Zero Punctuation: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

[Titanium Dragon]

You completely missed the purpose of Zero Punctuation. See, Yatzee fancy himself a game designer, and he review games from that point of view, unlike more "serious" review sites who review it from the point of view of getting web pages hit to drive the ad money.

No I didn't. I, too, fancy myself a game designer, and yes, he does from time to time actually address real design concerns, and he can (and does!) shine at that. But that isn't really why I or most people watch these videos.

Some of the things he pointed out about the game are true - a party game should not require you to spend hours unlocking characters like Sonic and Snake (or really, anyone) because that is antitheitical to the purpose of a party game. The camera zoom is another worthy issue to address.

However, if you're going to address a game from a design standpoint you also have to look for what it hit, and he often misses things which games DO hit. I think a large part of the popularity of SSB and Halo is their highly intuitive interfaces; you can pick up a controller and within 10 minutes you know what you do to do what, with no instruction manual necessary. In fact, I have always seen those as the greatest strengths of those series and why they are so popular, and I think on a deep level that IS why they're more popular than the standard fighting games/FPS games.

Moreover, SSBB (and its predecessors) have this nice property where it is difficult to become "that guy" accidentally; simply playing the single player will make you a bit better, but not so much better that you constantly crush your friends who only play it on weekends. What makes you better at SSB games is "gainful practice", which mostly constists of either A) playing against people better than you and really a lot of B) experimenting with what works and doesn't, then learning how to do what does work perfectly. It takes actual effort to become that guy, and that is another strength of the game - if playing it for ten hours in solo mode to unlock Sonic is necessary, then at least once you unlock Sonic you and your friends should still be able to play on relatively equal footing, and this game succeeds at that.

Saying such games are random button mashers is simply wrong - they aren't. But SSB is meant to be a party game, which means that among random people what you do should be fairly obvious, intuitive, and shouldn't bother everyone else, and no obvious strategy should clearly overshadow all others at the casual level that 99% of people who play SSB play it at and just because you've happened to play it twice as much as the next guy shouldn't make it so that you can't play it with them.

 

[FuckYouDad]

[/quote]That would be because he is. Every one of his points can be pointed out as just plain wrong, and we have no idea how he got them.[/quote]

Wait what? He got this game, brought over a few buddies to try it, was not impressed and this means he is wrong? I read your points, but they are all pretty subjective, except for number 3, which is pretty much the point of "having to prepare the game before". I'm not saying you're not entitled to your opinion, but do you have to talk about it like some objective truth he is stupid for not understanding?

 

[TheECP]

Hehe, as funny as this review was and as true as it is, it's still one of the best party games in existence. It's pretty fun.

Too bad I don't own a wii.

 

[GyroCaptain]

The shitstorm is still going on, I see. Personally, I like Brawl, but claiming it's the be-all and end-all of games or saying that it's revolutionary enough to justify moving consoles on a massive scale seems counterproductive. It's great, but aside from some balancing, character lists, reskinning, rebalance... it's still just a prettier SSBM. Given the choice between buying a Wii, classic controller, and SSBB or hunting around for a gamecube and SSBM, I'd have to go for the cheap bastard option because not enough has changed and mooching off friends' copies is enough to keep from mandating your own. I disagreed with quite a few of Yahtzee's remarks, but fighting games ARE fiddly, SSBB IS afflicted somewhat with "that guy"ism, the screen IS too busy, and the characters ARE small. These are all valid points, even if these things don't diminish the fun much for most.

 

[Gutterpunk]

1. the whole point is its meant to be chaotic. It shakes up the usual fighting genre by making you aware of your surrounding, instead of it just being something pretty for you to ignore while you mash A.

The original SSB did that. Yaztee's qualm is that this version doesn't do it better or bring anything new to the table. And he is right... heck, the game is even more fun with a Gamecube controller, if thats not an indication of rehashing old ideas.

2. If you've ever seen someone playing Street Fighter, you will know that every fighter ever eventually boils down to mash random buttons. What? Did you want them to come out with the Wii punching bag, so your own strength is added to the characters?

See, right there your ignorance is showing. Look at the history of Street Fighter, with all the tweak and version available for the different incarnation of the game just because Capcom felt that some counter were not timed correctly or some combo didn't fit. I'm not a SF fanboy , but saying that there is no more technique in SF than in SSBB is one stupid assertion.

3. There's the lazy-ass solution for unlocking characters too. It involves turning the game on, starting a no-limits brawl then going to bed. Plus, you can save all of your character info to your controller and bring it to a mates place.

You are criticizing his opinion for the exact same reason that he has that opinion. If the coder made it so easy to unlock shit, why not just unlock it from the start? That was the point of his comment, but you missed it completely.

Nintendo has got to stop thinking that they can single handily stop video game rentals (something they complained over and over again) just by stuffing locked content in every games.

4. The game even takes time out of its awesome content to tell you more about the characters, in case the plot has thrown you - they are called the trophies.

Once again that wasn't his point. He was saying that having popular characters on which you base a large part of your marketing money and then locking them is a ridiculous concept. I'm sure that Yatzee knows wtf is Mother 3, but the non-SSBM fanboy friends he played with didn't, and for a party game thats rather sad.

 

[miller483]

You know, this review makes me wonder about GTA IV...

 

[Daemongo]

It had it's funny moments, although I'd have to say I personally loved the game. The whole thing seemed more like a rant with jokes tossed in here or there, but it definately lacked something his other reviews had. Most games he reviews you get the sense that even if he didn't like the game, he still loved to make fun of it in a review, but... with this he just seemed pissed.
Pissed that everyone asked him to do it.
Pissed he eventually gave in and played it.
Pissed that he had to play a game he didn't really like.
And pissed that he had to write a review for it afterwords to shut up the previously mentioned "everyone".

If anything, this was just proof that he probably shouldn't do reviews based on endless nagging if he doesn't want to do it.

If that were true, he would have pulled Call Of Duty 4 apart with wild horses. There is something unique about this one.

Ehh, but he actually liked CoD 4, so it was actually a good reccomendation in his opinion. The only real difference is that he didn't like Brawl, so the unique factor is giving in to pressure only to be pleasantly surprised that he likes the game, or very annoyed when he gives in and doesn't like it.

 

[Lampdevil]

I loved this one! Not for any particular review reasons (I couldn't give half a damn about Brawl), but because Mr. Yahtzee, sir? It appears that your animation skills have suddenly gone up a few notches. There's some CLEVER visual shiz happening here, and I LIKE it! Kudos!

 

[AlphaWolf13]

Woot, I'm glad I'm not the only person in the world who found this game to be... Incredibly annoying, irritating, and boring...


Mer

 

[Xenoveritas]

Unless I missed something, you should unlock all characters from a single playthrough of SSE.

You missed something: three characters cannot be unlocked through normal completion of SSE. They can be unlocked in SSE, but only behind secret doors that only appear after defeating the obnoxiously difficult final boss who has instant-kill attacks. (The three characters are Toon Link, Jiggly Puff, and Wolf, in case anyone cares.)

On the up side, all the characters can be unlocked MUCH faster by playing 1-stock Brawl matches against yourself. I forget if you actually have to kill the other player or you can just have one be the Designated Suicider, but every several Brawl matches another character can be unlocked. Do this with the right characters, and you can also unlock all the stages this way, too. Which is nice, since SSE is long, boring, and obnoxious. Unfortunately it's somewhat easier just to play through SSE, since that way you don't have to fight all but the final three characters to unlock them, just complete levels.

And, yes, you do play through a number of levels twice in SSE: first normally, then again in the Great Maze. The Great Maze is just a bunch of older levels stitched together into one very long and very annoying level.

As for the whole "button mashing" thing I find that mashing buttons doesn't help as much as randomly lucking out and having the game hate someone. Be it lucky Smash Ball spawns or unlucky Bob-omb spawns or just bad luck on random stage elements, an unskilled player can screw over a skilled player by dumb luck. (And, in the case of Mr. Game and Watch, the Smash Bros. Dojo even suggests spamming Judge if you don't know how to play and to hope for a 9, which is almost an instant-kill.)

 

[Titanium Dragon]

The original SSB did that. Yaztee's qualm is that this version doesn't do it better or bring anything new to the table. And he is right... heck, the game is even more fun with a Gamecube controller, if thats not an indication of rehashing old ideas.

That's just a plain old hypocritical argument. He has complained repeatedly and justifiably about various gimmicky uses of the Wiimote and he's absolutely right about that. It is hard to then turn around and complain that someone DIDN'T make gimmicky use of the Wiimote in their game and claim that's a bad thing, because it really isn't. Which is probably exactly why he didn't complain about it in his review, and you, random person on the forum, added it in and are simply wrong.

Really, adding in a stupid gimmick doesn't make a game any better, and the point of sequels like SSBB is not so much to shake things up as to deliver a same-but-improved experience. There is a reason sequels do well and groundbreaking new games often do poorly, and that is that people really often DON'T want new things.

Complaining that it is better to use a Gamecube controller is stupid because the game was designed with that in mind and the system was designed with the idea of using Gamecube controllers in mind. There's nothing wrong with it, different controllers for different jobs and all that jazz.

See, right there your ignorance is showing. Look at the history of Street Fighter, with all the tweak and version available for the different incarnation of the game just because Capcom felt that some counter were not timed correctly or some combo didn't fit. I'm not a SF fanboy , but saying that there is no more technique in SF than in SSBB is one stupid assertion.

SF is a qualitatively inferior series because of the complex commands necessary to do things as simple as a fireball or dragon punch. Frankly, the barrier to entry on the game was high and unnecessarily so, leading to a lot of people simply not playing it and requiring everyone who wanted to really "play" the game to become "that guy". Not an ideal situation. This isn't to say the SF series is inferior on higher levels of game play to SSB games (it is really impossible to say), but that on lower levels SSB games are better.

 

[Itxi]

I have to say that it seems that a lot of the negative reviews yahtzee gives out are to do with him not being able to play the game correctly and thus get angry with it. Like guitar hero 3.

And I wanted to say to all those idiots who asked Yahtzee to review this game: It's your fault this review turned out to be nothing more than an anti-nintendo rant.

 

[Malmer]

This review did two things, which the Halo 3 one also did:

1. Rambling fanboys who HATE [said franchise] will get in here and say the the review is spot on.
2. Rambling fanboys who LOVE [said franchise] will get in here and punch the first guys in the face.

I signed up just to request, Ben, that you stop taking requests and get back to making those reviews that are actually hilariously funny.

 

[ayoama]

"Incomprehensible clusterfucks" comes pretty close to what I first thought upon trying to play Super Smash Bros: Melee on my boyfriend's Gamecube. And I like fighting games.

 

[drunkymonkey]

"Fuck Solid Snake, they should let you unlock Bill Murray."

Funniest one-liner in Zero Punctuation yet.

 

[babyblues]

I liked the review, mainly because I don't really care for the series. Nothing against the series or its fans, of course, but I just get bored while playing it. Good job Yahtzee.

If we want to be really~ mean, we should ask Yahtzee to review Dark Sector.

 

[Gutterpunk]

However, if you're going to address a game from a design standpoint you also have to look for what it hit, and he often misses things which games DO hit. I think a large part of the popularity of SSB and Halo is their highly intuitive interfaces; you can pick up a controller and within 10 minutes you know what you do to do what, with no instruction manual necessary. In fact, I have always seen those as the greatest strengths of those series and why they are so popular, and I think on a deep level that IS why they're more popular than the standard fighting games/FPS games.

True, you can pick up a controller and know how to play. And then someone plays with Pikachu, making his little thunders from under your feet, and suddenly it becomes a one man show. Thats not good design IMHO. The characters are vastly unbalanced, and there is no way to know that unless you played a lot. Being able to pick up controls in 10 minutes is inconsequent.

Moreover, SSBB (and its predecessors) have this nice property where it is difficult to become "that guy" accidentally; simply playing the single player will make you a bit better, but not so much better that you constantly crush your friends who only play it on weekends. What makes you better at SSB games is "gainful practice", which mostly constists of either A) playing against people better than you and really a lot of B) experimenting with what works and doesn't, then learning how to do what does work perfectly. It takes actual effort to become that guy, and that is another strength of the game - if playing it for ten hours in solo mode to unlock Sonic is necessary, then at least once you unlock Sonic you and your friends should still be able to play on relatively equal footing, and this game succeeds at that.

Your "gainful practice" works in a context where you can actually play with new people. In Halo, you fire up XBL and you have a ton of player to learn from. In SSBM, you will probably end up playing the same bunch of friends over and over again, because the wifi part sucks.

But once again, the unbalance of the game throws all of that out of the window. You can spend the rest of your lifetime unlocking Sonic, but in the end Kirby will kick your ass.

And I'm not sure how you can claim that anyone can learn to play the game and then praise how even the most casual player amongst your friends have a chance to beat you. Why would anyone spend any time trying to get better? Providing trophies as sole reward to play a game is not a good design decision. (Sure "fun" is a reward too, but fun is found in many games these days)

Saying such games are random button mashers is simply wrong - they aren't. But SSB is meant to be a party game, which means that among random people what you do should be fairly obvious, intuitive, and shouldn't bother everyone else, and no obvious strategy should clearly overshadow all others at the casual level that 99% of people who play SSB play it at and just because you've happened to play it twice as much as the next guy shouldn't make it so that you can't play it with them.

Being a party game doesn't mean that we can excuse it's flaws. Wario Ware : Smooth Move and Mario Party completely blew it on the Wii (one with a lack of proper competition, and the other with lengthy animations for everything you do in the damn game). IMHO SSBM blew it too as a party game, and there is way better fighting game out there. So whats left?

SSBM is only fun because of the novelty of using known characters to beat the crap out of each other. I don't see any other reasons to play it personally. The game doesn't bring anything new to the table compared to the original (which I played quite a bit).

 

[Gutterpunk]

Yes, maybe some of his friends didn't know who Marth was. But a helluva lot of people did, and really wanted him back in. Thats the point. People want to see their favourite characters in, thats the point, it adds to the great premise of this game.

Yes but those people are the one who will willingly play to unlock Marth and whatever obscur characters. The mainstream player who just come to your place for an evening of (clean) fun on a party game don't care about this.

Why not make everyone happy and lock the one that they crave?