Acorn

Issue date: 3/28/08 Section: Arts and Leisure

Media Credit: Desiree Hykes

If you have played videogames in the past decade, you have likely heard of the Super Smash Bros. series. The original game appeared for use on the Nintendo 64, selling greatly thanks to the ability to play as different Nintendo characters in a competitive four-player fighting game. For the first time, people could pit Mario against Luigi to see who the superior brother was, have Samus and Fox McCloud fight to see who the more adequate star-fighter was and witness many other dream battles. The GameCube sequel, Super Smash Bros. Melee, added even more characters, making more dream matches possible. This sequel was widely regarded as one of the best fighting games for the added depth to SSB's competitive fighting engine, ensuring more than half a decade of both matches between friends and tournaments around the world. Now, more than six years after Melee's release, the newest version of SSB has finally arrived-the Nintendo Wii exclusive Super Smash Bros. Brawl. For those wondering if this game lives up to the expectations of the series, the answer is yes and more.

As with past games in the SSB series, the goal of most of the Brawl's fights is to knock your opponents off one of many stages, each containing arenas with different features and hazards. Each fighter has a corresponding percentage displayed on-screen-when a character gets hit, his or her percentage will increase, indicating that the character is easier to knock out of the stage. Each character also has their own special attributes and fighting styles. For instance, a heavy character like Donkey Kong will be harder to hit out of the stage's arena and has more powerful, albeit slower, attacks than the typical character, while a more lightweight character like Pikachu will have weaker yet faster attacks, and though easier to knock off the arena, will be easier to maneuver back into it. Items are also thrown into the fray with different purposes-some will assist its user by lowering one's percentage, while others serve as cartoonish weapons. At the end of a match, either the character with the most knock-outs or the highest ratio between knock-outs and stage-falls will be named the winner, depending on the match type.

While this gameplay is expectedly intact in Brawl, what makes this version of SSB stand out from past games in the series, aside from the obvious graphical enhancement that six years should provide, is its enhancements to the gameplay. For starters, this game has the highest amount of characters in any SSB game to date, meaning that players have more attack styles and attributes to choose from. While most of the veteran fighters have returned for this installment, newcomers like the heavy-hitting Ike, of the Fire Emblem series, and the fast-moving Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario's 16-bit rival, will provide players with new characters to master.

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