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 We didn't really give much love to the SSBB on this site in the days, weeks, and months leading up to the games release. The way we figured it, why bother? Every other site was doing it anyways so we knew somebody would have you covered. Besides, we've never really been big fans of the series to begin with. So with that bias officially out in the open as a preamble to this review, what did we think about Super Smash Bros Brawl?
The core gameplay, which has always been the core of our complaints with the series, remains largely unchanged. If you're already a fan of the series, you're not going to feel out of place. A few new additions -- such as Final Smashes and Assist Trophies -- round things out nicely. Definitely nice additions, but again, if Smash Bros isn't your boat, there's nothing revolutionary in the gameplay that's going to turn you around.
Unlike other Wii titles, SSBB offers a wide range of controller options. You can choose from either the standard wiimote/nunchuk setup, the wiimote held NES style, the Classic Controller, or the Gamecube controller. The variety is nice -- especially if you're already used to Gamecube controls for the series. I fiddled with each and eventually settled on holding my wiimote NES style. It's something I've always liked best on the Wii anyways, and it felt like a good fit. Once I had that settled on, I strapped in and the mindless button-mashing ensued.
There are a few things worth noting about this version of Smash Bros. that set it apart from previous incarnations. The most important (and most obvious) is the inclusion of online play. Both team battles and every-man-for-himself style skirmished can be orchestrated. They're definitely a lot of fun once you can get into a match. The problem? Getting into a match. At the time of writing this, the online portion of SSBB is near-unplayable for the vast majority of players. Error codes, severe lag, and an inability to find matches are plaguing most players. I had experienced some of this issue as well as I waited 25 minutes for my first match to begin as it searched for available players. Luckily I didn't seem to encounter any of the lag that many are experiencing. Be forewarned -- if you're buying this game for a solid online experience, you may want to wait until Nintendo gets this resolved. It's a shame too, because by and large this game was really Nintendo's attempt to showcase the Wii's abilities in regards to online gaming. Guess that didn't work out to well for them.
Other additions that didn't really work out? Most notably, the game contains a surprisingly lengthy adventure mode that attempts to combine regular gameplay elements with 2D platform style gaming, and just falls flat. If they were to try and combine something akin to the Events or Stadium mode into a larger story, I think it would have worked out much better. Instead you're just trying to mash your way from A to B over and over in an effort to unlock some extra characters for the main game.
Speaking of unlocking characters, the additional characters included in Brawl are another reason people are going to be drawn to the title. Brawl marks the debut of third party characters like Snake and Sonic entering the franchise, but it also includes a number of fantastic first party additions like Toon Link and R.O.B.. These characters aren't available at the start of the game though. Like many of the games cooler characters, they require unlocking through any number of different methods. The games doesn't really clue you in on who's available or what you'll need to do though, so without a little help from gamefaqs you're pretty much up shits creek. The locked nature of these characters is really a double edged sword -- on the one hand, the game offers infinite replayability. Including so many characters and stages as unlockables creates incentive to keep coming back. On the other hand, a large portion of this audience is casual gamers who are inevitably going to miss out on all of this extra content.
I think that's really the crux of the problem with Smash Bros. It's built to be infinitely accessible, but it's structured in a way that only deep-rooted purists can appreciate. The very best parts of the game play like a love letter to hardest of hardcore Nintendo fans -- from stages that accurately recreate the Pictochat and WarioWare experiences to highlights from the Japanese soundtrack to Pikmin and stickers featuring characters as obscure as individual Elite Beat Agents, this game has it all. It's downright infuriating to people like me -- I love the inclusion of everything Nintendo, right down to Diddy Kong sporting a Nintendo cap -- but I just can't get passed the repetitive gameplay.
Other things of note -- SSBB includes a level editor that lets you share the levels you create with friends. though don't expect anything brilliant on this one. Your given three backgrounds and little more than a dozen or so items to scatter around. LittleBigPlanet this ain't. You can also take photos in mid game and send them to your friends or save them on your console. Once I dig out an SD card, expect to see a little masterpiece I call "Riding the Pink Yoshi" make its way to the site.
All in all, not much of a changed experience from previous games in the series. The inclusion of new stages and characters aside, the title does little right in the new things it brings to the table. Even if the online is fixed, Smash Bros has always been a series that you play with friends you can hear. The lack of voice chat on the Wii makes the online mode little different than the offline experience (save for the wait times and lag) and the inclusion of demos for Virtual Console games is offensive on three fronts -- 1) they're using a $50 retail game as a vehicle for advertising, 2) they're limiting the time on these demos (some as little as a minute, none longer than three) to such a length that nobody could ever get a real taste for the game, and 3) if I'm playing 16:9, they demos on here automatically resize to 4:3 -- but actually Virtual Console games won't?? That's 100% genuine cow dung there, kiddies.
If you're a fan of Smash Bros, this one should be right up your alley. None of the concerning additions are required parts of the classic gameplay (ie you can skip most of the modes that I've complained about) and the few additions that work (final smash, stickers, assist trophies) work well. If you're not a fan, nothing here will turn you around. Plus you get the added bonus of being pissed that Nintendo's only game that offers 100% fan service content isn't something you'd want to play -- just like us.
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, I think it's refreshing to see the other side of the story, for once. 
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