Zero Punctuation: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

[Ultrajoe]

You can tell the amount a game relies on the faith of its followers to plug up its shortcomings by how vehemently they defend it, at 728 posts, i think my point is made.

But most of those posts are supporting Yahtzee...

From what I've read it looks like hater-trolls out number rabid-fanboys. But there are some pretty good posts that are quite true on either side of the argument.

true, but given Yahtzee as an online review, it a given that it does rely on the faith of its followers, thats the point of a fanbase for such a review, my point is that a game should not need to rely on spit and prayers

not that i think brawl is bad, i just think my comment is relevant, spit and prayers isnt bad if it works, for the 40K players out there: It works for the Orks, why not Brawl?

EDIT: man, you must have got in just before me BTW: we look to be coming up on longest thread ever, keep it coming

 

[miller483]

True, he actually wanted to play the game to play as Sonic, and what got him pissed the most was that you had to UNLOCK him.

If you're playing this game JUST for Sonic, then it really isn't for you.

With that being said, I don't know why all the fanboys are getting their panties in a bunch (besides the fact that they're fanboys).

It seems pretty clear to me why Yahtzee didn't like this game:

1. He doesn't like Multiplayer (if I'm not mistaken)
2. He isn't the world's biggest Nintendo fan
3. He isn't the world's biggest fighting game fan
3. He was basically forced to review a game that he didn't like/care about.

It's like getting a non-anime fan to enjoy an anime game. If you're not a fan, there's a 75% chance that you won't like it. (and yes, that statistic was made up)

PS: I love Brawl. I am also not a fanboy. (PSWii60 FTW!)

Edit: The trolls are also getting pretty annoying.

 

[SolArc]

I like Yahtzee's reviews because he doesn't rate everything perfect, like most of the reviewers out there. Brawl being a 9.5 out of 10 as reviewed by Gamefaqs doesn't feel right to me. I feel that Brawl is a step back from Melee. There wasn't anything new and innovative about Brawl. They just pretty much took Melee and stripped it of somethings and added some "slightly" different things. They changed the air dodge mechanic; that's cool. But then they made it like SSB in the fact that everyone is slow and floats again. And I believe you can button mash in this game because I've fought against people who were just randomly dodging and shooting arrows while I was trying to strategically position myself for a grab but what happened? He ended up dodging in the middle of my grab and my grab missed. You wouldn't be able to do that as easily in Melee. But the whole point behind Brawl was that it isn't supposed to be a "Tournament" type of game, unlike Melee, which had so much you could do with it to make it tournament viable.

 

[Xenoveritas]

Snake and Sonic taking over 10 hours of gameplay to unlock? I had Snake unlocked within half an hour of the game's power being on for the first time and I wasn't even consciously trying. If you really were you could probably have him in five minutes. And you unlock Sonic just for playing a certain number of multiplayer matches (along with most of the unlockable characters in the game, by the way.) You know, multiplayer? The thing he was complaining about not getting to play because you "had to unlock everything in single-player?" My friends and I had Sonic out within maybe two hours tops.

Knowing how to unlock them that fast makes you "that guy." The only way to find that out is to look it up online. Granted complete unlock instructions are on the Smash Bros. Dojo, but reading that site also makes you "that guy." It's common knowledge that you can unlock most of the characters through the single player campaign. It's not common knowledge how to unlock characters without playing on specific stages.

Not to mention that certain elements are only unlockable by playing through the single player mode, including elements that effect multiplayer mode. Not characters, but unlockables none the less.

And button mashing does not get you anywhere in Smash Bros. As a matter of fact it's what sets it apart from most fighting games, whose very nature force you to study command lists for 15 years before playing easy mode. Smash Bros was designed to be "minute to learn, lifetime to master."

It'd help if SSBB offered a tutorial to help new players to learn the controls. (Apparently if you allow the demo to play long enough it'll show you a tutorial video, but that hardly counts.) Learning the controls involves having played the previous games or being taught by someone who has.

And the item spawn and certain characters are designed to allow dumb luck to beat skill. Maybe not "button smashing" but it's still the same "random luck over skill" that button smashing is.

And once more, if this is wrong, please tell me why, but -

How is the play needed to unlock Sonic or Snake any different from having to play through the setlist on any Guitar Hero game to get to the much hyped final tier? One and Number Of The Beast were featured in the hype for Guitar Hero III just as strongly as Sonic and Snake. I may be missing something, but they look to be exactly the same situations. The oint is, if he took such offence to it in this review, and did not mention it at all in the Guitar Hero III review, then he is just exhibiting a double standard.

I have to disagree that there's any analogy between the two. Locked tracks are more like locked stages, something that's more acceptable than locked characters. There's really no analogy between locked Guitar Hero III elements and Smash Bros. elements.

 

[SolArc]

What he was saying is that it still takes 300 matches. Doesn't matter how many people are playing.

 

[ArchmageDale]

I read this and actually had to go back and watch the review. I enyojed it far more than before, and here's why: The TWAT fanboy commentary was directed at the guy that writes hatemail because he did a negative review for Smash Brothers. True, he actually wanted to play the game to play as Sonic, and what got him pissed the most was that you had to UNLOCK him.
He refered to fanboys ONCE: When he said "You'll like the game EVEN if you haven't played it if you defended the Wii name when it came out". Come on, he actually didn't insult anyone. I encourage you to go back, forgetting there's around 18 pages of people saying how much the game sucks, and I bet you'll enjoy it a lot more.

Screw you guys, Im going home.

I've watched the review a couple of times now, and he also makes a fairly clear point about the only thing that you have to do to qualify as a fanboy is -being good at the game.- Oops, sorry. I'm still cool if I play casually once every few days and make certain that I lose, but if I have the audacity to actually like the game enough to want to get good at it, I'm a fanboy twat now? Come on, give me a break.

And I am incapable of comprehending why people can be mad at games for making them unlock certain features. He wanted to play as Sonic and he wasn't available right out of the box. Oh what a tragedy. I think that's because he was supposed to be a reward, and when you look at most video games and what you have to do to unlock features, I think the designers are more often looking at it with the mindset that people are going to be playing the game because they enjoy it, not because it's a fucking chore, because if it's a chore, why are you playing it?

If I complained about a first-person shooter not giving me infinite ammo with all weapons and invulnarability right out of the box, or an RPG not giving me the ending movie cinematic off of the opening options menu, you would all think I was a moron, but a fighting game making you actually play the game in multiplayer mode with your friends for -an hour and a half- to unlock a character and suddenly the house is burning down? Please.

Wiser people than I have expressed the opinion that they feel sorry for people who's job is to be a professional game reviewer because rather than being able to enjoy a game for why it's fun, they're forced to play it on a deadline and, oftentimes, play games at all that ordinarily they wouldn't enjoy. I think this is a perfect example of that. I feel sorry that Yahtzee had to review a game that he wasn't interested in. Maybe next time, if he has the choice, he will stick to stuff that he isn't biased against.

 

[SolArc]

But doesn't everyone have a bias? Aren't you biasing this review because you *like* the game?

 

[EvilToaster]

But doesn't everyone have a bias? Aren't you biasing this review because you *like* the game?

You can like a game and not be biased. There are a few problems with Brawl even though I love the game. For example. Hold down the A button as most characters and they do the first punch of their combo attack over and over again every other frame. No idea why it happens and I'm pretty sure it's a bug. Another example is some of the stages make it hard for some characters to recover because it has a little overhang for an edge and you could get stuck in it.

But even with it's flaws it's a fun game. I'm not biased towards it by being a fanboy of Nintendo or the game itself. I just like the game and can recognize it's good qualities and how much they outweigh the bad.



Also everyone who's saying "It's just for comedy" and stuff: that may or may not be true. But if it is true, then people shouldn't be taking his reviews seriously at the start. I want a review for a game so I know if I should spend money on it or not. Reviews like this don't help. It's good for a laugh or two, even though his latest reviews haven't been as funny as his earlier ones. But for a review of a game, it doesn't stand up.

 

[144_v1legacy]

Look at how angry everyone is. Yahtzee knows we already know what Brawl is good for (I should hope), and is bringing its faults to the foreground. It's okay for people to like or dislike games. Geez.

 

[SolArc]

Apparently it's not, 'cause look at all the pages and pages of comments o.o; But anywho...It's a review and one single review should not stop you from buying a game. It's up to you what you may or may not like. I like the Armored Core series and look at the reviews it normally gets...

 

[Logicality]

You know, after looking at the whole Smash Bros. series through the eyes of Yahtzee, I can understand the frustration of playing the game. I have it at home and I just don't have the patience to sit in front of my televisionfor countless hours trying to unlock some character that probably suck anyway. I was thinking about buying it, but I was instantly reminded of what I couldn't stand about the previous games. It's not because of the review by Yahtzee, but it's because I just don't have the patience for it. Great review! Keep 'em coming!

 

[Joined to vote Valve]

Attention argument about unlocking Sonic: I got him, on multiplayer, before I got the "100 matches" announcement. I'm 100% sure of this (your announcements are recorded for you). It is possible that there is another way in multi to do it besides 300. Apparently. Whatever.

Also, 144, don't post that this does not matter. If it does not matter, DON'T F**KING POST, let the people who care get their messages read.

 

[Xenoveritas]

Attention argument about unlocking Sonic: I got him, on multiplayer, before I got the "100 matches" announcement. I'm 100% sure of this (your announcements are recorded for you). It is possible that there is another way in multi to do it besides 300. Apparently. Whatever.

There is, spend 10 hours playing Brawls. I don't think that method will really help solve Yahtzee's problem, though.

 

[Joined to vote Valve]

Attention argument about unlocking Sonic: I got him, on multiplayer, before I got the "100 matches" announcement. I'm 100% sure of this (your announcements are recorded for you). It is possible that there is another way in multi to do it besides 300. Apparently. Whatever.

There is, spend 10 hours playing Brawls. I don't think that method will really help solve Yahtzee's problem, though.

That was ten cut down to 2.5 thank to four of us playing, though. So it does help.

 

[AlissaX70]

the Subspace-whatever was obnoxious (the adventure mode in Melee was better)

But Classic Mode is still existent in this one.

Well... yeah... thats the point of this fighting game- arcade style. I'm talking about the action-adventure-rpg feature this game has. Melee's adventure mode was better than Brawl's, which is kind of disappointing.

 

[Xenoveritas]

That was ten cut down to 2.5 thank to four of us playing, though. So it does help.

I'm fairly certain that's not how it works. It's 10 hours in brawls, not 10 hours total per player. So no matter how many players you have going, it's still 10 hours.

I could be wrong, but there's no way I'm going to try and check.

 

[ArchmageDale]

That was ten cut down to 2.5 thank to four of us playing, though. So it does help.

I'm fairly certain that's not how it works. It's 10 hours in brawls, not 10 hours total per player. So no matter how many players you have going, it's still 10 hours.

I could be wrong, but there's no way I'm going to try and check.

I just want to clear this up: I'm not starting an argument, I'm just correcting. The time in Brawls to unlock a character "thing" -is- based on number of players. So, time actually played times the number of people currently playing in the match. Almost all characters in Smash can be unlocked in this way, simply playing multiplayer, though there are usually easier ways to unlock most of them. This is how it has been since throughout the franchise.

And, incidentally, because there's been such a big deal about it, I just looked it up on Smash Dojo, and an alternate way to unlock Sonic is simply to beat Classic mode with 10 or more characters, which is a hell of a lot easier than either of the other things, but since one of Yahtzee's points was that he didn't want to play the single player, I was trying to play devil's advocate.

 

[Xenoveritas]

I just want to clear this up: I'm not starting an argument, I'm just correcting. The time in Brawls to unlock a character "thing" -is- based on number of players. So, time actually played times the number of people currently playing in the match. Almost all characters in Smash can be unlocked in this way, simply playing multiplayer, though there are usually easier ways to unlock most of them. This is how it has been since throughout the franchise.

Not in this one. In this game, the only consistent way to unlock characters is number of matches played. Note that's matches, so it doesn't divide per player.

Sonic is the only character that can be unlocked based on time. Together with Ness, he's the only character that can be unlocked in multiplayer by any method other than number of matches played.

All the other methods involve single player modes.

 

[The Thief]

I unlocked Sonic in definitely less time than 10 hours and way less than 300 matches. I had gone through single player (classic mode) with only 3 characters, and and only 4 times combined.

So you're all wrong in my eyes. >_<

EDIT: I read some threads, and it looks like I'm not alone. There's rumors that there may be more ways to unlock him such as running X distance, playing a 10 minute match, or that he just comes randomly. But I'm sure everyone has stopped caring.

 

[vietfighter]

its actually takes about 120 or so brawls. plus, it took me less than an hour to get sonic.
all you have to do is go to special brawl, set stamina flower brawl, then set the 3 computer or human players to 1 hp (not yourself). then do random maps until you have to fight an unlockable. and they're easy.