Zero Punctuation: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

[Emperor_Z]

The control scheme? What controls? You could change out the big rubber condom on your remote and bounce the thing on the ground and affect roughly the same response from your characters.

This quote has inspired me to make a Youtube video of just Wario's rolling on the ground laughing victory pose so I'll have a proper response to comments as stupid as that one.

 

[roy911]

dude i have like 3 freinds that are totally prepared and know all of the moves. It sucks.

 

[m_jim]

Do you guys think we can hit 1000 posts on this topic? I think we can!! Let's keep bickering everyone. Quickly, someone say something about my mother, then I'll mention that Mario is almost as overrated as Halo and that Shadow of the Colossus is not art.

 

[cool_moe_dee_345]

The control scheme? What controls? You could change out the big rubber condom on your remote and bounce the thing on the ground and affect roughly the same response from your characters.

This quote has inspired me to make a Youtube video of just Wario's rolling on the ground laughing victory pose so I'll have a proper response to comments as stupid as that one.

Go right ahead. I'm glad to inspire the younger generation. Especially when I'm right. Hyperbole aside, I could play this game with my feet and feel like I had just about as much control of my character as I do with my hands. The problem with putting eight billion different characters in a game and mapping every single thing they do to basically two buttons is that what those characters actually do when you push the buttons is kind of a guessing game. Some of the characters handle so differently from some of the others that I might as well hold the thing upside down. Most importantly, I don't feel like I'm in control of the game even when I'm doing it right, which is an error in both the control scheme and the presentation. It's workable, in that it gets the job done of letting you do......well, something on the screen, and if you keep at it long enough you can kind of guess what sorts of things are going to happen (sometimes), but guessing shouldn't be a part of the equation.

So, it works, but it's much less than anything I feel comfortable with. Kind of my point. Also relevant - if I shoved the controls down my pants and danced like Napoleon Dynamite, I'd probably have about a thirty percent chance of beating a randomly selected opponent using them "the right way" (and who's to say my way is wrong when it FEELS so right?). A thirty percent chance of success when operating the controls blind and in the grips of passion does not imply to me a terrific correlation between my intentions and the events on the screen. It kind of makes me think that any similarity between my vision of events and the way things actually play out is little more than coincidental at best. That's not good controls.

 

[Walrus42]

I liked SSBB, but i still dont kno who the hell Marth is... or that other sword guy... or Lucas... or Pit.... Holy shit it is a fanboy game!!

 

[Rawru]

Yahtzee, I love you.
For ages now I have been telling people "no actually I dont care for smash brothers" and they've all scoffed and spit at me.
Now I'll just link them this review and tell them to bite a fat one.

 

[Forsooth and Pi]

Unfortunately, you're both very much wrong. Yahtzee makes a number of good, relevant points in his review that I have to say I totally agree with, as another would be reviewer of games being forced by powers beyond his control to play through the horrible thing when he'd rather be out catching butterflies or getting sexually assaulted by passing otters.

1. The single player campaign is long - frankly, too long

2. The "fighting" kind of sucks a whole lot for a fighting game, to the point that it lacks any kind of obvious control. His point about the camera being zoomed out and the action obscured could only have been made clearer if he'd said what I'm (probably not everybody else) all thinking - you never feel like you're really in control of your character, or having much influence on what's happening on the screen.

3. The game has unlockable everything falling wholesale out of its sensitive bits, which he construes as horrible. As a tremendously anti-social gamer (also a self-diagnosed Aspy, lest anyone think I'm denigrating his disease) who still kind of enjoys a good fighting game, unlockable stuff is wonderful. I like finding out that something I did reasonably well made more content happen. It's like that feeling you get when you finally finish putting together your PC and it turns out to be more than the sum of blood and frustration you just had to sit through. But he makes a fair point - in a game that is at its best when you know precisely dick about what you're doing in the first place, putting in a bunch of incredibly obscure (I had to look up who Marth was, though I managed to guess all the Earthbound associates) unlockable crap that you don't actually get access to until ten hours in - or approximately two and one half parties' worth of coherent play - is the kind of stupid that's normally reserved for reality programming on basic cable, and the only reason Nintendo can get away with it is that it has such a massive and rabid base of fans dangling from its genitals that they could make the game explode in the console and burn down your house and only expect to hear mild complaints. Unlockable anything in a casual multiplayer game is criminally stupid.

4. His frustration also proves a point - specifically, that this ridiculous excuse for a game seems to be all anybody is talking about. Well, two weeks ago, but you get the idea. When enough people are discussing something like this, you expect it to be either really good or really bad, and this game is neither. It's a barely tolerable platformer strapped to a fighting game engine more interested in mascots and bright colors than it is with gameplay. That's the formula for below average. This is nothing anybody should be going on about. It is not revolutionary. It is not an affront to God. It's just a thoroughly meh game, and the fact that the gaming community, at least temporarily, was gripped with the sort of rabid obsession over the title that normally leads to restraining orders is incredibly frustrating and annoying to those of us who "don't get it." I can only imagine what it's like when you're a guy who's expected to write one funny review every week and read it over the air with clever and entertaining accompanying animation and you realize that, like it or not, you're going to have to address this.....thing whether you want to or not. It says something about the culture - probably not complimentary - and we deserve to be chastised for it.

So yeah - there's valid points that he's making there. And he's right. What else is there to talk about? The control scheme? What controls? You could change out the big rubber condom on your remote and bounce the thing on the ground and affect roughly the same response from your characters. The visuals? What visuals - it looks like every Nintendo game ever, though I'm sure that for the sequel they'll pull some other obscure title that time forgot out of their butts. The cute, lovable characters? What love? I don't know who half of these dinguses are in the first place, and the half that I do know about I'm ambivalent toward at best because it seems like they show up in every game Nintendo releases ever. The story? You mean the story told entirely through pantomime about a recognizable evil character (that we can't mention, mind you, or be screamed at for spoiling things) spewing purple crap all over some weird reject island from Skies of Arcadia where apparently everything ever associated with Nintendo or HAL Labs lives when it's not off doing the same thing for the thirtieth consecutive time to earn money for the parent corporation? You mean that story? I'll be happy to explain it to you as soon as I find somebody to translate the depth of feeling and subtext conveyed in Diddy Kong's apish buffoonery into the English language.

The moral of this review is that he pretty much reviewed everything there was to look at that was worth mentioning. The game is Melee after a big fat flaxseed oil rubdown with an ungainly platformer surgically attached like some kind of bizarre conjoined twin, sharing some of the same vital organs but using them in twisted and inappropriate ways that put the whole operation at risk of sudden death. Most of all, what's Yahtzee going to say that's going to affect anybody's opinion about anything on this game? Nintendo fans will buy it because they drink the Kool-Aide. There's nothing wrong with that. They'll enjoy it for whatever reason they do. I certainly don't understand it, but since I actually finished the first Shadow Hearts, I don't think I'm in a position to criticize people for playing below average games out of an unexplainable sense of affection. But all that's going to happen if you sit here like I just have and point out the game's flaws is they will get angry. Similarly, people who don't like Nintendo are going to very rightly hate this game for its myriad failings. People who don't care....well, they'll keep right on not caring. I'm personally glad that Yahtzee took the game (and the culture) to task for that, and I'd pity the guy for having to go through it if I didn't kind of want his job.

But not a real review? No sir - there was a review in there.

1. I agree on that point.

2. Brawl is not a "true" fighting game, and anybody who places it strictly in that class is missing the big picture. It is a fighting/platformer game at best. I've never noticed the camera to be an issue except in really large stages, which I tend to avoid for that reason, and many Brawl fans agree that New Pork City and 75m are terrible stages.

3. I agree on that point. Some unlockable stuff would have been nice, but there was way too much here.

4. This point is ludicrous. Just because a game is popular doesn't mean that it should be reviewed in a stricter fashion. A reviewer should look at the content of the game, and not just how every other critic views it. If Brawl had a lot less hype, the review would have been a lot less scathing, which is one of the reasons why I dislike it... it feels like the main flaw with the game isn't the game itself but it's band of screaming fanboys. Yahtzee can certainly mention that fact, but he shouldn't base his entire review on it.

So I agreed on two points that the review certainly dealt with, but this is not the crux of the game. At the very least, WiFi should have a big mention. This was Nintendo's biggest foray into console WiFi, and they blew it. Big time. And since we're looking at Brawl, and not Melee, why don't we mention some of the features that were exclusive to Brawl? The lottery was done away with in favor of the "coin launcher," which is fun for only a few minutes before it tires you out, especially if you want to collect every trophy in the game. The stage editor is a nice touch, but it is severely limited in what it offers, and feels more like an afterthought. Stickers are just plain stupid; their only purpose is to pump up characters' stats in the Subspace Emissary (which we already agreed was too long and pointless) or for putting together your own collages. And Masterpieces don't even deserve a mention; they're just there to bolster Nintendo's sales for other games on the Virtual Console.

One of my fears for Brawl was that it would be a step back from Melee, and in many ways it was. Rather than comparing Brawl as a standalone game to the rest of the series, Yahtzee jumbles them all together, and then, if that wasn't enough, compares the entire series to the likes of other fighting games, which have little in common to begin with! Yes, Brawl had some flaws, and yes, they were mentioned in the review, but a lot of content was missing.

 

[stompy]

Do you guys think we can hit 1000 posts on this topic? I think we can!! Let's keep bickering everyone. Quickly, someone say something about my mother, then I'll mention that Mario is almost as overrated as Halo and that Shadow of the Colossus is not art.

Your mother, sir, is a... jeez, why don't you just finish off the sentence m_jim? I'm too good natured for 'ur mom' jokes. On the other hand, Halo is overrated. A good game, ruined by it (mostly) rabid fanbase (kinda like Nintendo).

- A procrastinator

 

[MightyMouse]

So... much... nerd rage...

N.B. I'll include Yahtzee in this, because it's more amusing that way.

 

[DewMan001]

I hate the end song. So many terrible memories.

 

[Joined to vote Valve]

Well guys, every one of you dropped the ball here. I am sure (ish) that Yahtzee reads through the comments... but there is no chance in hell he will this time. Valid points have been made, fair criticisms, etc., but they will go unnoticed because there is no way he will wade through all this. Good job, guys.

 

[Emperor_Z]

The control scheme? What controls? You could change out the big rubber condom on your remote and bounce the thing on the ground and affect roughly the same response from your characters.

This quote has inspired me to make a Youtube video of just Wario's rolling on the ground laughing victory pose so I'll have a proper response to comments as stupid as that one.

Go right ahead. I'm glad to inspire the younger generation. Especially when I'm right. Hyperbole aside, I could play this game with my feet and feel like I had just about as much control of my character as I do with my hands. The problem with putting eight billion different characters in a game and mapping every single thing they do to basically two buttons is that what those characters actually do when you push the buttons is kind of a guessing game. Some of the characters handle so differently from some of the others that I might as well hold the thing upside down. Most importantly, I don't feel like I'm in control of the game even when I'm doing it right, which is an error in both the control scheme and the presentation. It's workable, in that it gets the job done of letting you do......well, something on the screen, and if you keep at it long enough you can kind of guess what sorts of things are going to happen (sometimes), but guessing shouldn't be a part of the equation.

So, it works, but it's much less than anything I feel comfortable with. Kind of my point. Also relevant - if I shoved the controls down my pants and danced like Napoleon Dynamite, I'd probably have about a thirty percent chance of beating a randomly selected opponent using them "the right way" (and who's to say my way is wrong when it FEELS so right?). A thirty percent chance of success when operating the controls blind and in the grips of passion does not imply to me a terrific correlation between my intentions and the events on the screen. It kind of makes me think that any similarity between my vision of events and the way things actually play out is little more than coincidental at best. That's not good controls.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9aPENiXp_Gw
Skip to 3:08

If you honestly think you could beat me, a fairly mediocre player, even once out of 100 tries, just by smashing buttons at random, then you are truly delusional.

Either you're the worst player in existance, or you're just making crap up. There is no guesswork to what move you'll perform in Smash Bros. I'm leaning toward the latter, judging by the way you made up a random statistic and continued to use it for an entire paragraph.

 

[Sylocat]

Also relevant - if I shoved the controls down my pants and danced like Napoleon Dynamite, I'd probably have about a thirty percent chance of beating a randomly selected opponent using them "the right way" (and who's to say my way is wrong when it FEELS so right?).

I DEFINITELY want a Youtube video of that.

 

[Bryy]

b) Stopped with the quickness from beginning to end.

Comic timing is a negative? Really?

 

[Abbadiel]

Hmm... As other people stated before, this is an usual fenomenom in the escapist. Altough, it obviously became more pronounced, because of 2 facts:

a) Yahtzee is becoming popular (which is apparently, tiring him a lot)
b) Yahtzee is reviewing games with a wider Fanbase

Now, a*b = Big clusterfuck, where there are fanboys defending the game just bashed and ZP-fanboys that protect the review no matter what.
Now, I've noticed a general thought pattern in here. Every people that posts here fails to get inside their heads the fact that Yahtzee's oppinion (and, actually, anyone else's oppinion) is just a reflection of the writer's likes.

So let me state this:

- YAHTZEE IS NOT A GOD

Everyone acts like his words are made with gold and must be followed strictly. Other people think it's unfair and try to fight it.

Which is pointless, because of the fact that everyone has a different opinion.
Oh and by the way, I always liked original Smash Bros. and I was actually considering buying a Wii just to play it. Do you think I would care if he considered the game chaotic fights retarded? That's why I liked Smash Bros. in the first place!

Zero Punctuation is dead. Yahtzee has gone and killed his master work. He has:
a) Thrown in a bunch of rubbish screen and vocal editing and
b) Stopped with the quickness from beginning to end.
Well, now I've only got my old friend Homestar Runner to entertain me. Sorry Yahtzee, you hopeless f***wit, but you've destroyed it. You once had something brilliant and now you gone and destroyed it. You might as well quit now and go and get some terrible office job somewhere.

Well I hope you're wrong. I thought the same from the Burnout review (the most boring of all of his reviews, in my opinion) but then his reviews were starting to "perk up" again.
I can only hope that this is a momentary downfall [/Zpfanboy]



87% sure nobody cared what I just wrote up there.

 

[stompy]

Yahtzee has gone and killed his master work.

You've never played any of Yahtze's games, have you?

- A procrastinator

 

[miller483]

And the fanboys/trolls are STILL going at it!?


This giant shitstorm is REALLY making me excited for the GTA IV review... =)

 

[lethalsilicong5]

i love ssbb and i'm in the top 5 in my college but this is a great review and i totally understand how this game is just stupid with it's mechanics and particle effects

 

[stompy]

And the fanboys/trolls are STILL going at it!?

Here's my answer:
<quote=m_jim>Do you guys think we can hit 1000 posts on this topic? I think we can!! Let's keep bickering everyone. Quickly, someone say something about my mother, then I'll mention that Mario is almost as overrated as Halo and that Shadow of the Colossus is not art.

- A procrastinator