Being a long time Nintendo fan it is no doubt I have played the hell out of the Newest Super Smash Brothers. Super Smash Brothers has a super long lineage going back to the N64. It is a fighting game that pits long time and lesser known Nintendo characters into one roster. An impressive roster at that. Smash Brothers has always been one of my favorite games on Nintendo and probably my most played game on my N64 besides Goldeneye. Spent a lot of time playing Melee for GameCube as well and owned the one for the Wii U.
The game is a stylized fighter / brawler where every character has the exact same move sets controller wise, but the corresponding moves are drastically different for each character. Some characters have similarities usually if they are from the same game franchise or the same story line. Instead of life bars in SB, hits you land increase Damage% and as this rises you or characters you hit are thrown farther from the impact. Eventually after enough Dmg% is accumulated even the smallest move will send a character flying off stage which knocks a point off their score or finishes the match. Basically weaken your opponent enough to Smash them off the stage. These basic mechanics make Smash Bros easy to pick up and learn but a challenge to master. There is a lot of depth to this game, coupled with a HUGE roster of characters, there is a lot to chew on.
Diving right in to the new Super Smash Brothers Ultimate for Nintendo Switch.
The list of characters starts off small and you unloce new characters just by playing the game. I think it took me several weeks to get all of them. There are 76 characters in the game at present, each with different powers and abiliteis. This may seem daunting but the game rewards you well jsut for playing and experimenting with the different modes and functionis. There are many different playstyles among the characters including fighter types, sword types, shooter types, and various other types based off of the games where the character comes from. I’ve put around 40 hours into the game and I still have far from seen everything.
I like this game because there is a littele something for everyone. There is definite action. The graphics are more cartoony and very colorful, so kids can enjoy it. The game has tons of customization and handicap settings so, again, kids can have a good time as well as more seasoned players. I’m not even particularly good at SB but it is always a riot to play with multiple people who know what they are doing, even if they don’t, matches are crazy and mostly enjoyable. You can easily make it easier if you are having trouble in most spots, except for the new Adventure mode.
I enjoy the new Adventure mode, speaking of. It adds the slightest story and strategy element to the game instead of it being just a brawler. After a cutscene you must travel a world map and fight enemies in battles with set parameters and hazards. Doing this gains you spirits which come in two forms. Main and support. These spirits are from any Nintendo property you could ever imagine even some super obscure ones that I have never seen before. Spirits serve as a cool and functional collection item that allow your character to become immune to various stage hazards, move types, or start you off with various weapons. They add very basic form of strategy that is easy to get the hang of. This is a one player portion of the game, but the spirits can be used on any other part of the game, and it lets you choose whether you want them on or off.
The rest is all here including the Classic mode which slowly gets more difficult if you do well, and ends with a battle with master hand or a franchise boss fight depending on which characters you are using. There are also some other great modes including the Century Smash where you fight a hoard of 100 bots, or challenging last man standing type battles. Normal Smash mode has a fully customizable set up and you can save your favorite match types so you don’t have to deal with the menus unless you want to tweak something about the match. You can change pretty much anything about the match including game rules, certain items, handicaps, CPU difficulty, and anything else you could imagine. Ultimate playability (I don’t think that’s a word..)!
There are tons of unlockable items in this game. Literally a thousand plus spirits and thousand plus different pieces of music in the soundtrack. Countless pieces of armor and costumes for your Mii character.. It’s truly impressive the amount of stuff they can fit on those tiny little Switch cartridges. There are literally 100 different stages or battle arenas!!! This game is simply massive.
There isn’t much bad to say about it honestly.
The game is a lot faster than I remember.. Sometimes the hardest part of the match is literally trying to keep track of your character. The stages move and swoosh around and are a potential hazard in themselves. I often find myself losing track of my character after a large explosion or other dazzling event, thus I die needlessly fairly often. You do get used to this but it was something I noticed. I may be getting old or it may have been a long time since I played a SSB game. Honestly this adds to the chaos of the game and mostly ends up being funny in large multiplayer matches. When playing solo it is much easier to see what your character is doing and what your moves do. It took me a lot of time playing solo before I got the hang of the larger more intense multiplayer matches.
The online mode kinda sucks. Or maybe I just suck at SSB because I rarely win and when the lag isn’t messing up my experience people tend to be try-hards or just spam the same bullshit moves over and over. Needless to say the servers aren’t very stable and I’m sure they will be updated eventually but I generally don’t play much online. It picks a random match and random team mates for you unless you are playing co-op with a friend. I probably just need more practice.
With all the games I played this past holiday season I’d say this one was one of the only two that felt worth it, Red Dead Redemption 2 Being the other. I have discussed the ongoing trend of developers selling shoddy and incomplete games. I’m happy to say this game felt worth my money.
I’d highly recommend this game to anyone who likes fighting or beat em ups. The action is intensely smooth and fast paced but the simple controls let pretty much anyone figure it out pretty quick. Definitely a no-brainer for anyone who loves Nintendo and owns a Switch.
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