The Globe and Mail

• Reviewed on:

  Nintendo Wii

• Also available for:

  N/A
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• The Good:

  A superb party game for players of all skill levels that includes a fun single player mode and more than enough unlockable content to keep any Nintendo fan happy for months

• The Bad:

  Doesn't improve on any of the problems the series is famous for (floaty controls, random outcomes) and suffers crippled online functionality due to Nintendo's ridiculous online strategy

• The Verdict:

  For any Nintendo fanboy there is arguably no better game available on the Wii right now, particularly if you've got enough controllers to share the experience with friends
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This week I watched as Mario, without mercy, beat Princess Peach around the head, body, and legs with a baseball bat until she could barely grip onto the edge of a dangerous precipice in the Mushroom Kingdom. The second she started to climb her way back up, without a moment's hesitation, he whacked her so hard in the face that she flew off into oblivion.

A little later, I placed bets with a group of other people on the outcome of a battle between a small blond boy, known only as Lucas, and a cheerful little monkey dressed up like a person. I didn't look away once while Lucas electrocuted the monkey over and over again, before finally setting him on fire to finish the job. (I'm ashamed to say I won a lot of money on that fight.)

You would imagine such a circus of horror would be greeted with revulsion by all and sundry and quickly denounced by Nintendo, but it's actually the core of one of the most anticipated games of last year: Super Smash Bros. Brawl. A gleefully bizarre cross-over fighting game featuring characters from all of Nintendo's prestige franchises (and even some from other companies) I'm joking when I portray it as dark; the game is pure slapstick. Even after being set on fire, exploded, electrocuted, squashed and just plain pummelled every character is smiling happily in preparation for the next battle.

SUPER SUMO BROS.

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, Super Smash Bros. isn't so much a fighting game as it is a cross between a platform game with sumo — up to four players compete on levels (from a selection of 41 in Brawl) with a variety of effects, from simple scrolling on the Jungle Japes stage to a continually redrawn landscape on the (genius) Pictochat stage, and attempt to defeat their opponent by causing them as much damage as possible before performing a "smash move" to blast them off the stage. While this all occurs, power-ups including everything from hammers to pokeballs drop onto the stage allowing the balance of power to shift wildly.

The Super Smash Bros. series has always been a chaotic party game, and Brawl is no different. Players who have disliked the series as a result won't find enough of a change here to come back to it, but for players (including myself) who have sat on the fence, never quite sure if they liked it or not, there's more than enough in Super Smash Bros. Brawl to convert you to its side.

WI-FI WOES

To get the negatives out of the way, Super Smash Bros. main problem has always been the relative "floatyness" of the controls. Using the analogue stick rather than a d-pad has meant that pulling off moves is never quite as rewardingly definite as you could hope, and certain design decisions (such as a major differentiation between moves performed by holding or tapping the stick) acerbate the problem. Nintendo offer 4 different methods of control, but the only one to use digital control (use of the Wii Remote only) is unfortunately crippled in other respects.

The only other problem isn't so much the fault of the game as it is of Nintendo's own conscious decision to cripple the online functionality of the Wii. While Super Smash Bros. Brawl has a (barely) acceptable method for online brawls against anonymous opponents, playing against friends requires the use of yet another Friend Code, making even just keeping a list of friends utterly tedious (never mind trying to arrange games).

A FANBOY'S DREAM

But the online segment is only one part of a huge amount of content packed into the title. Super Smash Bros. Brawl has 34 characters (most with wildly different move sets) and multiple modes for both solo- and multi- play, not least the Subspace Emmissary, a full "story mode" for one or two players which features an surprising amount of cut-scenes written with the help of Final Fantasy scenario writer Kazushige Nojima.

A strange sort of combination of traditional Super Smash Bros. game play and series creator Masahiro Sakurai's previous Kirby platform games, the floaty control means the platforming heavy parts are a little more frustrating than I'd like but it's an entertaining ride.

When you add the absolutely absurd amount of "fan service" collectables to be found during play (using a clever rip-off of the Xbox's achievements as impetus) including detailed statues and stickers that can be arranged and photographed in dioramas (!) for any Nintendo fanboy there is arguably no better game available on the Wii right now, particularly if you've got enough controllers to share the experience with friends.