Matrixbeast said:
Broady Brio said:
Two words.
Cruel. Brawl.
Could ANYONE do that!?
I did...
As Jigglypuff...
And kinda just exploited their AI...
Yep. Jiggly was one of my main characters, so racking up 17 cruel kills with her Rest wasn't too hard. (I am impressed with by 7 for Ness, though). That being said, there are people who live for Cruel melee, getting hundreds of kills.
I have to be honest, I don't understand what Sakurai is talking about here by "hard." The SSB series is primarily about versus play, where it's the skill of your friends that you have to beat - so the only neutral difficulty everyone has to overcome is learning the controls. And SSB does a wonderful job of making the controls very simple (and standardized - what happens with a given button-direction input is different, but those inputs are the same for every character), one of the reasons why SSB and SSBM are among my favourite games ever, and why in comparison I will never really get into 'normal' fighting games. More than anything, SSB makes the game less about having to memorize move lists, and instead puts the focus on movement (particularly with the variety of stages, but simply having double-jumping and multiple aerials does this) and the timing of moves.
Timing. Yes, very important in each of the games, because each has a very different rate of play. The original is extremely lag-based: that is, almost every move has a lot of lag after it that allows your opponents to exploit your attack and kick your butt. Probably the most obvious place this comes in to play are the treacherous grab-vs-roll battles that arise when both or all of you are at high percentages. (Ever been in a 4p battle with everyone at 120% and one life? Holy crap, that was tense.)
SSBM is, in contrast, quite fast-paced, and frequently depends on taking in what your opponents are doing and responding fast enough. However, it's also a bit more lenient than the original in this regard, particularly since throws were tuned
way down in power. I think a lot of the 'technicality' people talk about when referring to melee originates from the fast pace of the game.
(Of course, wave-dashing constitutes another huge part of it, but wave-dashing should have never made it into the final game and should have been killed when the developers found it. The broken play base and bad rap it has created is simply shocking, particularly since the game is plenty deep without it. I say this as someone who doesn't use it but has played against several who have (and done respectably, I should say - one friend commented that I seemed to unconsciously play as characters who wouldn't benefit much from wave-dashing anyway). Wave-dashing might have contributed to the longevity of the game, but (since I refuse to learn it) I know for a fact that I would still be playing it today (like I still do) regardless of the existence of wave-dashing. Hell, without it, tournaments might not be the farce of the game that they are (relying so astoundingly on one glitch), and I might even have cared to play in those.)
Perhaps because Melee's play speed is just right for me, Brawl feels like a freakin' glacier. Coupled with gimmicky stages (which seemed to take the worst elements of the Melee stages), Final Smashes (which spit balance right in the face, with some of them ridiculously powerful, others terribad), and the incompetent way of killing wave-dashing (seriously, you killed directional air dodges? like, one of the best mechanics in the previous game? you couldn't think of anything else?), Brawl is not the game for me. Of course, I don't really care, because as stated I continue to play Melee to this day, and I will for many years to come.
tl;dr: Smash Bros was better than all other fighting games ever, Melee's 'technicality' is hyperbolized, and I don't like Brawl. (So, if Sakurai is basically saying that he's not going to take design lessons from Melee anymore, then that's fine - it just means I very likely won't be interested in any future Smash Bros games. I've got my SSB and SSBM and intend to play them.)
(Now, if Sakurai is saying that the player-vs-computer portion of the game is bad, well then
no shit. It's because computer players in Smash Bros have never been played like any actual players do, regardless of difficulty. But this is most noticeable at the higher difficulties, where the computers are simply cheating bastards - they still walk places and can't see items (except when that item is off-screen, of course), yet have the miraculous ability to shield reflect and cancel everything.)
