Unwanted Changes
I believe that the overall changes in the sequel of Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super smash Bros. Brawl, have actually hurt the game. The game at it’s inner most core, is relatively the same; knock your opponent off the edge. This is like comparing the WWII game, Call of Duty to the futuristic alien fighter, Halo; kill your enemy with a gun. While updated graphics, new levels, new characters, and adventure mood may seem alluring, it still doesn’t excuse the unwanted changes. The change in the physics of the game has made it almost completely different. The updates have changed the way the game is played and how the game feels. The only change that would be considered a major improvement would be online; however, for online, it couldn’t possibly be worse.
Honestly, if you could find a way to make online any worse, please let me know. First of all, to even battle your friend you need to find out their 9 digit friend code. Second, there is no way to contact the person. The only way you can communicate with them through the Wii is to change your profile comment to something you want to say. You can’t do that in the middle of a game, so you have to leave the game, change your comment, hope they get out the match, and then maybe they’ll read what you have to say. Honestly, the chances of them reading and responding are minimal at best. A two minute conversation would take hours on Brawl. Third, there is no scoring system to know who is winning. Fourth, no stock battle option! You have got to be kidding me. Fifth, in free for all mode, playing two players is fine, you don’t need to put in two computers. If I wanted to fight two computers, I wouldn’t have gotten online in the first place. Finally, with some of the characters, like Sonic or Pokémon Trainer, it is difficult to tell the difference between the two colors on team match, so you end up trying to attack someone on your team for half the battle. Although online is a pile of garbage, it’s still better than having to fight humans than computers.
One unwanted update is the change in characters. While having new characters is nice, it doesn’t make up for the unnecessary effects they bring in. While the top teir characters, or characters that won tournaments the most, from the old game have been toned down, nerfed, to make all the characters more balanced, they have failed to balance the new characters. In fact, one of the characters, Meta Knight, also known as MK, is considered being banned from tournaments. Meta Knight is so unbalanced, according to
The Official "Should/Will Metaknight be banned?" Thread (LISTEN TO THE SBR PODCAST!) - Smash World Forums, “even tons of high-level MK players admit that MK should probably get banned.” While all the new characters have awesome recoveries, the ability to get back to the stage, and amazing stats, the rest of the characters have been toned down, aside from the horrible characters that were toned up, but it still doesn’t make them as good as the new characters. In fact only one of the old characters, Mr. Game and Watch, is on the top tier list; he was one of the horrible characters that was toned up.
While Mr. Game and Watch has been toned up, Captain Falcon, Samus, Falco, Peach, Luigi all have been destroyed by the wonders of nerfing. Captain Falcon used to be one of the highest tiers, now he is the very lowest. According to the official blog of Smash Bros.,
The Official SBR Brawl Tier List v1.0 - Smash World Forums , Captain Falcon is even lower then Charizard, a worse remake of an already low tier. Due to the magic of nerfing, I never use my secondaries, or characters I use really well but their still not my favorite character, I had in Super Smash Bros. Melee. For example, my strategy with Link was to do a series of combos until I got them into my finisher, the B-up. But now the B-up isn’t worth using anymore due to the lack of power. Some characters are unplayable due to the changes. Changing the moves was a horrible idea, just look at what you have done to Samus! Samus was one of my favorites, now she’s so weak, I’ll never use her again. Her regular B attack was amazing, but now look at the pile of mediocrity we are forced to endure. Her missiles are wimpy and you can’t even do an attack out of her B down attack, which destroys the possibility of combos.
While some characters moves have been changed, the designers have completely removed some character or they have swapped the characters out for someone else with a similar move set. They have completely removed Pichu and Dr. Mario. They didn’t even give Mario a Doctor Mario outfit. Young Link has been replaced by Toon Link, Roy has been replaced by Ike, and there are several who protest Mewtwo being replaced by Lucario. In fact, a group of hackers has made a Mewtwo costume for Lucario. Unfortunately, this costume is not available to the public. While the moves are somewhat similar to their predecessors’, overall it’s like fighting with a new character. In a sense, it is nice that clones are more defined than in Melee.
Aside from the changes in characters, Brawl introduced the removal of advanced techniques. L-cancelling has been in the games since the original Super Smash Bros., but now it’s suddenly removed. L-canceling would canceling lag from A aerial attacks, this was done by pressing the L, R, or Z-button right before you hit the ground. Characters that had horrible lag time, such as Bowser or Link, would find the technique as a core strategy. Not only does the removal of L-canceling leave you open for attacks, but now SFFLing is useless. SFFLing is an extremely advanced technique that is involves short hopping, making a tiny jump instead of a normal one, and fast falling, falling really fast, and L-canceling, which gets rid of the lag, which allows you to do another attack. Without L-canceling, this advanced technique is a thing of the past.
In addition to removing L-canceling, they changed is the airdodge system. In the new system, you can dodge multiple times in the air and still do things. In Melee, air dodging would allow you to move in the air up, down, left, or right at the expense of not doing moves in the air. This would gain you a little distance, sometimes needed to recover. Characters such as Jigglypuff or Yoshi, who have no recovery found this technique lifesaving. Characters that used grapplesto hook the stage to recover, such as Link, Samus, and Young Link, would also find this technique life saving, they would get just enough lift to attach to the stage and recover. But that is not the main reason why the change in the airdodge system is so unwanted, it is now impossible to do wavedashing. Wavedashing was an extremely useful techinuqe that allows the player to quickly dash. How far the character goes is based on its traction. For Luigi, you can go across Final Destination is less than 2 seconds. Being able to go extremely far, extremely quickly allowed players to be more competitive. One technique was the waveshine. A combination of a wavedash and Fox’s B down, which would instantly kill the opponent if done correctly. Though, some characters had no wavedashing skills, Peach‘s movements were barely noticeable. The reason why it’s impossible wavedash is because you can airdodge diagonally. Wavedashing was accomplished by short jumping and quickly airdoging diagonally to the ground, which would make your character quickly dash. Without wavedashing, characters such as Luigi are useless.
The feel of the game has also changed. The overall speed of the game has been slowed. Movements are much more sluggish now. The characters are much floatier. In Melee, everyone fell at there own rate; in this game, everyone falls at the same speed. In Melee, the faster falling and individual falling speeds promoted being more familiar with your character. For some characters, such as Ganondorf, Sheik, and Captain Falcon, this has ruined most of there potential. Sheik users were used to the lightening quick speed of Sheik, and the fast falling which made up for her lack of power. Now Sheik is as floaty as Kirby, who is a balloon creature. The speed and the floaty sensation mess with edge games.
In Smash Bros., the goal is to knock your opponent out of the ring. In Melee, this was more focused on edge games. Edge games are the following: edge guarding, edge hogging, and intercepting. Edge guarding is the attack of hanging on the ledge so your opponent cannot grab the edge and fall to their death. In Melee, this was extremely focused on. One way to edge hog was to roll back on the edge, which was an amazing technique. While your opponent would try to grab the edge, you would roll back on to the stage, thus keeping you out of harm’s way, rolling back onto the ledge would also keep your opponent from grabbing the edge so they would die. In Brawl, this technique is gone. However, it is still difficult to edge hog due to some of the awesome recoveries of the new characters.
The floaty sensation also affects edge guarding. Edge guarding is the act of waiting at the edge for your opponent to try to recover, when they get close enough the player would either attack them from the ground or intercept them. Intercepting is attacking your opponent, in the air, as they try to recover. It generally involves a meteor smash or spike. Meteor smashes and spike is an attack that sends your opponent straight down, this could be to the ground or there death. The difference between the two is a meteor smash is harder to recover from and is more effective than a spike. The floaty sensation and lack of speed make it easier for the character to get back to the level while higher in the air, so it’s impossible to wait to intercept.
The change in edge games affects how you kill your opponents. Now instead of outsmarting your opponent and keeping them off the edge, you simply and brutally hit your opponent, making them fly off stage. No clever strategy, no creativity, just beating someone mercilessly until they fly off screen. In fact, the Brawl is much less competitive than its prequel, Melee; which has been considered one of the most competitive fighting games of all time.
It could be considered less competitive because luck is a factor for winning. One luck factor is tripping. Now, you randomly trip in the middle of a match. I’ve seen some epic trips, which cost the player the match. Also, items are more relied on in this game. This is supported by how easier it is to pick up an item while running, or how much easier it is to catch an item in mid air. Some items, such as Pokéballs, assist trophies, and hammers are a mad rush to get. With Pokéballs and assist trophies, some random character comes out to assist you; however, they still can harm you. Hammers instantly kill someone by merely touching them. However, sometimes the hammers are defective and you’re left while open for a royal whooping. Dragoon is an item that instantly kills someone and it’s a crazy dash to get all three pieces so you can summon the item. The pieces can be knocked out of a character at any point and they return to the stage for anyone to grab if that character dies. Sometimes, the dragoon pieces won’t show up for the match.
The smash orb is also a luck based item that ruins the game’s quality. There smash orb that floats around on stage, which everyone tries to break. When it breaks that person is granted access to an ultimate attack, the final smash, unique to that character. However, some final smashes are pathetic. King Dee Dee Dee, starts dancing and summons a bunch of random round creatures to run around on stage and damage you. This attach is most commonly preferred to as “the big gay dance.” It is extremely rare that someone gets killed by this attack. However, Sonic’s final smash is so Godly, they have banned smash orbs at the tournaments. Sonic turns into a super fast, flying, invincible 3 hit touch killing machine. It’s almost impossible not to kill at least one time.
Worse than the final smash is the pity smash. The pity smash is a final smash given to a character if they are losing significantly. This has the power to completely change the outcome of the match, especially with characters like Sonic, Fox, Wolf, Falco, or Bowser. It’s possible to kill everyone at least once with certain characters. I’ve seen people win matches just because they got a pity smash. The worst part of the pity smash is there is no way to turn it off.
Overall, Brawl has made several unwanted changes that just hurt them game. If Melee’s graphics, features, and online capabilities were updated, it would be a better game. But, they messed up the characters in general; this was done by introducing unbalanced characters, nerfing the old ones, and removing or swapping the characters out for new ones. Also, changing the physics of the game has completely changed the game itself. The last unwanted change is bringing in a luck factor and destroying the competitive value of the game. However, Brawl is still an amazing game; it’s just not as perfect as Melee.
Pretty awesome.