The time to throw down is now! Gamers have been waiting for the fourth instalment of Super Smash Bros before it was even officially announced last year at E3. The game is actually split between the 3DS and the Wii U, with the latter being released on November 21. But does the 3DS version live up to the hype?
For those of you that are not familiar with Super Smash Bros., it’s a series of fighting games pitting Nintendo’s best and brightest stars in a battle royale. Instead of relying on a traditional health meter, the opponent accumulates a damage percentage as they are attacked. The more the damage percentage rises, the more knockback moves cause. Whoever can force their opponent off the stage is the winner. This series is one of the most praised in the industry, pairing easy to learn controls with a surprisingly deep fighting system.
This installment might be the most polished entry in the series. Its 51 characters are a lot more varied and fresh, yet more balanced than in earlier entries. There is no one dominating character and no one character that is too weak to use. The combat adds more visual and audio cues, such as a slipstream effect on punches, as well as tweaked character animations to help indicate the trajectory of attacks. Most of the returning characters from past series retain the move sets they had in the previous entries, but the moves have been upgraded so that they have more utility.
The game does offer some good customization elements. Each character can have up to three variations for each of their four special moves. And you can equip items that raise one stat while lowering another. There’s also a fighter based on the Nintendo Miis, so you can make a Mii to represent yourself and even dress it up in costumes. It gets very addicting and fun to combine different sets and tweak stats so that they’re just right.
There are a large number of things to do other than have standard matches. Classic mode, a series staple, has you go through a variety of different matches with different characters before fighting a final boss. The classic mode in this entry is given a few more options to spice it up. When you raise the difficulty, you bet more coins to get a better chance of receiving more rewards.
There’s also All-Star Mode, another series staple since Melee. In this mode, you fight all of the characters in a series of matches with only one life. This time you can start it right away without unlocking all of the characters. If you do unlock all of the characters, you’ll unlock the True All-Star mode and be able to fight all of them instead of just fighting the starting roster.
There’s also the home run contest, where you rack up damage with a sandbag and then hit it as far as you can, and the multi-man melee, where you fight a ton of weak Mii characters. Both of those events were staples since Melee, but there’s a new event called Target Blast. In this mode, you rack up damage on a bomb and then send it flying towards a bunch of targets and buildings much like “Angry Birds.”
But the big new event, and the one exclusive to the 3DS version, is Smash Run. In this mode, your customized characters are put into a very large map. You have to then take down a bunch of enemies, from Koopa Troopas to Octorocks, and collect the stat boosting items that they drop. After five minutes, your newly invigorated fighter is pitted against other fighters in a match with randomized rules.
The visuals on the 3DS are surprisingly great. I was expecting to have trouble seeing my characters on my tiny 3DS screen, but I had no trouble at all due to the darkened outlines of the characters and the brighter color palette. Although the character models tend to look a bit blocky at times, everything runs at a smooth 60 frames per second. The characters you summon from pokéballs and assist trophies run at 30 frames per second however, but it doesn’t seem to affect gameplay at all.
This should be a perfect game, but it’s unfortunately hindered by a variety of problems. First of all, it does take some getting used to playing on the 3DS. The circle pad, while good enough, has a tendency to be inaccurate when imputing the trajectory of moves. Also, playing on my small regular 3DS gave me hand cramps after playing for long sessions. However, this might not be as much of a problem on the bigger 3DS XL and even the 2DS.
Despite all of the options and events that you have at your disposal, including collectible trophies and the aforementioned customization options, there’s a lot of things that feel missing. I would have loved to further tweak the settings for regular matches other than just changing what items appear. It would be great to have a slow-motion, giant character match or any other combination to spice up the action every once in a while. Also, the other Melee staples, namely a true Adventure mode, the Event mode, and even the fully animated intro are all missing, and the void it leaves is very noticeable.
A lot of people complained that Smash Run has no online multiplayer, but I think it’s for the best. Not only is it more fun when you actually have friends around, but the online capabilities are a bit pathetic even for Nintendo standards. There has been many times where I waited too long for a match to actually get started. And when it did start, the bits of lag every now and then was almost too disruptive. Which is bad considering that even though it has a separate server for people who want high level play, the lag makes it nearly impossible.
Again, the game that we get is very polished, challenging, accessible, and fun with a lot of replay value. But it’s unfortunately held back by the hardware. It feels more like a means to tide you over till the release of the Wii U version, rather than an equally engrossing substitute for people who don’t own a Wii U. But because it’s on a handheld, that makes it easier than ever before to get a group of friends together, which is where Smash truly shines. So despite the problems, it’s still worth every penny and every 3DS owner should go out and get it.
Rating: 8/10