Prior to playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl, I had no experience with the series. I had often heard of Brawl tournaments, but I was intimidated by the frenzy and skills of the dedicated fans.

However, there was one tournament that I chose to attend. At GDC, one of my fellow volunteers (CAs) had brought a Japanese Wii with a copy of Brawl. This was before the game’s release, and I thought it would be worth checking out the game, even if it was just for educational purposes. Soon we had a tournament, with rounds scheduled in the evenings. I signed up to play a round, even though I knew that I had no shot at winning.

During the few minutes that I played, I felt that I was given a crash course in crowd dynamics and the real spirit of Smash Bros. While there was some skill involved, a lot of the game seemed to be based on chance and being in the right place at the right time. The controls aren’t very refined, but there are a few things you can do to gain an advantage, such as getting power-ups. The crowd added a whole new dimension to play, as they would cheer when someone did major damage. The crowd also helped me when I got a smash ball by shouting “Press B!” I was playing as Samus, and it was great fun to unleash the Zero Suit version from the bulky armor.

I never bought Brawl, but I have had the chance to play the localized version with my friends. I tried out the co-op mode with one friend, which turned out to be more frustrating than fun. When playing in co-op mode, you only get the number of lives as you would on single player mode. This seems fair until playing through the levels, where enemies are all over the screen and it actually becomes easier to die with a partner taking up prime strategic locations on the screen. It’s much harder to avoid certain ranged attacks, so lives seem to disappear faster.

I played group melee mode with a few different friends. It’s tough to be a beginner because I had little chance of winning, but I felt that I could improve my chances by sticking with certain dependable characters like Pikachu. The skill gap still makes it a bit difficult to have fun (for a sustained period of time), but there is the option of teaming up in melee. I found that it was a lot more fun when I was helping a friend instead of fighting against them.

I didn’t play much of the other modes, but I did watch other friends play. One friend complained about the single-player mode, claiming that the levels were poorly designed so many features were frustrating. When I observed the levels, I began to see how some tricky areas of the levels depended more on chance than skill to get through, such as an area where enemies would continually freeze you because of the way they were lined up.

There were a few elements of this game that really bothered me. First, the sounds were incredibly annoying when you weren’t watching or playing the game. The sound effects were short and repetitive. Characters such as Pikachu with odd voices got on my nerves fast if I wasn’t involved in the game. The pace of the game itself is hyper like the sounds, with changing environments and fast moves. However, the controls can seem slow to respond due to set animation loops, so it leads to impatience on the part of the player. Also, there seemed to be a lot of useless features, such as being able to arrange and photograph trophies or make a virtual scrapbook with stickers. While these features may have appealed more to a Japanese market, it seems a ridiculous waste of time and resources to me when the single-player levels could’ve used more refinement.

While Super Smash Bros. Brawl does come with a few neat features, such as building your own levels, it seems to have a lot of frustrating elements in single-player mode and other areas of the game. It is certainly strongest in the group melee modes, but that comes as no surprise, given the proportion of time players will spend on that mode. It seems that this game could’ve benefited from a better allocation of resources by cutting a few single-player levels or additional features that seem to detract from an otherwise decent fighting game.