Smashtastic

Super Smash Brothers Brawl dropped yesterday and I have been playing it religiously ever since, such a good little reviewer am I. This is hot on the heels of me finishing God of War: Chains of Olympus in record time so that I could get that review in the can and start working on this one. It's not exactly the way I like to play these games, however there's so much content to Smash Brothers, that I can get enough done to write a coherent review and still have plenty of trophies, stickers and songs to unlock. Yeah, I said stickers.

While I give a lot of credit to Nintendo for offering so many control schemes between the Wiimote, Wiimote and nunchuck, classic controller and Gamecube controlller, there's really no reason to play this game with anything but the Gamecube controller. Seriously, the Wiimote only option? It's a mess, an unmitigated disaster. Luckily, adding a Nunchuck makes the control scheme open like a flower, ready to accept the sun's rays, or in this case, being punched by a large monkey. Or a small one, your choice. The classic controller, purchased just for this game, doesn't quite work, despite it's layout being similar to the Gamecube controller. I think it's because it's so small, or maybe it's the double shoulder button motif. Not really sure. The control sticks are fairly loose, which certainly doesn't help and I think with time I could learn to love the classic controller, however I have two Wavebirds ready and waiting for my nimble fingers to play them as instruments in my symphony of ass whipping, so I don't need to get used to anything. I kind of feel bad that people who don't have Gamecube controllers are missing out on the best control scheme, but the Wiimote and Nunchuck works so I guess it's not that bad.

The game is awesome, as was expected. It didn't take me long to get back into the swing of things however my entry back was marred by an absolutely horrible first match as my old buddy Pikachu. I was quite depressed afterwards, thinking that I had lost all of my mojo, but a short time later I was kicking ass and taking name. I can somewhat understand the various reviewers knocking the game for not being that much different than Melee, but at the same time, Melee is awesome, which means that at the absolute worse, Brawl is just as awesome. That's a hard problem to have.

We're traveling to the wilds of PA this weekend for my grandmother's 90th birthday, so I'm doing my best to have my review written before then so that when I get back I can just fuck around in the game. We'll see. Truth be told, I'd feel pretty comfortable writing the review now, but I haven't gotten in any online matches, save one against a very wily Fox McCloud who managed to put together a last minute Dragoon strike to seal my fate. I still need to play with 3 other folks locally as well as online before I can put my unique seal of approval on it. In the mean time, it's back to the Smash Brothers salt mines with me. Ike demands nothing less than perfection.