All Hail Brawl

Well, I've been meaning to blog about this for about the last month and a half, but it's one of those games that take a stranglehold on you. With school & finals out of the way, I can finally write about this:







Smash Bros. Brawl. Yes, It's finally out, and is my new God. Even now as you are reading this, I am preparing what victims I should choose to sacrifice to its greatness.

If you don't know already, my best characters (or "mains") happen to be:


-Meta Knight
-Falco
-Lucario
-Ice Climbers
-Lucas
-Gannondorf


In that order. Of course, I've had plenty of experience with Melee and I've already been pretty good with the 21...ish returning characters, and now I had to get used to their changes. Here are some notable changes from Melee to Brawl:

-Actual gravity. Heavy characters now don't jump as high. That really, really sucked. But i'm used to it by now.

-The removal of "Very Easy" and the addition of "Intense" Difficulty. At first I thought that they only renamed the difficulties. It turns out I was dead wrong. Even on "Easy," the AIs have gotten smarter, but it provides a better challenge.

-Changed moves, such as Mario's Down+B attack, which is now drastically different. What was once the very useful Mario Cyclone was replaced by a semi-useful FLUDD water spray.

-Much more stuff to collect. There were 249 trophies in Melee, now there are over 600. There are also Stickers, which power up your characters in in Subspace Emissary. There are 700 of these. You can also unlock extra music for stages via CDs, there are over 80 of these to collect. Suffice it to say, I'm not done yet.

-The "Luigification of the Clones", subtle changes to the clones to make them different. Most of the returning clones improved (Falco, Luigi), one worse (Gannondorf). The addition of more clones (Wolf, Lucas, Toon Link, Ike) had frightened the self-hyped Smash community, but we got over it once we got our hands on the game and realizes, yes, they're pretty damn awesome.

-Young Link being Modified into Toon Link, who is now better than Regular Link.

-Gannondorf, my best character from Melee, now is MUCH worse. And that makes me a sad panda.


I remember the day the full Roster list was leaked from Japan. We were all stunned that Mewtwo was gone, R.O.B. was in, and the self-hyped Ridley from the Metroid series was just a boss in Subspace Emissary. After cries of "it suck0rs now!!1!" and "When's Smash Bros 4 coming out?!" dissapated, we realized that we had 35 characters (39 total if counting Shiek, Zero Suit Samus, and the 3 separate pokemon playable by Pokemon Trainer), who were all awesome in their own way.



Now for this part of the post, I'll list the reasons why the characters that were in Melee didn't come back. I know that this was more relevant 2 months ago, but here we are.



Pichu


Reason he's Gone: No longer relevant. And he sucked. When Melee was released, the Gold & Silver Pokemon games were rather recent, and it was obvious that a representative from G/S would be in Brawl. What we got was Pikachu's baby form, Pichu. Everyone loves Pikachu, how about another one? One that's smaller and faster! Oh, did we mention that he damages himself whenever he attacks? Awesome!

No.

Where is he in Brawl? A Trophy, which you obtain after clearing All-Star mode without using a continue.



Mewtwo


Reason He's Gone: Like Pichu, he's no longer relevant. Unlike Pichu, he was awesome. It's been over 10 years since the original games were released, and about almost as long as the First Movie was released in the US, where he was the main antagonist. He has since been replaced so to speak by Lucario, a more relevant pokemon who really does kick ass.

Their only similarities besides that they're both pokemon that have been featured in movies is their B move. For Mewtwo, it was Shadow Ball, that always curved when fired. Lucario's is Aura Sphere, which goes straight ahead when charged up. Also, the more Lucario's damage increases, the more powerful his "Aura" attacks are, meaning a fully charged Aura Sphere at around 150%+ damage is one of the worst things you can get hit by in this game. This works very well in Sudden Death.


Where is he in Brawl?: Again, as a Trophy, only you obtain him by beating All-Star Mode on Intense difficulty.


Dr. Mario

Reason He's Gone: Honestly, I have no idea why he was even in Melee.

Where is he in Brawl?: As a sticker. Also, his theme music from Melee lives on in the Flatzone 2 stage. There was no way that awesome song was going to be left out of Brawl.


Roy



Reason He's Gone: Once again, Relevance. Roy was only in 2 Fire Emblem games in Japan, and his first appearance was released a little bit after Melee was released over there. With Ike confirmed for Brawl, the fact that he was actually in some of the American releases, and that Ike is a far better FE & Brawl character than Roy, his days were numbered.

Where is he in Brawl?: A sticker. That's it. Good for him.



Tune in for my next Brawl installment, where I discover some connections between Brawl and the Kirby Series. Due to both games made by HAL, you'd be surprised how much Kirby influence there is on this game.