The Gamer's Quarter

[SuperWes]

...because I was playing as Olimar and he plays unlike any other characters in Super Smash Bros. Brawl! Speaking of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, what's the consensus on it around these parts? I'm not talking about as a high level fighting game or anything like that, but as an experience. I mean, I know many of us are totally against collectathons and dangling carrots and that's pretty much what Smash Bros is, but it's specifically about dangling little pieces of gaming history and I think we can appreciate that.

Personally, I think the game is pretty good and I definitely enjoy the little rewards that are constantly popping up (I'm not always against this sort of thing), but I also feel disappointed that the game is still basically the same thing it's always been but with a fresh coat of paint and a new set of carrots. The redeeming factor for me is that the new characters are all very different from the ones that have been in the game up to this point.

I already mentioned Olimar, who pulls Pikmin from the ground and has powers that change potency depending on the number of Pikmin on the board, but Wario is also pretty unique too. Wario can pull a motorcycle out of his pocket and ride around on it, attacking anyone in his path, but he can also get off of the motorcycle and throw it at people. It's interesting! But it also sort of reinforces how boring the old charachers are. Every time I hit the character select screen I'm disappointed by how many returning faces there are.

So anyways! What are y'allz opinions on this guy?

-Wes
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[Max Cola]

This, No More Heroes and Mario Galaxy (which seems good despite disappointing my expectations) mean I now have a reason to get a Wii. It's all a matter of funding now.
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[fish]

i appreciate smash for the amazing fan service blowjob it is.
i have fun with it for a while whenever a new one comes out and always eventually lose interest.

some guys at this place i used to work at would play EVERY DAY at lunch.
every day. they were hardcore. yet they all complained it was too fucking random.
yet they played everyday. meh.

i hear there's electroplanktons in this one!
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you cant spell selfish without fish

[Ethoscapade]

so far, i'm a little bored.

then again, i hadn't even planned on buying it; i just didn't have anything to do today (already cleaned the house and read rubin on murakami cover to cover this weekend) so i grabbed a bunch of my roommate's games that he forgot he had, brought them to the gamestop where i used to work, said hi to everybody, got smash.

read: i'm alone and oughtn't be judging the game on these terms anyway.

[JasonMoses]

I like it a lot! I always thought that Melee felt kind of uncontrollably fast and loose, and Brawl is a nice step back from that. Also Lucas is way good, which is a major plus in my book. There's... a lot going on, though, in terms of how many play modes the game wants me to pay attention to is concerned. It'll be a while before I can really take everything in, y'know?

The level design in the story mode strongly reminds me of a Kirby game.

[Swimmy]

I just watched my roommate play a bit of adventure mode. Looks like the same old thing but prettier. Deets is right, the levels are all Kirby; even the Metroid level had a kirby-launcher sitting around on the ground.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Harveyjames]

I'm looking forward to the trophy and sticker mode, just because I like nosing around all the models and art they've produced! Can anyone tell me how high-res the stickers are? How far can you zoom into them before they blur up?

[mslano]

I've played Melee competitively for about 4 years, so my initial impressions of the game (on imported versions in past weeks) were disappointing when taken from that perspective. Playing through my own copy in the coming weeks will probably get me more into the spirit of enjoying the game as it was intended, but I can't help feeling a little miffed that this game was not built with the competitive player in mind (which can likely be said for the whole series, with Melee being a fluke in how suitable it proved to be for withstanding the scrutiny of a large competitive community).

[dessgeega]

playing smash bros. competitively is for shmucks.

i just got my copy, and i'll be playing as soon as my laundry's done.
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[JasonMoses]

I think this is still a pretty great fighting game on its own, it's just not as fucked up as Melee was. Which is a good thing, I think. And I mean, hell, who knows what crazy techniques people will figure out over time (although, yeah, it does look like the developers covered their bases pretty well)?

The story mode is wayyy more fun co-op, as expected.

[The Great Unwashed]

Hi! I live in Australia, so I won't be seeing this game, which I am unreasonably impatient for, until probably around the end of the year. I just wanted to post and say that I am seething with envious hatred of you all right now. Cheers!


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[JasonMoses]

The last half of the game's story mode is pretty amazingly vile. It requires going through an enormous map consisting entirely of previous ares strung together via random doorways, while fighting all of the previous boss fights and every other character in the game. When my roommate started his percentage completion was at 41%. When he finished it was at 82%. So uh, you basically have to play the game twice.

[Intentionally Wrong]

I dunno, Jason. I was really dreading that part from how other people had described it, but it wound up taking us only about two hours to get through "The Great Maze", while the first half of the game took us six to eight hours. It seemed kind of daunting, but you can keep up a pretty brisk pace; either the levels were longer the first time around, or certain parts of the terrain were repeated in different stages and with different characters. They also change the layouts within the terrain--there's a certain lock that takes five switches to get through initially, but it only takes three switches in the Great Maze, and you have to hit one of them just to get up to it. It feels a lot like the Castlevania approach to getting the most out of your art elements.

Or, to put it another way, 1% of the Subspace Emissary right at the beginning involves a much different amount of playtime than 1% a the end.


There are a lot of subtle improvements to the game that I really like: the ability to swim, climbable ladders, tripping over banana peels (and your own dumb feet on occasion). Some things still throw me off, like the fact that aerial dodging doesn't change your position, or the fact that Mario's Down+B isn't a spin anymore. Either way, I like it, and I like the chaos it inspires.

[simplicio]

Playing alone = I don't buy this game.

I guess, but the 2nd one never thrilled me all that much. Never played the first.
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"Worlds turn the new machine to thee. To thee. Though, thine the new machine space."
-Kurt Schwitters, 1919

[Harveyjames]

Is the art high-res in the sticker gallery, or low-res?

[dessgeega]

i've been mostly playing subspace emissary. i like a lot of what it's doing so far: things like the mine cart rides remind me that it's a sequel to kirby super star, which is a fairly perfect marriage of 2d platformer and brawler. the discs on rails are fabulous game elements.

i like lucas's stage a lot, though it's totally not in fitting with the tone of mother 3. smash bros. could never match the tone of mother 3, and i think what happens in lucas's stage is a nice way of acknowledging that.

i've played through classic mode twice, with meta-knight and pit. at some point i'll try event mode. oh, and the coin launcher is absolutely great. it may be the smartest addition to the game. the original was just a gumball machine!

oh, and a got a sticker from joy mech fight. that made me pretty happy. oh, and the arranged snowman track. i could probably list things all day if i let myself.
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[dmauro]

[bleak]

just for the record, capitain olimar is the most worthless character i've ever witnessed.

my favorite characters are ness, ROB, and pokemon trainer so far. charizard is the jams.
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[dmauro]

Bleak, Olimar is my main. If you want to go head to head with no items on Battlefield I will show you why. (alternatively, my Olimar vs. the CPU)

oh and...



Anyone at all near Brooklyn should add me and send me a PM.

[Harveyjames]

[kirkjerk]

Got it today. Have not tried it yet.

Hopefully it should allow sharing of save games, right?
I'm going to explore the single player modes etc but I cannot abide some of the ridiculousness entailed in unlocking all characters and boards in the previous games.
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=/ \(<D)_/
==/\/ >_ kirkjerk.com

[dmauro]

[kirkjerk]

Well, haven't played it all yet; I just remember melee had some bosses that seemed really unfair for unlocking things.

I had good luck using a downloaded save game for Excite Truck
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=/ \(<D)_/
==/\/ >_ kirkjerk.com

[Intentionally Wrong]

Unlocking characters in Brawl is a whole lot faster than it ever was in Melee.

[dmauro]

[Harveyjames]

[Hospital Zone]

[dessgeega]

i just played three hours of smash bros. with my classmates on a giant projection screen. this game is a blast.

one of lucas's alternate color schemes is claus. meta-knight and dedede are great.
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[bleak]

meta knight is pretty phenomenal, yeah. i still prefer ness over lucas though, i can't seem to do anything effectively with the kid.

snake is such a blast to play!

edit: dmauro have you played against humans yet
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[helicopterp]

he will soon if he hasn't and he wants to respond to the pm i'm about to send.


hey dmauro i'm going to be in brooklyn from philly this weekend and i'm pming you about Brawl.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[dessgeega]

notably kickin' music:

super mario land 2 palace theme, jazzy meta-knight's revenge, metal gourmet race, humoresque of a little dog, gorgeous snowman arrangement, famicom medley (attached to a pretty amazing stage). it goes without saying that the main theme is fantastic.
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[helicopterp]

Is there a Dr. Mario costume option for Mario? Not having the good doctor in the game would be a little sad for me. That's my character we're talking about.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[dmauro]

[dessgeega]

[sediment]

because a lucky item grab levels the playing field and he wants a skill match

i say, smash brothers was never meant for skillful play. i say, pokeballs for everyone!
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[dmauro]

[dessgeega]

i dunno, playing smash bros. with no items seems like playing sonic the hedgehog without running.

so what i really like about this game (i was telling one of my classmates today) is that there seem to be a bunch of ways to unlock each character (and this is at least partially true of melee too). i'm playing through subspace emissary and i unlocked two characters i know my classmates have unlocked through completely different means. this is nice in a game that can be played so many different ways: it tells me all of those ways are valid.

(except playing with no items. that still doesn't count.)

(it's also true of other unlockables, via the challenges screen. i saw a hidden stage behind "clear ???? event" and used a golden hammer to get it open.)

my "% completed" tells me i'm halfway through subspace emissary. i just earned a slew of characters, including a TOP SECRET one. the more i play subspace emissary the more i admire its design, and the way it unifies so many diverse platforming scenarios while simultaneously unifying so many diverse characters in a story that actually makes sense and allows each of them to shine. some really nice boss fights toward the middle mark, too.
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[Ethoscapade]

really? i'm, i think, 39% through, and the boss fights have just seemed so.. sloppy so far. like, i can tell they've got patterns, but the floatiness of the controls doesn't really help me with reacting to these patterns accordingly, and the general difficulty of actually getting killed means that it's not such a big deal that i can't.

[sediment]

played subspace emissary and the two-player challenges with a friend today.

I really, really like Pit. IN fact, the 50 yoshi challenge with metaknight and Pit was really quite fun!

Lucas feels like a more inflexible Ness.
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[JasonMoses]

Lucas can KO at something like 70-80% with his standing up-smash, recover from nearly any situation and deal fairly ridiculous damage with his enormously improved PK Thunder (and rope snake!), actually hit opponents with PK Freeze - which often results in more damage than Flash - and can grab people from more than twice the distance that Ness can. So uh, what are you guys doing that's leading you to conclude that Ness is better?

[helicopterp]

[JasonMoses]

[Ethoscapade]

[JasonMoses]

I should have known!

[dessgeega]

[dmauro]

I think it was in another forum that someone mentioned knowing the controls will really help you get over the "floaty" feel that is giving you a hard time in the SSE:

After you come down just a bit from the apex of a jump (or a short hop, which is accomplished by tapping the jump button quickly) you can tap down on the analog stick to fall faster. If you are using a character that has a rapid A combo, you might try using your forward or down tilt instead to keep from attacking longer than your want to (you can also cancel that A combo by ducking after your first jab). When you are flying through the air after being hit by a strong attack, doing a mid-air dodge will slow your momentum and get you back on the screen faster. Also, when you are flying off the screen (this one is tricky because it's counter-intuitive) pressing the opposite way you are going will not help, but pressing in a direction perpendicular to the way you are traveling will help.

I'm not having a problem with the controls being a problem with the bosses, but instead I don't know what attacks to use. When you're fighting another fighter you switch up the attacks you need based on where they are and how it will knock them back. But when the boss is so big that any attack will hit and deal no knockback, which attack do you use? I usually just end up spamming my forward and up smashes and then dodging attacks (or if I'm pikachu, down b down b down b ad nauseam).

[bleak]

[dmauro]

Gimpyfish has done some pretty amazing things with MK. He may not have direct KO ability, but he can edge guard pretty well.

I am also a huge fan of * R.O.B. *. His nuetral air is ridiculous and his back air functions as a headbutt of sorts as well. And then there's his gyroscope which is fantasic (until everyone gets good enough to just catch it). I haven't unlocked him yet in the US version, which is sort of driving me crazy because he's one of my favorites. Oh and the fact that you can repeatedly use his up b makes edge guarding much safer too.

I'm surprised you didn't have anything to say about Diddy though. His bananas are interesting, and he has some decent knock-out abilities and is extremely fast and agile. And his forward dash also cancels into an up smash really well. And if he catches you with a forward b and then jumps, if there is no ground below you, you're probably not going to recover (but he still gets his jump and up b). He's probably my favorite newcomer after Olimar, but I'm not very good with him yet.

[bleak]

I haven't played much diddy, so I don't have much to say about him. He definitely seems solid, with some interesting metagame revolving around the banana peels/over b
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[sediment]

Yeah, definitely agreeing re: Lucas. I liked Ness, but Lucas - even though he's a total powerhouse compared to Ness - is far less maneuverable and a lot slower. I felt more nimble with IKE, of all people.

Wario simply should not be used on some maps. Like the one where there are two tiny steely towers floating in dead space? Yeah, that one is definitely a Wari-no-zone.

I couldn't really figure out how to use Olimar effectively. Do the pikmin beef up his A attacks, or are they just used for his B techniques? Granted, the first - and only - map I landed on him randomly was the upwards scrolling bridgefest, so I lost a lot of nominal practice time just trying to not get blasted by the zone borders.
His final smash is pretty awesome, though!
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