So my friend Marianne told me that she would no longer be my friend if I didn’t play Super Smash Bros. Brawl. She assured me that it is the greatest game ever, and I would instantly like it. I picked up a copy from the library, and…
It is just me, or does SSBB suck? I mean, it really sucks. I don’t know how you can defend it as a playable game, much less the greatest game of all time.
Now I want to write a Ten Reasons column trashing the game. Here’s a preliminary version of that column for you…
1. The Title: Who are the Smash Brothers, anyway? Are they characters in the game or what?
2. No Training Mode: The game throws you into fights, expecting you to already know how to play. And since I don’t, I lose. Wait…hold on a second, I’m getting a message from Smash Brothers fans…what’s that? The game does have a training mode? In that case, I want…
3. A Training Mode That Doesn’t Suck: The training mode in this game pits you in a ring with a computer-controlled character who doesn’t do anything. That’s not a real training mode! A real training mode teaches the player that A = Punch, B = Kick and so on. Jeez.
4. Single Player Mode Confuses Me: I heard rave reviews of the Single Player Mode and its fantastic story, and I am forced to conclude that I must be playing the wrong game because the single player mode I played for a few hours makes no sense whatsoever. All I can tell is that the bad guys are turning people into chess pieces, which is bad, apparently. Then I get forced to pick a random character and plough through levels, fighting bad guys for no understandable reason. Who are these bad guys? Where are my characters going? Why doesn’t anyone ever TALK? Am I playing the wrong single player mode or something?
5. The Music: The music is pretty good, actually. I recognized the Jungle Japes theme music in the Donkey Kong stage. Cool.
6. Pit: Who the heck is Pit? Is he supposed to be an angel? Or is he an updated version of Kid Icarus or something?
7. The Fighting System: Boy, oh boy, is this fighting system confusing. I know you’re supposed to be able to pull off cool moves and combos, but…yeah, random button mashing works just as good. In fact, it’s all random button pushing for me, because I can’t tell how to use any of the moves. Maybe this is another complaint about the lack of a proper training mode, actually…
8. What’s Up With Percentages? They have a percentage number for each character at the bottom of the screen. What does that mean, just out of curiousity? I thought it represented health/damage, but you can go past 100%. How can you take more than 100% damage? I’m confused again.
Right, so that’s all I can think of so far. What do you guys think? Should I expand this into a The Ten Reasons for next month? Or should I be burned at the stake for even daring to insult this game? Let me know!
