You Must Recover!!

                   Dissecting Why Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the

                             Most Disappointing Game Ever Made

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the most disappointing game in the history of Nintendo, and therefore the history of video games.

Built up as the most hyped game of all time, Brawl delivered on many levels. On the surface, we got what we wanted. But as you delve into the real knitty gritty, (i.e.: everything that matters) it's an overstuffed mess of awful gameplay, poorly made decisions and shattered dreams. 

1. Sakuraaaaaaaaaiiiii!! 

 If there was a Mount Rushmore for Nintendo, the faces included would be Shigeru Miyamoto, Gunpei Yokoi, Eiji Aonuma, and Masahiro Sakurai. That's right, Masahiro belongs up there with the rest of Nintendo's legendary brass. Not only is Sakurai the creator of Kirby, (and we really can't give him too much credit for that because...well let's face it, Kirby is just a bunch of circles) he's also one of the most valuable assets currently working for the Big N. He represents the hardcore gamer, something Nintendo lost a long time ago. His repertoire of titles (Brawl aside) panders to them terribly. Sakurai's mantra is "give the player a buffet". This is a great rule to develop games by, but he always inevitably puts far too much on the buffet and the player's plate becomes overstuffed!

Sakurai is the director of all the Smash Bros. games, the be all end all of any decisions and creative input that goes into them. This hallowed position is a double edged sword: while he is responsible for coming up with Smash's incredibly fresh take on the fighting game genre...he's also responsible for tripping. (but more on that later) At the end of the day, he is equally responsible for both everything that is good and everything that is bad through the course of all that is Smash Bros.

But you can't blame the guy for tripping somewhere along the line. (pun intended I guess?) The responsibility given to him was a heavy load: take Nintendo's biggest names from its greatest franchises and put them all together in something that gamers had been wanting for a long, long time. In short, he delivers in almost every way. Almost every way. There's one big exception, and it's Super Smash Bros. Brawl. 

2. History 

When we were kids, we all had those discussions at the lunch table: who would win in a fight? Link or Mario? Well, now we could answer that question.

To fully understand why Brawl is so disappointing, first we need to understand where it came from. Super Smash Bros. was released for the Nintendo 64 in Japan on January 21st, 1999. Originally planned to be a Japanese exclusive, the bigwigs at Nintendo never thought that it would actually take off into popularity.

What were they thinking? Was the formula of Smash Bros. that far away from traditional fighters of the time that there was doubt that it would succeed? Certainly if there's one reason why Smash has been so successful its the departure from the normal conventions of the fighting game genre. In Smash Bros. you don't just beat your opponent into oblivion; you also have to send them flying! Landing attacks racks up damage, and the more damage you take the easier it is to send you out past the invisible boundaries on all sides of the stage that equal death.

It's a lot like sumo wrestling when you think about it: push your opponent out of bounds to disqualify them.

The combination of fresh gameplay along with an all star cast of characters taken from Nintendo's storied history laid the framework for success for Super Smash Bros. before it even came stateside 3 months later in April of 1999. The game was a hit. The four player madness led to many nights of friends duking it out as their favorite characters, finally settling those old schoolyard squabbles. But it hasn't aged well. It was a polygonal mess, and the clunky gameplay can be attributed to the limitations of the N64.

There was a lot of room for improvement, and it wasn't long before that improvement was delivered. Super Smash Bros. Melee, released a scant 2 years after Smash 64 and slightly after the launch of the Gamecube in 2001, seriously upped the ante. Faster, tighter gameplay, an entirely overhauled physics engine and an improved single player mode made Melee superior to its predecessor in every way. More characters, more stages, the whole lot.

And Melee was the true test to see if you had any grit. Furious, face paced gameplay made it a competitive magnet. Its also a technical juggernaut; layer upon layer of gameplay nuances that gave it replay value beyond everything established in the simple framework of Smash 64.

Part of what made Melee so great was that there were no preconceived notions of exactly where improvements should be made. Surely aspects of the game that needed fine tuning stuck out like sore thumbs such as the rudimentary graphics and limiting character roster, but in terms of gameplay it was really from the minds of Masahiro Sakurai and the development team at Hal Laboratory that would shape Nintendo's newest franchise into what we know it as today.

Like Smash 64 before it, Melee was a hit. It fueled the Gamecube (Nintendo's least successful home console) for years through the dangerous competition of Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's X-Box. But much like the limitations that the N64 imposed on the development of the original Smash Bros., the incredibly anemic development time of Melee left a lot to be desired from Sakurai and his development team. 

Melee was developed over the course of 13 months. In terms of game development, that's really only the blink of an eye. Sakurai quoted the development period as being "grueling" and lead him to live a "really destructive lifestyle" in which he would work 40 hours straight, sleep for four, then immediately go back to work. On the upside to this, the success of Smash 64 gave Sakurai the freedom to do pretty much whatever he wanted with Melee, granted it fit within the incredibly tight development window.

So what did Sakurai do with his complete creative control? "I had created Smash Bros. to be my response to how hardcore-exclusive the fighting game genre had become over the years. Melee is the sharpest game in the series." he wrote. "It's pretty speedy all around and asks a lot of your coordination skills. Fans of the first Smash Bros. got into it quickly, and it just felt really good to play." (1Up)

The hardcore crowd is something that began to slowly drift away from Nintendo around the time of Melee's release, flocking to the new hardcore havens that Microsoft and Sony were serving up to the gaming populace. Sakurai continues, "But why did I target it so squarely toward people well-versed in videogames, then? That's why I tried to aim for more of a happy medium with Brawl's play balance. There are three Smash Bros. games out now, but even if I ever had a chance at another one, I doubt we'll ever see one that's as geared toward hardcore gamers as Melee was. Melee fans who played deep into the game without any problems might have trouble understanding this, but Melee was just too difficult." (1Up)

The difficult accessibility that most of Melee's audience lauds is a fault that Sakurai wanted to smooth over with the next entry in the franchise, Super Smash Bros. Brawl. "If we want new people from this generation of gamers to come in, then we need it accessible, simple, and playable by anyone. You can't let yourself get preoccupied with nothing but gameplay and balance details. That's where the core of the Smash Bros. concept lies, not on doggedly keeping the game the way it was before." This sentiment, the one regret Sakurai has over the masterpiece that is Super Smash Bros. Melee, is the beginning of what would make Brawl one of the most divisive games in history.

3. Courting the Casual Audience

 Moving past the failure of the Gamecube, Nintendo decided it needed to change its image and sail the uncharted seas of casual gaming. They believed there was an entire new audience to attain, one that vastly outnumbered the hordes of the hardcore it helped nourish and grow in the 80's and 90's.

Their mission was easier said than done: sell consoles to people who normally don't play video games. At E3 2006, Nintendo unveiled the Wii to the world; the very first home console with motion controls. Nintendo wanted to court non-gamers. It was a huge gamble, but it paid huge dividends. The Wii quickly became the fastest selling console ever, and in the months following its launch in November of 2006 Nintendo was unable to meet demand and keep the system on store shelves. Today it is fast approaching the best selling home console of all time, nipping at the heels of the previous king of the hill the PlayStation 2.

The success of the Wii allowed Masahiro Sakurai the breathing room he needed to craft his next great opus, Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It also fit into line with how he envisioned the series: accessible, simple, and playable by anyone. Sakurai wanted to make a game that both hardcore gamers could enjoy, but also appeal to non-gamers without the intimidation of complex gameplay and mechanics. To all of the hardcore who were eagerly awaiting the next installment of the franchise, frothing at their mouths in anticipation, it was the complete opposite direction any of them had expected the series to turn.

This is what preconceived notions do to all forms of media that are held in deep, unfathomable anticipation.

4. The Dojo!! A.K.A. The Hype Machine That Killed Brawl

The single greatest factor that lead to Brawl's massive disappointment was the game's official website, the Super Smash Bros. Dojo. As if having all of Nintendo's All Stars in one game wasn't enough to get people riled up, the Dojo really fueled the hype machine into overdrive.

Every weekday the Dojo would update with a post regarding some aspect of the game. Sometimes it would be an announcement of a new game mode or item that would make an appearance, but what everybody was most interested in were character announcements. The Smash Bros. roster is the game's strongest selling point and seeing which character is going to be playable has always been the most interesting part. Roster additions always trump stages, music and even gameplay changes when it comes to Smash.

And that's what made the Dojo so interesting: the random nature of each post's substance had people biting their nails in anticipation every day. The site updated on Japan time, which meant that here in the U.S. we had to wait until around 2 or 3 AM (East Coast time) to see the update. I wouldn't stay up every night to see the update, but on some nights I had the Dojo in the back of my mind and couldn't help but stay up to see what was going to be added to Smash Bros. next.

80% of the time the updates weren't interesting. Usually it would go something like, "Oh hey, items are back! Shit, I need to be up for work in 4 hours..." The rest of the time however we got random character announcements, and that's what everybody wanted to see. It was even exciting when we got a glimpse of updated versions of returning veterans. "Oh snap, Marth's coming back?! He looks so cool this time! Look at the detail!" In the end however, the announcement of newcomers were the real draw and you never knew exactly when you'd see one. It could happen any night. I remember the day the Pokemon Trainer was announced. That one really came out of left field, and the mechanics of how he worked blew a lot of minds. "You mean he controls 3 different characters?! Genius!"

How unfortunate that when we finally got our hands on the game we quickly realized what a terrible gimmick the Pokemon Trainer was, and how alternating between 3 different characters basically made him unplayable. It was the over hype of the Dojo that made us believe that characters like the Pokemon Trainer would be the best thing since sliced bread, but in reality would be a gameplay experiment that failed miserably.

The posts on the Dojo usually went into a fair amount of detail. Multiple screenshots visualized the new additions and paragraphs of text went into detail on explaining how they worked. If the Dojo was less detailed and a little more cryptic, would the hype train have ever left the station? Or perhaps it just wouldn't have picked up speed? Its a really difficult path to tread: you want to get information about your game out to the masses, but how do you do so without driving people crazy with anticipation? That leads me to put some of the blame on the gamers. I mean, how can you not? In the end the amount of hype that's driven up about any form of media is always upheld by the people. Sure, those behind whatever it is that's being hyped always drive the train from the station, but its the people that incessantly feed it coal to make it pick up speed.

The Dojo only did its job by informing us about the new aspects of Smash Bros., but it certainly didn't do itself any favors by teasing us with a flood of information in the form of trailers, musical clips and character reveals. The way it did so built hype in the most archaic way possible; feed people tidbits of information in the form of daily announcements that added to the buffet of options Sakurai would give his players. It only makes sense that this hype would naturally snowball as the game's intended release date approached.

5. Tripping and the Gameplay Casualties of "Blue Ocean"

When March 8, 2008 arrived, gamers in NA finally got their hands on Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Nearly a year of daily updates from the Dojo built the game up in our minds to be something it wasn't, and only after release were we able to actually play the game. Fans immediately began to wail and moan that Smash Bros. was the latest casualty of Nintendo's "Blue Ocean" strategy. We all quickly realized that due to the massive, sudden influx of casual gamers Brawl's gameplay was severely watered down from that of its predecessor, Super Smash Bros. Melee.

But what if Sakurai was right? What if Melee was too difficult for the general gaming population? Okay, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt here. Even if that's the case, I don't think it justifies the over simplification of Brawl's gameplay. One of the biggest complaints about Brawl is that its too slow; the characters are all floaty, there's too much landing lag and lag in general, and tripping...TRIPPING. Never before has any competitive anything suffered such a difficult tribulation than Smash Bros. has with tripping.

 
At any point during the game when your character begins to run or dash there is a chance that they will trip, fall over and be completely vulnerable to attack until they get back onto their feet. So you're basically punished for either trying to move/attack too fast or...well, some unlucky people get punished for no reason and just trip randomly. Watered down gameplay mechanics were bad enough, but tripping was a blatant red flag that shouted to all of the hardcore Smash Bros. elite that we should either get used to random punishment or go back and play Melee.

Overall gameplay mechanic changes weren't the only death knell for Brawl; there were also more specific outlets for it's massive let down, and they came in the form of playable characters.

 6. Balance and the Meta Knight Debacle

 

One of the biggest issues when developing any fighting game is balance. This problem becomes compounded with every character added to the roster as the amount of variables adds up in the form of different match-ups. This is an understandable nightmare for development teams. I don't envy being the quality control tester of a Smash Bros. game. Sakurai has stated on multiple occasions that he does a lot of quality control and balance testing personally and on his own time, proving the dedication he has to his craft and his immensely popular creation. But is balance really at the forefront of his mind? I can't deny that the man is a genius game developer, but some comments that he recently made in his weekly column in Famitsu (a Japanese gaming publication) makes me think differently.

This year sees the release of not one, but two new Smash Bros. games. One will be for Nintendo's home console, the Wii U, and the other will be for their juggernaut portable gaming system Nintendo 3DS. One of the newcomers, Little Mac, looks oppressively OP in trailers and previews. When discussing the nature of Little Mac's place in Smash Bros., Sakurai touches on the notion of balance by saying, "Balancing a character comprised of opposing extremes is always quite difficult. Depending on the style of match, he’ll either clobber the competition or get completely shut out. He could even become broken in some combat environments." (Famitsu) Um...any red flags going up here?

He goes on to say, "However, when choosing a character, I want to focus on whether he/she has some kind of special ability that no other character does, and whether he/she contributes to making a better and more enjoyable gaming experience. Compared to these two primary concerns, “balance” and “fairness” are afterthoughts. I mean, hasn’t Smash Bros. always been that kind of game? You get together with your friends, duke it out and have a good laugh–that’s what the game is really about. It’s no fun if all the characters are the same." (Famitsu) While I agree with Sakurai that Smash is primarily for fun, his liberal stance on balance is to be lamented. Even in Melee, a competitive juggernaut, 4 or 5 characters always stood out as the best in the bunch.

Creative control and the director's chair give Sakurai the ultimate say on which characters are OP and which characters suck, but there will always be balance issues that slip through the cracks. From time to time, without realizing it a game will be completed with little glitches and bugs that stow away in the game's code and sneak by the development team.

But this is the future folks. We live in an age of instant data transfer. Balance is still an issue, but its something that can be ailed as time progresses and doesn't need to be locked down before "going gold" and shipping for retail. Via the power of the internet, roster adjustments toward the game's overall well being can be made at any time. Many of the most popular fighting games use DLC and updates to adjust the inconsistencies in their rosters, but Brawl did not. Nintendo is a very traditional company, dead set and firm in their policies, one of which used to be (but has since been remedied) "No DLC".

No DLC? Why? Well, in Nintendo's eyes a game that needs DLC is a game that is incomplete and therefore shouldn't be released yet. They'd rather delay a game to tweak it than release one that isn't finished. This is understandable for certain genres, such as platformers or games with only a single player experience, but fighting games in particular require DLC as a modern necessity. Modern fighting games have grown to have rosters of 45+ characters, truly massive in their ambitions. There's no way that developers can truly balance a game in the stature of Smash during the period of development. Its only through countless matches played by the community over the course of days, weeks and months that all the nooks and crannies of a game can be explored. Leave it to some asshole who is trying to deliberately find the easiest way to win to find the glitches that need to be patched with DLC.

In the time since Brawl's release Nintendo has warmed up to the notion of DLC by slowly easing into the modern era. Like I said, they're a very traditional company (and very traditionally Japanese, which makes them even more stubborn) so they need to be dragged kicking and screaming into modernity. The Wii very rarely had DLC, but the 3DS and the Wii U have seen a constant stream of both hardware and software adjustments via the internet.

I don't expect any development team to find all the inconsistencies in the complex data they're developing, (especially in a game as deep as Smash) but I do think that glaring balance issues absolutely need to be adjusted. Enter Meta Knight.

A villain (and sometimes anti-hero) of the Kirby series, Meta Knight is an original creation of Sakurai himself and hands down the strongest character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The consensus is universal: Meta Knight is plain unfair. With Meta Knight, not only does he have the power to fly but he can chase and attack characters as they're recovering. Basically, he can have the entire stage covered at all times. It's stupidly unfair. In a game where your main objective is to recover I find it grossly irresponsible to allow some characters to have the ability of near-unlimited flight. Meta Knight, Pit, and R.O.B. are the biggest offenders here. Pit can fly underneath the stage and move from one side to the other without batting an eye. R.O.B. can do something kind of similar.

But why? Why is Meta Knight the best character in the game? Perhaps nepotism is a factor? Was Meta Knight deliberately made superior to every other character in the game on purpose just because he's Sakurai's little baby? Perhaps we'll never know. If Sakurai's mantra of adding characters is based on their uniqueness, what was Meta Knight's unique quality? Being superior? Why Meta Knight is OP is irrelevant. The fact remains that he was pretty much universally banned from tournaments and the like shortly into Brawl's lifespan. Nobody wanted to play against Meta Knight in a game that people were debating whether or not they wanted to play in general.

So if the tripping, sloppy gameplay mechanics and the crash of over-hype made people start to think that Brawl sucked, then what do they do? Do they go back and just keep playing Melee? We wanted to keep a few things that Brawl actually delivered on, most notably its over the top production values and larger character roster, but with the gameplay of Melee. Thankfully, the Smash Bros. community was ready to step in and save the day.

7. Mod Nation Smashers

 Is Smash Bros. Brawl the most over-modded game of all time? Heh, not even close, but the amount of modding and tinkering that the community did with it is undeniable...and a little silly. Brawl Plus, Brawl Minus, Vanilla Brawl, Balanced Brawl and Project M all swam in the pool of Brawl's universal disappointment. They shared a common goal in attempting to make it balanced and playable. The exception is Brawl Minus, whose goal was to make a mockery of Brawl and have all the characters be as broken as possible.

This mountain of mods proves 2 things: Brawl's widely regarded disappointment and the community's adamant conviction to get what it thought was coming. I think we all had different notions of what Brawl would be before it was released, and what it actually was turned out to be quite different than what everybody imagined. Most of them were little pet projects that materialized once people realized how easy it was to mod Brawl, but one stands out: Project M.

The best way to describe Project M is this: its the game that Brawl should have been. The game's official site describes it as "...a community-made mod of Brawl inspired by Super Smash Bros. Melee's gameplay designed to add rich, technical gameplay to a balanced cast of characters while additionally enhancing the speed of play." So basically, Project M takes all the issues I complained about above and fixes them. Brawl's main issue, its maddeningly slow pace, is completely erased. Characters not only move and fall faster, but a level of technicality is added that was previously absolutely absent.

Although Project M uses the gameplay of Melee as a point of reference, matching it 1:1 is not its goal. It is undeniably faster than Brawl, but not an exact mirror of Melee. That's a good thing; it allows Project M to retain its own uniqueness while still adhering to the core essentials of Smash Bros.

It feels like a whole new game. Playing Project M for the first time was like an adventure, trying out every character to see what changes had been made. Moves were added in some cases and removed in others, all in the name of balance and fun. For example, Pit no longer has the ability of near-unlimited flight; he has a normal recovery like everybody else. Shitty characters like Zelda and Lucas are now powerhouses, making them not only playable but appealing.

But its not all about maintaining balance and allowing a competitive atmosphere to flourish. Fun is a key factor in what makes Project M so endearing. Since Smash 64, I've really only played one character: Donkey Kong. The Melee days were tough. He was at a terrible disadvantage compared to the rest of the cast, but I stuck it out and played only him. (I dabble a little with Dr. Mario as well, but not nearly as much) With Project M, I feel like all of the characters are fun and appealing.

But that's not all. Character changes and balance weren't the only things added to Brawl's roster; entire characters were put back into the game! That's right, two characters from Melee that were cut in Brawl, Mewtwo and Roy, are playable in Project M! Yes! YES! For many people Mewtwo represents Pokemon right alongside Pikachu and Charizard. He's the original legendary, and now Mewtwo is back...but unlike his appearance in Melee, now he doesn't suck! Similarly, Roy is given many new abilities that allow him to rival Marth as the go-to Fire Emblem swordsman.

The stages are edited in a way so that wacky and obtrusive hazards are no longer a factor. Some people might find this boring, and that's fair, but for serious Smashers this aspect of Project M is a Godsend. No longer do we have a only 5 or 6 playable stages to choose from; now we have up to 20. If anything, there are too many good stages!

Like the Project M team states, "Project M aims to capture the essence of what made Melee a truly great game in our eyes." They've succeeded, and I hope they take it to the nth degree.

I can't be a big enough cheerleader for Project M. If you've never tried it, all you need are 3 things: a Wii, a copy of Brawl, and a 2GB SD card. (exactly 2GB...for some reason it won't work if you put it on a card that's bigger than 2GB) To download it, go to http://projectmgame.com/en/download

Please, do yourself a favor and go download Project M. You'll never play Brawl again!

I seriously hope Sakurai is aware of Project M and has played it, because he could learn a thing or two about the ideal Smash Bros. experience.

8. You Must Recover!! Redemption in the form of Cross-Platform Smash

 

  However egregious the error, there's always room for redemption. Smash Bros. is insanely popular, pretty much assuring a new entry on every single one of Nintendo's consoles from this point forward. Case in point, this year sees the release of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS. (they really could have put more thought into those names) This is Sakurai's chance at redemption. I may have qualms with how Brawl turned out, but I can't villainize him. He may be responsible for tripping but he's also responsible for all the great parts of Smash Bros. as well. I also can't deny how much of a talented developer he is, a veteran of the gaming industry.

The new games' releases are quickly approaching, and unlike the lead up to Brawl Nintendo has given gamers and members of the media many chances to play the new titles. Before it's release, Brawl was locked up like the recipe for Coke. Perhaps they knew how much the game was going to suck and didn't want to give us a chance to take it off of it's pedestal? Whatever the case, Nintendo has been far more open about letting us demo these new games than they did Brawl.

Since the release of Smash 64, Nintendo never really acknowledged Smash Bros.' competitive scene. Recently however, they seemed to have embraced it. Acting as a sponsor for Evo 2014 and proudly touting Melee's lasting appeal among gamers, are they finally willing to commit to Smash Bros.' competitive community or is it all just to score PR points with fans and consumers regarding the release of the new games? Regardless of their current intent, its still nice to see Nintendo finally show a side that we've always wanted to see.

Through demos and pre-release tournaments we've been able to see a lot of footage or even get a chance to give the new games a spin. The gameplay overall is certainly faster than Brawl, but not quite as fast as Melee. Characters are still a little floaty, but attacks happen in a fast and more precise manner. Early in their development, Sakurai stated that tripping was being taken out. Perhaps there's hope that he recognized Brawl's missteps and is trying to make up for it?

The number one goal in any Smash Bros. game is to recover, and with these new titles its Sakurai's chance to recovery.