The Wiire - The Full Brawl

Section 5: The Final Smash Attack

And the greatest disappointment of all: The Smash Ball.

I can't believe I'm saying it, myself! The Smash Ball is not as entertaining as it seemed to be. Of all the unfair advantages and lacking balance, it had to come from the Smash Ball.

The Smash Ball is not an item. Rather, it's a floating essence that roams the stage until a character hits it enough times. Having done so, the character will go into a trance and be able to perform his or her Final Smash special move. Sounds fun and balanced, right?

Wrong. Link's special attack is powerful, but can only be performed if the first slash hits an enemy, and it's not as easy as striking a character with a standard slash. Only by holding down the special move button can players initiate this, so Link has to follow the enemy and hope that the attack hits. If not, the Smash Ball is wasted. The same can be said for Ike and others.

Similarly, some characters have less useful abilities. For instance, Peach puts all enemies to sleep for a short period of time. The closer you are to her, the longer you'll sleep. During this time, food drops from the sky and scatters around the stage. This could be useful if Peach can grab a homerun bat or if she has taken heavy damage, but it seems like other characters have more useful abilities. Samus has an infinite firing range in one direction, which is certain to kill all in her path. The same can be said for Sonic, who can freely fly around the stage as Super Sonic and kill anyone in his path.

The real issue is that players aren't bothering to really fight each other; they're just waiting for the Smash Ball to appear. When it does, players stop killing each other and begin attacking the ball. Someone wins, and the effect is either minuscule or insanely deadly, depending on each character's Final Smash. This takes away from the real challenge of Super Smash Bros., which is a fair fight among players who don't have a natural advantage over one another outside of maybe reflexes. Now, with the Smash Ball, they do have an advantage. For some, that advantage is massive.

Unless this can be turned off early in the game, it will be difficult to play with friends using the Smash Ball and walk away not hating them. Also, despite promises of the Smash Ball only appearing once per stage, the demo provided the Smash Ball multiple times during a match. I transformed into Super Sonic twice in a matter of two minutes, and I began to feel bad for my opponent.

Brawl will be discussed in upcoming podcasts, news updates and more. If there are any further questions, feel free to e-mail Rob at rob@thewiire.com.

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The Full Brawl

by Rob Galbreath (2007-10-24)addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'thewiire';

by Rob Galbreath (2007-10-24)