Zero Punctuation: Super Smash Bros. Brawl
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Ok, so after finally having played the game I think I am fully qualified to comment on his review (A thousand posts! :O)
So, what he said about having to unlock characters, I really don't care. I wasn?t playing the game long enough for it to matter, and it is something we're all used to anyway, having played the game enough times already.
The particle effects thing is true, but it's also something that has been happening since the first one. When you're playing with three other people, it gets a bit crazy. Maybe this is some of the appeal.
Problems I had with the game personally:
Where the hell are the motion sensitive controls? Doesn't it seem like a step backwards when the game is better played with an old GC controller instead of the wiimote and nunchuck?
And why is this game more of the same? Honestly, this game is the same but with a few more bells and whistles attached. With the wiimote, they really could have done some interesting things, but like many of the Nintendo franchises, they decided to make the same game again, but with more random guys to choose from.
I enjoy playing it but I still don't understand how this game is getting eights and nines across the board (well, I kind of do). It really doesn't deserve to be that high. Nintendo, being this old a competitor in the console wars, should really be trying harder to make better and more interesting games. They took a risk with making the system how it is, why would they not try to use that to the best of their advantage?
I mean, I don't know, this game seems like a real step backwards if you ask me.
So, what he said about having to unlock characters, I really don't care. I wasn?t playing the game long enough for it to matter, and it is something we're all used to anyway, having played the game enough times already.
The particle effects thing is true, but it's also something that has been happening since the first one. When you're playing with three other people, it gets a bit crazy. Maybe this is some of the appeal.
Problems I had with the game personally:
Where the hell are the motion sensitive controls? Doesn't it seem like a step backwards when the game is better played with an old GC controller instead of the wiimote and nunchuck?
And why is this game more of the same? Honestly, this game is the same but with a few more bells and whistles attached. With the wiimote, they really could have done some interesting things, but like many of the Nintendo franchises, they decided to make the same game again, but with more random guys to choose from.
I enjoy playing it but I still don't understand how this game is getting eights and nines across the board (well, I kind of do). It really doesn't deserve to be that high. Nintendo, being this old a competitor in the console wars, should really be trying harder to make better and more interesting games. They took a risk with making the system how it is, why would they not try to use that to the best of their advantage?
I mean, I don't know, this game seems like a real step backwards if you ask me.
You're wrong! Onion sounds nothing like opinion! Opinion sounds more like cotillion or a million! I know this because my opinion is the only true opinion, making it an absolute truthSimon_TR said:
!And now writing the word opinion looks weird since I've wrote it so many times... In my opinion of course, you may not think it looks weird at all.
Even though I'm fresh to this forum I felt the need like so many others to post a comment here. When I was younger and less demented I enjoyed playing the original SSB for long hours with other yet to become demented children. That being said, it's a game that is probably the king of all button mashers. It's somewhat like fantasy football and Marvel vs. Capcom?s baby and in turn the majority of the pleasure I had with it was the odd "Dream Matches" I came up with. It's a good series, but it's not ground-breaking it's just what every fan boy this side of Mars wants in a sense, a disturbingly cohesive fan-fiction fight.
But...if you were less demented when you were younger, wouldn't that mean that what you wrote just now is a demented guy's opinion?The People's Geek said:
Very much so, the fanboyish innocence of my youth is what allowed me to enjoy it. Alas, it has long since passed ever since I discovered the yahoo search bar.144 said:
I have tried for something like nine years (I think SSB the first was released in 1999, but I could be mistaken easily and have not checked) to get into this series. This most recent installment looks, feels, acts just the same to me and I don't like it. It's sad, too, because I'm such a terrible Link fangirl that I wanted so badly to get into a game where I could play as him.
I like fighting games, generally, as time wasters if nothing else. But SSB (and all its clone incarnations) feel different than most fighters, and I've never gotten into the battle system. And there are too many major faults with the series for my attnetion to stay on it long.
I liked the review if only because I'm quite tired of hearing several of my friends talk about this game as the second coming of the messiah. I even gave playing it a chance. It sucked. Like it's earlier brethren.
I like fighting games, generally, as time wasters if nothing else. But SSB (and all its clone incarnations) feel different than most fighters, and I've never gotten into the battle system. And there are too many major faults with the series for my attnetion to stay on it long.
I liked the review if only because I'm quite tired of hearing several of my friends talk about this game as the second coming of the messiah. I even gave playing it a chance. It sucked. Like it's earlier brethren.
Even though I'm a big fan of Brawl, I happened to like Yahtzee's review of the game. It's not his best, but still entertaining to watch.
This is quite a battle (this thread not the game). Yahtzee fanboys vs SSBB fanboys. Why can't there be peace!
Okay, I don't want to sift through 31 pages to see if anyone's addressed this correctly yet, and my sincere apologies if this has already been done justice...
This wasn't a review. There was no depth. Most of the "facts" brought up by this review were just not true.
I don't want to give you the wrong impression here; I didn't really like Brawl. I regret I purchased it. I regret reserving it. HOWEVER, I did give the game a fair chance. I LOVED Melee. I STILL love melee. As far as I'm concerned, Melee was the pinnacle of "fighting" game achievements. The reason I detest Brawl is that it took Melee's fine art mechanics, slobbered on them, and poured molasses over it all.
The first thing to address is the unfounded notion that Brawl (or any game in the series) is a button-masher. NO. The creators had the same problem with the fighting game formula, and made Smash Bros. something entirely different from that. More than any other fighting game, Smash Bros. is about controlling your character at all times, not trying to Dragonforce all over the controller. It's simple, there are no button combinations, and the attacks are sorted by speed and power with how they are executed. Of course, anyone who read the manual, watched the "How To Play" video, played the previous games, didn't automatically seizure on the controller, or watched a real match ought to know this.
Secondly, all the characters have THREE unlocking methods. THREE!!! TWO of them are multiplayer! Sonic was one of the first characters my friends unlocked because of some condition that I'm still not even sure of. Snake is a simple 10 matches on Shadow Moses Island, which you can rig to occur in less than a second!
Third, this game isn't just about the Nintendo Character Orgy Fest (tm). It's about bucking the standard convention of fighting rules, using a completely different method of playing. This all comes around to the anti-button-mashing format.
Now, the game DOES have it's flaws. The items seem to have been designed by Karl Marx, as outlined in the Communist Manifesto. The Smash Balls are highly unbalanced, with some characters having way too much of and advantage with them. Super Sonic can fly, moves hyper fast, and touches you for death. Peach puts people to sleep. Captain Falcon's attack is very easy to avoid. One of these things is not like the other.
One thing Yahtzee did nail squarely on the head was the tedium of the single player mode. THAT was the Nintendo Character Orgy Fest(tm). The boss battles were more of a return to standard fighting game mechanics, and had the predictable movesets. The platforming parts were all too similar to Donkey Kong Country with the wrong pacing and jumping mechanics. When your characters have such large jumps, there is no real call for platforming. Platforming is a very simple style of gameplay, and the challenge usually lies in the limits of your character's ability to move. You have to have a tight control of your character. Smash Bros. has very loose mechanics, which is fine for the fighting part of the game when your position is less important aside from very general "I don't want to be in this area" and very finite movements over small distances, but the platforming scale is in between, where the floaty physics really get in the way.
Everything is slowed down from Melee, and everything feels a lot less precise. In melee, the timing was down to hundredths of a second, and the motions were very controlled. See short-hopping/wavedashing, as much as those tactics seem arbitrary and elitist. The demand for the utmost precision in execution of those moves gave them a high learning curve. I had friends who played it for 7 years, and STILL play it, and they are still improving. Brawl, on the other hand, doesn't have much to offer in the way of really talented moves. You can spend hours with it and still feel like Pei Mei after four bottles of hard liquor fighting a similarly intoxicated Goku.
Aside from all it's mechanic flaws, Brawl has a lot of improvements. There is a level editor(!) and tons of minutia to unlock. You can save replays and take pictures in any match. There is a Odyssian amount of content to explore, and there is online competition, though that also suffers from a few design flaws.
In summary, Brawl would have been the savior the Wii needed if it had kept the mechanics of Melee, but included all of it's features, bells, and whistles.
This wasn't a review. There was no depth. Most of the "facts" brought up by this review were just not true.
I don't want to give you the wrong impression here; I didn't really like Brawl. I regret I purchased it. I regret reserving it. HOWEVER, I did give the game a fair chance. I LOVED Melee. I STILL love melee. As far as I'm concerned, Melee was the pinnacle of "fighting" game achievements. The reason I detest Brawl is that it took Melee's fine art mechanics, slobbered on them, and poured molasses over it all.
The first thing to address is the unfounded notion that Brawl (or any game in the series) is a button-masher. NO. The creators had the same problem with the fighting game formula, and made Smash Bros. something entirely different from that. More than any other fighting game, Smash Bros. is about controlling your character at all times, not trying to Dragonforce all over the controller. It's simple, there are no button combinations, and the attacks are sorted by speed and power with how they are executed. Of course, anyone who read the manual, watched the "How To Play" video, played the previous games, didn't automatically seizure on the controller, or watched a real match ought to know this.
Secondly, all the characters have THREE unlocking methods. THREE!!! TWO of them are multiplayer! Sonic was one of the first characters my friends unlocked because of some condition that I'm still not even sure of. Snake is a simple 10 matches on Shadow Moses Island, which you can rig to occur in less than a second!
Third, this game isn't just about the Nintendo Character Orgy Fest (tm). It's about bucking the standard convention of fighting rules, using a completely different method of playing. This all comes around to the anti-button-mashing format.
Now, the game DOES have it's flaws. The items seem to have been designed by Karl Marx, as outlined in the Communist Manifesto. The Smash Balls are highly unbalanced, with some characters having way too much of and advantage with them. Super Sonic can fly, moves hyper fast, and touches you for death. Peach puts people to sleep. Captain Falcon's attack is very easy to avoid. One of these things is not like the other.
One thing Yahtzee did nail squarely on the head was the tedium of the single player mode. THAT was the Nintendo Character Orgy Fest(tm). The boss battles were more of a return to standard fighting game mechanics, and had the predictable movesets. The platforming parts were all too similar to Donkey Kong Country with the wrong pacing and jumping mechanics. When your characters have such large jumps, there is no real call for platforming. Platforming is a very simple style of gameplay, and the challenge usually lies in the limits of your character's ability to move. You have to have a tight control of your character. Smash Bros. has very loose mechanics, which is fine for the fighting part of the game when your position is less important aside from very general "I don't want to be in this area" and very finite movements over small distances, but the platforming scale is in between, where the floaty physics really get in the way.
Everything is slowed down from Melee, and everything feels a lot less precise. In melee, the timing was down to hundredths of a second, and the motions were very controlled. See short-hopping/wavedashing, as much as those tactics seem arbitrary and elitist. The demand for the utmost precision in execution of those moves gave them a high learning curve. I had friends who played it for 7 years, and STILL play it, and they are still improving. Brawl, on the other hand, doesn't have much to offer in the way of really talented moves. You can spend hours with it and still feel like Pei Mei after four bottles of hard liquor fighting a similarly intoxicated Goku.
Aside from all it's mechanic flaws, Brawl has a lot of improvements. There is a level editor(!) and tons of minutia to unlock. You can save replays and take pictures in any match. There is a Odyssian amount of content to explore, and there is online competition, though that also suffers from a few design flaws.
In summary, Brawl would have been the savior the Wii needed if it had kept the mechanics of Melee, but included all of it's features, bells, and whistles.
This review was absolutely the best ever. Good work. Not only Yahtzee makes fun of the turning into a fanboy, he also brilliantly defended him against any fanboy trying to cry to him about it.
Well, it's clear that some people like fighting games, and some don't. That's fine. SSBB doesn't fit in with the "fighting games in general" genre though because it's much more lighthearted and easily accessible, so I didn't really get why Yahtzee kept calling it a fighting game.
Either way I got the game despite this review because ZP is clearly meant to be biased and everything he says should not be taken literally.
Either way I got the game despite this review because ZP is clearly meant to be biased and everything he says should not be taken literally.
Hey, I'm a Nintendo fanboy. You don't see me crying and screaming at this review.
Something I'm noticing is that some people believe that there is a massive amount of hate in this review, and shoving it in Nintendo fanboys' faces is going to make them go insane and spam Mr. Croshaw's E-Mail inbox with hate. However, this is probably one of the less hateful reviews, more like the Super Mario Galaxy review. Not to mention I actually quite like this review.
...However, I found that this "review" was much less a review than it should've been.
Something I'm noticing is that some people believe that there is a massive amount of hate in this review, and shoving it in Nintendo fanboys' faces is going to make them go insane and spam Mr. Croshaw's E-Mail inbox with hate. However, this is probably one of the less hateful reviews, more like the Super Mario Galaxy review. Not to mention I actually quite like this review.
...However, I found that this "review" was much less a review than it should've been.
Yeah, the main problem I have with this is that there is no depth, and over half of the problems are misinformed. If this was actually reviewing a standard beat-em-up, sure, that would be fine, and I have no problem with berating anything, but when I got the impression he didn't really play the game (and it looks like it wasn't played properly at the very least), I don't find it to be entertaining.
So, I guess this is a lesson that he shouldn't take fan requests.
So, I guess this is a lesson that he shouldn't take fan requests.
Ok so after re-watching this review now that I own this awesome game despite it's over-ratedness, I can confidently say this:
Don't email Yahtzee requests!!! He won't take it seriously, and if he already hates something, he'll be extremely judgemental and prejudice; should I point out the flaws in this review? No, and he still has some great points as usual but pointing out the flaws is utterly worthless and a waste of time, but seriously guys, stop fucking e-mailing him requests, CoD4 was a happy accident and it won't happen again, even with GTA IV and MGS4.
-and why doesn't he have a seperate e-mail account for requests?
"Ask me why [blah blah?] [email protected] - and for requests e-mail [email protected]"
there you go Yahtzee, 70% of your inbox = CLEARED!
Don't email Yahtzee requests!!! He won't take it seriously, and if he already hates something, he'll be extremely judgemental and prejudice; should I point out the flaws in this review? No, and he still has some great points as usual but pointing out the flaws is utterly worthless and a waste of time, but seriously guys, stop fucking e-mailing him requests, CoD4 was a happy accident and it won't happen again, even with GTA IV and MGS4.
-and why doesn't he have a seperate e-mail account for requests?
"Ask me why [blah blah?] [email protected] - and for requests e-mail [email protected]"
there you go Yahtzee, 70% of your inbox = CLEARED!
nice review. reading through this, there are clearly a lot of people who think he's two harsh ("fanboy twat")
however, I'm sure most people would agree that to be labelled under the Nintendo Fanboy banner is surely a bad thing. For one, it makes you sound like a performer for a Japanese porn expose'. And second, it means you freely admit that you love playing with the same characters over and over. Mario has been in 113 games now. I don't hate him, but surely things were good when he was a platformer, and in Mario Kart. Heck, even Mario Paint was a cheap laugh. But who the hell wants to play football with him? For one, he's Italian, so get ready for the amatuer dramatics on the floor. And two, he's a plumber.
I'm all up for Mario games to continue, but the Kart and Smash Bros thing was tired after Mario Kart 64 and Super Smash Bros. I own Melee and Double dash on GC and I have to say they are completely run of the mill. Nothing exciting, just more of the same thing that was released on the N64 ten years ago. And yet here we are again, with another Smash Bros and another Kart game.
I have played Brawl, but I have to say, even if your not a button masher, so to speak, there really isnt as much skilled involved as there is in Dead or Alive or Soul Calibur. Pretty much the only advantage you have is knowing how not to fall off the flipping side, whilst myself and the other two clueless chimps you invited round try to find ourselves in amongst all the clutter of guns, hammers and general Nintendo themed bollocks.
I really thing its time Nintendo came up with something original and good. The irst 3d Zelda and Mario games were brilliant. So why not a new IP? And no, not some tit rolling a giant egg around.
however, I'm sure most people would agree that to be labelled under the Nintendo Fanboy banner is surely a bad thing. For one, it makes you sound like a performer for a Japanese porn expose'. And second, it means you freely admit that you love playing with the same characters over and over. Mario has been in 113 games now. I don't hate him, but surely things were good when he was a platformer, and in Mario Kart. Heck, even Mario Paint was a cheap laugh. But who the hell wants to play football with him? For one, he's Italian, so get ready for the amatuer dramatics on the floor. And two, he's a plumber.
I'm all up for Mario games to continue, but the Kart and Smash Bros thing was tired after Mario Kart 64 and Super Smash Bros. I own Melee and Double dash on GC and I have to say they are completely run of the mill. Nothing exciting, just more of the same thing that was released on the N64 ten years ago. And yet here we are again, with another Smash Bros and another Kart game.
I have played Brawl, but I have to say, even if your not a button masher, so to speak, there really isnt as much skilled involved as there is in Dead or Alive or Soul Calibur. Pretty much the only advantage you have is knowing how not to fall off the flipping side, whilst myself and the other two clueless chimps you invited round try to find ourselves in amongst all the clutter of guns, hammers and general Nintendo themed bollocks.
I really thing its time Nintendo came up with something original and good. The irst 3d Zelda and Mario games were brilliant. So why not a new IP? And no, not some tit rolling a giant egg around.
WILL YOU JUST FUCKING LET IT GO ALREADY? NOBODY GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOUR OPINION,AND NEITHER DOES YAHTZEE! IF YOU ACTUALLY BOTHERED TO READ HIS BLOG, YOU'D SEE THAT HE IS LAUGHING HIS ASS OFF READING THIS THREAD.IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT OR FEEL OFFENDED, DON'T WATCH HIS REVIEWS OR GTFO OF THIS SITE ALTOGETHER.IF YOU HAVEN'T NOTICED YET, BECAUSE OF ALL THE FUCKING EMAILS, HE HAS TO REVIEW AAA/POPULAR TITLES THAT OTHERWISE SCORE 9'S AND 10'S IN ALL OTHER REVIEWS.OBVIOUSLY HE'S GOING TO NITPICK BECAUSE OF YOU FUCKTARDS TELLING HIM TO REVIEW GAMES HE DOESN'T WANT TO DO.
Joe, PLEASE lock this thread.
Joe, PLEASE lock this thread.