not in Brawl. At least, not yet…

@Crustifix
Well, this being 4cr, I just figured it was a matter of time till someone posted a “I dun like (insert popular game) so that makes me cool” post. Seriously? Choppy Frame rate? WHEN?! Get your wii fixed because it constantly runs at a very smooth rate.

Haha “competitive Melee player”, mains Captain Falcon. Haha.

Amazing. It seems that i am the only one that likes the wiimote setup the best. maybe because i have big hands. i dunno. great game so far, and i really like the supspace emmisianary. overall a great game, couldnt be happier with it.

@Crustifix
1/10, too obvious

Maybe it’s just my congested head making me grumpy but I have to say that Brawl elicits a huge yawn and shrug of the shoulders from me.

I played a few matches to come to the conclusion “this is it?”.

To me, this is nothing more than Melee 1.5. I suppose, with the stellar reviews the game was getting, I expected something more. Instead I feel like I’m playing an expansion pack to Melee.

I usually don’t go with the “Nintendo endlessly rehashes the same boring game concepts” argument but this one is really making me agree with that - I feel a bit ripped off. At least, with trade-ins, it only cost me $18 bucks.

The game is awesome but since everyone else is talking about how awesome it is I’m going to give the few complaints I have.

The majority of the melee stages they decided to put in were crap, and they left out the good ones. For example, Termina: Great Bay. That was my favorite stage in Melee (if only for the background =P) and I’m going to miss it, majorly. Hyrule Temple, or Castle, or whatever the 64 thing was, should’ve made it to Brawl, as well as Saffron City, and a lot of the stages should’ve been more unique instead of these annoying basic levels. Animal Crossing stage, for example, is great, but it could’ve been more than two floating platforms.

Roy should’ve been left in and decloned like the other clone characters. He deserved that much, even though I hated him because my little brother always spammed his side b. Toon Link shouldn’t be in at all. Waste of a space. They could’ve put in a more unique Zelda character (Midna). Krystal should’ve also been in as well as Lyndis for Fire Emblem, and there should’ve been some more third parties (Megaman, more Sonic characters), but I guess we can’t ask for that much considering it’s the first game to include them. I really felt there should’ve been 50 characters and more stages. Also, Ganondorf is still a Falcon clone. Why. Why. Why.

The new modes, Stage Builder and that mode where you can arrange trophies, are very good and add a lot to the game, but both have room for improvement. The latter should allow you to place more than four trophies at a time and give you more room and overall more control. The former should have more than three backgrounds and a few more objects for placement, and the fact that you can’t place some objects next to each other is very annoying. The game overall also seemed far too easy. I’m definitely not a competitive player, but you unlock stuff faster than you can blink. I was waiting for it to say “Congratulations, you unlocked _____, good job hitting the on button.” I’m very upset that they seemed to leave out Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask from pretty much everything (including trophies) and the new Zelda stage additions were pathetic. Zelda deserves more rep, and it definitely deserves more than a ship and a bridge. They could’ve chosen something much more iconic, and where is my Lost Woods stage?

On a few good notes that nobody else has seemed to mention yet, the game feels and plays much better than Melee in my opinion, and I love the new Link. The soundtrack is absolutely amazing, I LOVE stage builder (despite its faults), the Subspace Emissary is a huge improvement over Adventure mode, though the story moves a little too fast for my taste, and Coin Launcher is definitely better than the Lottery.

Overall, it’s a great game, but it’s definitely not perfect, as everyone seems to want to imply.

I just picked it up last night, so I’ve only gotten about an hour in with it. I made the mistake of playing Melee a bit the day before just long enough to remember how I played. Unfortunately everything I remembered I get to unteach myself and relearn for Brawl. I generally play as Link in any of them, but despite his similarities to his Melee self the timing on his attacks are all different, and I’m having trouble adjusting. Gives me good reason to focus on trying some new characters. I tried Ike, but he didn’t really click with me. I’m thinking Lucas next.

I only to the second area in Subspace, but then I forgot to save. I think I’ll start again with some co-op.

The only major problem I ran into was the online lag. I only did two matches, but the first of the two was practically unplayable. Love spectator mode though, made quite a few coins betting on it so far. I’ll be trying some online with friends later tonight, I like the idea around here of using phones or such for pseudo voice chat. Heres hoping that Nintendo will figure out this whole internet deal by the next console.

I was disappointed by the stage selection, but I shouldn’t complain before unlocking them all. I expected a better selection from the previous games, but I suppose new stages are best. Just wondering, any Big Blue this time along? I loved that stage.

P.S. WHY IS EARTHBOUND NOT IN THE MASTERPIECES?!

I was there for midnight launch and a tournament @ Gamestop- so much fun with friends! Unfortunately, school got in the way of staying up ridiculously late with it.

I agree that subspace is sub-par, but I’m forcing my way through it to unlock all of the characters I don’t have (sonic, wolf, jigglypuff, toon link). Online play is great fun, but lag gets in the way occasionally.

I also agree that pit, when played well, is overpowered, but of course I play as him a lot so no complaints. My new favorite characters are all newcomers- Dedede is lots of fun, Snake takes some getting used to but the mines are fun to trick people with. Lucario is very enjoyably, and after ~7 years of playing with Marth/Roy in Melee, having a counter there is very comforting.

Overall, AWESOME.

For perspective I’ve only played for about 4-5 hours. My thoughts:
-Loading times are quite variable, I read that it’s a dual layered disk, I wonder if they made an effort to put related content on the same layer.
-Adventure mode plays like a mix between kirby-style platforming and *GASP* a brawler.
-The soundtrack is fantastic. Perhaps a bit too intense, not as lighthearted as other soundtracks.
-Adventure mode is a step above Melee’s, but the stages are kind of bland. I really liked when they had you go through the Mushroom Kingdom and what not in melee, they just didn’t do it enough. They should have set it up like Kingdom Hearts, with different planets/galaxies. Alas.
-I love the coin minigame.
-WHY ARE THERE NO N64 STAGES? What gives? There are some great stages that have gone unused. I suppose they want us to buy Smash Bros. when comes out on Virtual Console (shouldn’t that be in the masterpieces? come to think of it?)
-Classic mode has been hurt greatly: they got rid of the bonus levels, except target test. And target test was made lazily, there are only 5 different levels. Its no longer a clever skills test for each character. This was one of my favorite parts of single player.

soooooo amazing. but I hate online. what’s the point if you don’t know who you are playing and what their rank is. I want to know where I rank as well.

@Mad-ladder

Uhhhhh maybe to just have fun?

best. game. ever.

i hate you all
the UK has to wait for ages until brawl comes out….
please, someone tell me, how import-worthy is it?

I absoulty love this game….very little i dont like…just the coin launcher

I’ve played the N64 version, but never Melee, and I never owned a Gamecube. The controls were OK for me, but not great. I’m not used to the (original wired) Gamecube controller, and the Z button just feels like it’s too small and out of the way to be useful. Th N64 version still controls best for me. The controls just felt *right*. Wiimote and Nunchuck controls worked decently, but they still felt a little weird. Occasionally, the controls also felt unresponsive, like having double jumps not registering (although that could just be my misunderstanding game mechanics or something).

Graphically, the game looks good. No complaints there. Sound’s good too.

The stages are pretty good, but the quality varies greatly. Some of the levels felt very gimmicky and changed too quickly with too big of an impact for my tastes. I’m also disappointed that they left out some very good N64 stages (Hyrule Castle). At times, the levels were too big and the screen would zoom out too much to see the characters clearly in 3-4 man brawls if one or more persons stayed away from the main fight. Some of the stage backgrounds were also too cluttered and made it difficult to see the characters. New Pork City is the worst offender, as its background is very detailed and the level is very big. It’s difficult to fight with all the visual distraction at max zoom.

The combat felt pretty balanced. As a non-hardcore Smash player, there weren’t any character’s that stood out as being overpowered. Some character’s were very annoying though, namely Pikachu and his ranged attack being able to hit people hanging on ledges. The quality of final smashes varies greatly. Some, like the Landmaster and Pikachu’s Volt Tackle are very strong in the right hands. Others, like Marth’s, aren’t very good and are easily dodged. Captain Falcon’s final smash is also annoying, as it’s not obvious how to dodge it.

The items in this game felt quite gimmicky. I think the game simply added too many 1-hit kill weapons, and high damage weaoibs. Not only do you have the hammer, but you also have the dragoon, final smashes, and all the bombs. Collecting the three pieces of the Dragoon created a nice dynamic, as it required quite a lot of work and skill to use correctly, but it was still a 1-hit kill 99% of the time, which felt a bit unbalancing. The final smashes, while eye-pleasing, were very common (I’ve had 5 minute matches where the item’s appeared 3 or 4 times), and could drastically change the flow of the game.

i hate you all!!
The Uk has to wait ages for Brawl!
someone, please tell me, is it import worthy?!?!

i hate you all!!
The Uk has to wait ages for Brawl!
someone, please tell me, is it import worthy?!?!

i hate you all!!
The Uk has to wait ages for Brawl!
someone, please tell me, is it import worthy?!?!

Gamecube controller!!

Props to Sight - YES, WHY IS EARTHBOUND NOT IN THE US VERSION?

I’ve played it and enjoyed it very much. but i think the series has reached the point all fighters seem to where the biggest changes only matter to the serious players. it’s a great game no doubt, but as a pretty casual smash player I really wasn’t terribly impressed. I’ve felt that way about pretty much every fighting game that’s gotten this many sequels without any serious changes in the formula (such as SF3).

Err that was worded badly, i meant Street Fighter 3 as a game that did have significant changes.

I may have to retract my earlier statement - Brawl has started to hook me to the point that I’m doing the “just one more match” thing.

I started getting more into it because I wanted to unlock the various characters and stages. I think this was what ended up getting me so engrossed in Melee. Although, I have to admit, to me, the controls still feel a bit sluggish. Maybe I’m just not use to it. I like my controls tight and they don’t seem to be in the game.

But the Subspace emissary is pretty horrible so far.

My, didn’t sleep for the first three days when I got it.

This is a fantastic game, of course. But, you know, having been a hardcore melee player, this game is far too forgiving and easy. And despite the terrible single-player, it’s still wonderfully gorgeous and fun.

Ive been playing the game all week.
Its fun stuff.
Though theres a few rough edges here and there.
Limited map maker, low res snaps, three minute replay limit, lack of online communications, lack of working online play outside of friend codes.
Its mostly nit picking though.
The game is pretty great offline as a third installment to the series, but the new features are just a tad rough, though never the less fun.
Also timed stock matchs are mysterously gone O-o

Sonic is also a fun and challenging charecter to play as.

My preferd control setup is Classic controller with tap jumped turned off.
B= Jump, A= grab, Y= attack, X=special.
The rest are defualt setup.
Its very SNES like but I get alot more control over my up attacks that way.
Also I really wish I could use the D-pad instead on the classic controller :/

Ike is sick nasty, Sonic is so much fun to play and changing from zero suit samus to the chozo suit is easily the most exciting aspect of her character.

forgot to mention how awesome Lucas is. no need to ever play as Ness.