First: Jesus, that's a lot of posts in a couple of hours.
Second: The random plug for the game trading store was golden. This is the first review in a while that I actually had to re-watch because I laughed so hard that I missed specific points. I saw a post do this earlier, but I want to reiterate their comments in the hopes of emphasizing them even more: congratulations, even after so many videos, the quality remains fairly high. By internet standards, ZP has been around for a long, long time now and its definitely something to be proud of at this point.
Third: I feel a bit guilty now. While I've always been above e-mailing the man personally, taking in good faith that he reads comments/his own forum, I do feel a bit guilty for publicizing that he has the game and has played it. Australiangamer.com publicized this as well in one article and one podcast.
So it was probably more than the usual 1,000 e-mails saying, "Review this game!" It was also that many fans KNEW he had, KNEW he had played, and couldn't see why he wouldn't review it.
Fourth: I was not surprised. From what I've been reading, this game was not received well by non-fan boys. I strongly suspected, when I saw the first videos of game play, that Brawl was going to be to Melee what Melee was to the original--I posted that view exactly a while ago. Namely, they stripped more of the clarity out in favor of screen shaking, particle effects, super big levels with huge zoom-outs, and adding even more complexity to controls.
Overall, the "Melee effect" on the original put it further from the hands of casual gamers, and it seems that the Brawl effect will continue this tradition.
I happen to be the N64 versions biggest fan, and my friends and I (edit: I definitely DID NOT play that much on my own... oh no.) logged something like 10,000 total KOs over the last summer (before some dick-hole friends deleted my versus record). Countless hours -- usually at least three or four hour streaks at a time.
I first hand saw that if you put the controller in the hands of someone who had literally never played before, told them what they needed to do, then in 5-6 matches they could be competing on a fairly level playing field. Not amazingly, and they would rarely finish first, but they could do some things. Someone mentioned this earlier--the learning curve is a little steep, but once you have the basics the rest comes pretty easy.
Fifth: It isn't a button mashing game -- even less so than many more traditional fighting games. Any game where 4 people who don't know what the hell they're doing play together is a button mashing game. Could you imagine 4 people who have never played playing Team Fortress 2? I'm sure it'd look like a joke.
On that note, these videos show, I think, that a button masher stands no chance against someone who has been playing for a while:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMUM6KIB8_c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtNQA8U2GDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY5393IBnDU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyk1R69fGkw&feature=related <-- MARY, MOTHER OF GOD!*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVbXWcsD0Hs&feature=related
*25 seconds in is crazy.
*1:05 is even crazier.
There are definitely different levels of skill associated. To call it button smashing is silly. I feel like Yahtzee is criticizing fighting games in general, that he may consider them all button mashing. And that's silly. That's like me saying that half-life is just like any other PC shooter, where you just mindlessly point and click at things on a screen.
Then again, you kind of cover your bases if you divide everyone into "Button Mashers," or "That Kid" I suppose.
