Super-Smashing into Next Gen

The Super Smash Bros. series has pretty much been a mainstay throughout my childhood, so when the first rumours of a handheld SSB game surfaced back in 2011, my interest was piqued. I’ve been a huge fan of the series since its inception, and, seeing as previous iterations had been confined to home consoles, I couldn’t believe that I’d be able to pit Link against Mario, Kirby and Captain Falcon while travelling on the Underground. Fortunately, those initial rumours slowly morphed into a genuine development and, after numerous delays, Super Smash Bros. for 3DS was finally released in the UK last week. And, wow, was it worth the wait.

For the uninitiated, Super Smash Bros. gathers together a vast array of characters from all over the Nintendo universe and allows players to brawl it out against their friends or strangers from around the world. The control system is the same for every character, resulting in an easy-to-learn but hard-to-master experience. The true skill lies in anticipating your opponent’s move and then selecting a suitable move to neutralise it, like Marth’s counter to Donkey Kong’s giant punch, and knocking your opponent off the screen.

Firstly, the gameplay. For me, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the predecessor to this game, focused very much on defensive strategy. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a fantastic game. It was just very difficult to emulate the frantic, attack-minded nature of Super Smash Bros Melee SSB4 has rectified this, however, with the end result being a fast-paced and ultimately fun game. The number of different playable modes do a lot in ensuring the game doesn’t get stale, with the player being able to switch between regular matches, Home- Run Contests and All-Star Mode with ease. With the game being so tailored towards multiplayer modes, one would think that it would be fairly dull for just a single player. Wrong. Nintendo have created a complete single player adventure (“Smash Run”) which is great fun to play. I must say that even if this mode had not been included, the desire to keep practising and improving will prevent a lot of players from getting bored.

Another feature that prevents any monotony is the sheer size of the character roster. The game initially starts out with 36 playable characters , with a huge variety encompassing nearly all Nintendo games. Old veterans such as Pikachu can now duke it out with newcomers such as Little Mac (from Punch Out!!!) and Robin (from Fire Emblem Awakening). Characters from outside the Nintendo universe like Pac-Man and Mega-Man also appear and are embraced with respect to their source material. Even the Wii Fit Trainer turns up and, I must say, is one of the most fun characters to use. It is just so satisfying sending Mario flying with a perfectly timed yoga pose and then following it up with a taunt of “Now let’s work our core muscles!” This level of detail i n all the characters meant that even a f – ter multiple hours of gameplay, I could still find something new to chuckle at.

The visuals of the game are extremely well done, with Nintendo working around the 3DS’s inability to display high-definition visuals by implementing cel-shaded outlines to each character. The end result is a unique experience that runs smoothly at 60 frames per second. However, a significant issue that keeps rearing its ugly head is that it is sometimes extremely difficult to keep track of characters when the camera zooms out. The player can activate a target-box that highlights the character, but you get the feeling that this was tacked on at the end, with Nintendo failing to solve the larger problem.

Finally, the online multiplayer. I was definitely not a fan of how this was implemented in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, due to it being just not fun to play. Thankfully, the online multiplayer has undergone a major overhaul, with different game modes available for those who just want to have a fun match (“For Fun”), or those who want to play seriously (“For Glory”). I’ve personally only played on “For Glory” and must admit that is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The online matchmaking is fairly well done and the matches can get extremely tense, which makes it that much more fun to play. A noticeable problem though is the lag that occurs occasionally in online matches – it results in the game veering sharply from fun to frustrating as you just can’t land your killer move. However, rumours are that these are just teething problems and should vanish within the next month or so.

SSB4 is one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played and would definitely recommend it to anyone. The huge amount of gameplay modes available and just how fun it is to play ensure that you will never really get bored of it. In fact, I’m off to go play it some more.

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Images: Flickr / BagoGames

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