Super Smash Bros Wii U and 3DS: Info Collection - Dojo, Mega Man and Trailer! 2014!

Even though I rag on Brawl, I did play it for a long time. (290 hours)

However it doesn't remotely compare to my Melee playtime, which has over 900 hours of playtime.

I won't say that melee is outright better than Brawl, but it definitely had a bigger impact on me. (I can't even count how many times i've completed adventure mode)

EDIT: The removal of hitstun (or to be more accurate, the "changing" of hitsun) did not make the game more strategic. It only ended up limiting characters who relied on combos to do damage (hi Mario) and benefiting characters who could easily string together moves together (Metaknight)
 
Aeriscloud said:
You're right, because it wasn't greater.



Online Matches
Online spectate
Sub Space Emissary
2 Player Subspace
Greater Roster
Stage Building
Stickers, More Trophies
New Mini games
New and improved challenges
Better score
More Stages
3 ways to control characters
Text Taunts
Ike
Meta Knight
Snake
Diddy Kong
R.O.B.
Wario
Olimar
Lucario
Not Sonic
Pokemon Trainer
Wolf
Toon Link
King DeDeDe
Lucas
ZSS
Assist Trophies
More Pokemon
More, More.
Click to expand...
I should have been more careful with my words, I meant to ask what makes Brawl a better fighting game than Melee.

Look at it from the competitive standpoint (both in friendlies and tournament level), many of those things aren't even relevant:

Online Matches lag being location dependant & unpredictable
Online spectate useful albeit rarely used, and unused outside of tourney level
Sub Space Emissary singleplayer aspect adding nothing to gameplay (aside from unlocking characters)
2 Player Subspace secondary to FFA/Teams and not 4P
Greater Roster - I'll accept this one, albeit it's subjective to which new characters added interesting balance to the game's matchups and mechanics
Stage Building barebones, rarely in friendies and unused in tourneys/serious play
Stickers, More Trophies extra collectibles adding nothing to gameplay
New Mini games same as above, no gameplay effect
New and improved challenges albeit fun, similar to SSE's singleplayer limitation
Better score - music is nice (although it adds nothing to the gameplay)
More Stages - a plus in friendlies and at tourney level cuz of the added tourney-legal starters/counterpicks adding variety
3 ways to control characters - useful although majority of yourney level players use GCNpads
Text Taunts fun, yet no gameplay addition
Ike
Meta Knight
Snake
Diddy Kong
R.O.B.
Wario
Olimar
Lucario
Not Sonic
Pokemon Trainer
Wolf
Toon Link
King DeDeDe
Lucas
ZSS All of the new characters are included above in "greater roster" many are unbalanced/broken in vanilla brawl, at least 3-4 are barely-decent clones, but few actaully add to the gameplay variety and matchups of the Melee veterans in a balanced way.
Assist Trophies fun in friendlies(items off in most serious play), unused in tourneys
More Pokemon fun in friendlies(items off in most serious play), unused in tourneys

Most of those things listed don't add anything to what makes Brawl a better fighting game over Melee.

My point is, there's a slew of advanced techniques and parts of the game engine/physics and individual characters that were broken, nerfed, or missing from Melee to Brawl that took away from the game at it's core when GAMEPLAY is concerned.

Why are most serious players playing Melee over Brawl at tournaments, and more recently, why are they enjoying Project M over vanilla Brawl? Because they all want brawl to be what it should have been, an enhancement to Melee's technical gameplay and depth, not a neutering of it.

EDIT: The lesson here is that SSB4 needs to get the gameplay right and lean towards Melee's more advanced and deep gameplay system over the unbalanced infinite moves and lax gameplay that Brawl breeds. If SSB4 can suceed at gameplay first, I coudl care less if it has a singleplayer, trophies, mini games, stage creation, or any other Singleplayer fluff. This is especially considering that most of the time in Smash games is spent in FFA/Teams over Singleplayer.
 
This discussion about Melee vs Brawl makes me very curious about how people will feel about the balance Sakurai is talking about between the two. I guess it'll either make everyone happy for the perfect balance or piss everyone off for catering neither to the competitive nor the casual.

I played both Melee and Brawl religiously, and while I agree Melee is fantastic for competitive play, I found myself generally having more fun with Brawl. I guess because it is so approachable by people of all skill levels, people who aren't nearly as into video games as I am could whip my ass and it made for good fun.

Really, I think comparing Brawl and Melee is really trite because they are just so different on many levels.
 
Tookay said:
I'd argue that combos force you to consider strategic platforming even more by aiding you with opportunities to attack and follow up for good placement and punishing you for not factoring in the environment effectively in your strategy.

Lowered hit-stun decreases the risk/reward of that decision-making by resetting character advantages and placement after every blow.
Click to expand...

This is coming from someone who was always a mid-tier Melee player (and I mean really mid tier, not average which would be way down to really low tier) who was much more successful in Brawl, but in my opinion, the pros outweight the cons.

I always saw the Brawl vs. Melee arguments essentially falling into two camps. Either you felt Brawl severely nerfed the competitive aspects of Melee or Brawl was retooled to be a much more balanced fighter (with the exception of Metaknight who pretty much broke the game). I personally feel the latter is more true.

While combos can be really cool in Melee, I agree with Sakurai that Melee was a bit too hardcore focused. For me, getting caught up in seemingly endless combos felt too punishing and I was often frustrated when playing my friend who mained Fox. This is also why I grew tired of MvC3 and stopped playing that game online altogether after about 3 months. In Melee, it was very easy to get caught in a punishing combo chain and then edge guarded until you lost a stock. Yeah, I realize that describes much of high level play in Melee, but personally I wasn't as big of a fan of it. I felt much more competitive in Brawl, even among really skilled players, and it was much easier to escape and use the level to your advantage. Games far less frequently became endless series of edge guarding exchanges. I eventually got really tired of that in Melee.

Of course, there were other big fumbles that really hurt Brawl's competitive scene. Metaknight literally broke the game and tripping was probably the worst change ever made in such a mega-franchise. I still have a hard time saying which I enjoyed more, Brawl or Melee. I would probably say Brawl's competitive aspects were nerfed a bit too far and that it could have been improved with a bit more hitstun but I don't think Melee trounces it just because it was much easier to combo/juggle.
 
rekameohs said:
Maybe I'm weird but I love all of the Super Smash Bros. games
Click to expand...

I liked all of them as well, but to be honest I played them casually and didn't care about the mechanics. It didn't matter to me whether Melee had more hitstun or Brawl was more floaty. That's why I wonder if Brawl's mechanics really made it more fun for casuals. People who are just mashing around will have fun regardless of what the mechanics are, and people will always lose to more skilled players.
 
Freezie KO said:
They're similar in a lot of ways too. They're both fighting games. Both feature an all-star cast of Nintendo characters. Neither one has an online mode.
Click to expand...

Brawl had an online mode, also friend-codes count...

And BTW to those curious, I'm a backer of Project M and it's movement. I think the development team's goal of making every character tournament viable, is admirable and certainly welcome considering they worked so hard to re-balance the whole roster. Giving melee veteran chars their old moves and physics back with a few tweaks to help against the brawl generation of chars, while balancing the brawl gen to a Melee-esqe standard.

It's my main brawl variant at this point, I'll never play vanilla Brawl, ever again.
 
guek said:
This is coming from someone who was always a mid-tier Melee player (and I mean really mid tier, not average which would be way down to really low tier) who was much more successful in Brawl, but in my opinion, the pros outweight the cons.

I always saw the Brawl vs. Melee arguments essentially falling into two camps. Either you felt Brawl severely nerfed the competitive aspects of Melee or Brawl was retooled to be a much more balanced fighter (with the exception of Metaknight who pretty much broke the game). I personally feel the latter is more true.

While combos can be really cool in Melee, I agree with Sakurai that Melee was a bit too hardcore focused. For me, getting caught up in seemingly endless combos felt too punishing and I was often frustrated when playing my friend who mained Fox. This is also why I grew tired of MvC3 and stopped playing that game online altogether after about 3 months. In Melee, it was very easy to get caught in a punishing combo chain and then edge guarded until you lost a stock. Yeah, I realize that describes much of high level play in Melee, but personally I wasn't as big of a fan of it. I felt much more competitive in Brawl, even among really skilled players, and it was much easier to escape and use the level to your advantage. Games far less frequently became endless series of edge guarding exchanges. I eventually got really tired of that in Melee.

Of course, there were other big fumbles that really hurt Brawl's competitive scene. Metaknight literally broke the game and tripping was probably the worst change ever made in such a mega-franchise. I still have a hard time saying which I enjoyed more, Brawl or Melee. I would probably say Brawl's competitive aspects were nerfed a bit too far and that it could have been improved with a bit more hitstun but I don't think Melee trounces it just because it was much easier to combo/juggle.
Click to expand...

I say this as a mid-tier Melee player maining a bottom-tier character (Link) that Melee felt more satisfying to me. There were times I would get trounced, but it always felt fair to me because I screwed up. The hits had an appropriate weight to them that made you consider your own timing and placement and didn't cheapen your (great or poor) decision-making by resetting the playing field after every attack.

I think Brawl is a couple tweaks away from greatness. It's just that its changes went too far and killed a lot of viable older characters. In general, it feels like a lot of 64 cast did not fit in with the movesets and advantages of Brawl's characters and fighting engine. And despite its claims of accessibility, a lot of the new cast was really abstract and broke away from some of the traditional uses of A-button/B-button attacks, like they had been designed out of a completely different philosophy than 64/Brawl.

I can see how somebody has fun with it, but after hundreds of hours playing with friends throughout college who loved it more than me, I think it's pretty shallow, in a way that wasn't intended.
 
I personally found Brawl to be better simply because outside of physics, it did everything better.

Which is why Project M was a huge disappointment - it could have fixed Brawl, but instead it became fanboy drivel.
 
I don't think it's nice dismissing Brawl's competitive scene just because Melee is arguably a more execution intensive game. There is high level play in Brawl, there are tournaments with a ton of players, there's money to be made and fun to be had. I don't get Why people need to bash the game they like the least - SFIII will play SFIII, SSFIV players will play SSFIV.
 
Tookay said:
I say this as a mid-tier Melee player maining a bottom-tier character (Link) that Melee felt more satisfying to me. There were times I would get trounced, but it always felt fair to me because I screwed up. The hits had an appropriate weight to them that made you consider your own timing and placement and didn't cheapen your (great or poor) decision-making by resetting the playing field after every attack.

I think Brawl is a couple tweaks away from greatness. It's just that its changes went too far and killed a lot of viable older characters. In general, it feels like a lot of 64 cast did not fit in with the movesets and advantages of Brawl's characters and fighting engine.

I can see how somebody has fun with it, but after hundreds of hours playing with friends throughout college who loved it more than me, I think it's pretty shallow, in a way that wasn't always intended.
Click to expand...

Hah! I mained Link in Melee too! But I eventually had to begrudgingly switch to Captain Falcon because Link in Melee suuuuuuuuucks. SUCKS, man. He is DOGSHIT.

And maybe the fact that Toon Link is so much better in Brawl comparatively is why I enjoyed it so much, I'm not sure. I don't think Brawl was flawless at all, and I'd wholeheartedly echo the "couple tweaks from greatness" remark. Ultimately I ended up playing Brawl far less than Melee but I don't know whether or not that was just due to circumstance. It's certainly the better party game imo, but I wouldn't label it shallow. There is a happy medium between Brawl and Melee that'd blow our minds that I really hope Sakurai finds.
 
Cuban Legend said:
EDIT: The lesson here is that SSB4 needs to get the gameplay right and lean towards Melee's more advanced and deep gameplay system over the unbalanced infinite moves and lax gameplay that Brawl breeds. If SSB4 can suceed at gameplay first, I coudl care less if it has a singleplayer, trophies, mini games, stage creation, or any other Singleplayer fluff. This is especially considering that most of the time in Smash games is spent in FFA/Teams over Singleplayer.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but Sakurai isn't building a game for the tournament scene. I've said it earlier in this thread, not everyone has access to tournament play. The majority of people who will be buying both versions are not tournament players. Others do care about "Single Player fluff."
 
Rm88~ said:
I don't get Why people need to bash the game they like the least - SFIII will play SFIII, SSFIV players will play SSFIV.
Click to expand...

Here's where we differ: I don't get why people need to be offended when someone bashes a game they like the least. Especially when they articulate their reasons why they like it the least.

It is after all a game. And this is a discussion forum. Breaking down why we think certain ways should be applauded.

What I "don't get" is when people who prefer Melee are stereotyped into being nutjobs or elitist tournament-players just because they have an opinion over a game. I don't see that coming from Melee fans towards Brawl players. I don't try to ascribe ulterior motives to them for why they have their preferences or discredit their point-of-view because of those preferences.

And I understand that there may be a certain fatigue among the internet community over this "Brawl v. Melee" discussion, because it's been going on since 2008. But that doesn't give people carte blanche to engage in strawmen or actively denigrate posters instead of arguing games. And I'm not really saying that you're part of this group, it's just that your post is sort of a launching point for something that's worth mentioning.
 
Tookay said:
What I don't like is when people who prefer Melee are stereotyped into being nutjobs or elitist tournament-players just because they have an opinion over a game. I don't see that coming from Melee fans towards Brawl players.

And I get that there may be a certain fatigue among the internet community over this discussion, because it's been going on since 2008. But that doesn't give people carte blanche to engage in strawmen or actively denigrate posters instead of arguing games. And I'm not really arguing that you're part of this group, but it's a point that's worth mentioning.
Click to expand...

I do, and I have seen that, but I agree with your sentiment. People like what they like.
 
guek said:
There is a happy medium between Brawl and Melee that'd blow our minds that I really hope Sakurai finds.
Click to expand...

I agree and that's why I remain somewhat hopeful, although a lot of what we've seen so far indicates it hewing closer to Brawl than Melee (which may be agreeable for some, but is disappointing for me).
 
Boss Doggie said:
I personally found Brawl to be better simply because outside of physics, it did everything better.

Which is why Project M was a huge disappointment - it could have fixed Brawl, but instead it became fanboy drivel.
Click to expand...

I dunno. I actually think that brawl's single player modes (SSE, classic, event mode and allstar) were inferior to Melee's single player modes

Cuban Legend said:
But it can by being an evolution of brawl, like it was to melee? don't kid me, bro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HbLvZpHkYg&feature=c4-overview&list=UUQXmSkRf_Hkf3-fw43q6s1w

HYPE RISING.
Click to expand...

So this is what having multiple orgasms in a row feels like.
 
I prefer 64 over Melee too. But again, I love them all pretty much equally and I don't need them to be the same, I'm fine with this game trying its own thing.
 
Aeriscloud said:
I'm sorry, but Sakurai isn't building a game for the tournament scene. I've said it earlier in this thread, not everyone has access to tournament play. The majority of people who will be buying both versions are not tournament players. Others do care about "Single Player fluff."
Click to expand...

He might not be building it to be played at tournaments, every game has it's ranks of players, casuals, regulars and enthusiasts...but the truth is sad:

The vocal minority of smash enthusiasts, play at a serious/tournament ruleset/level.
The cash-flowing majority of smash casuals/regulars who will BUY SSB4 won't play with tourney rulesets, even less will be tourney enthusiasts.

  • For a fighting game to succeed in the serious/tourney community, the enthusiast must be satiated with depth of gameplay over it;s predecessor- Melee did this.
  • For it to succeed in the mainstream, it can break depth and limit the skill gap to be more 'accessible' over it's predecessor - Brawl did this.
  • For it SSB4 be perfect, it has to be deeply technical for enthusiasts while having casual accessibility without limiting the enthusiasts - (easy to learn, difficult to master is the idea here) - SSB4 needs to do this.

And btw, being someone who plays with Tourney Rulesets with other local friends, and being someone who plays at a high level in competitive Tournaments are two different things. Someone can appreciate the purity of tourney rulesets without ever setting foot in an actual tournament or even mastering the gameplay. I am such a person, and my friends are better smash players for it, thanks to Project M w/tourney rulesets easing them into a more freeing level of gameplay reminiscent of Melee while keeping Brawl as the base of the game.
 
Tookay said:
I agree and that's why I remain somewhat hopeful, although a lot of what we've seen so far indicates it hewing closer to Brawl than Melee (which may be agreeable for some, but is disappointing for me).
Click to expand...

I think visual evidence can only lead us so far. Once we get our hands on it, we'll know what's what.
 
New pic:
yQ5hPp2.jpg
 
Daily reminder that gyroids are ghosts/undead/old humans that died during the great "Crossing War", thus making humans endangered.
 
Anyone disappointed with the graphics? Looks good but not as good as I thought it would. The leap is about as big as melee ta brawl, n that was on about 1.5x stronger hardware
 
FUNKNOWN iXi said:
Smash 64 is incredibly fun and flies under the radar. It's probably because of Melee's timing, 64 didn't have enough space/time to shine.
Click to expand...

Definitely. 64 is very underappreciated. Also has the best Ness, Kirby and Pikachu.

FreeMufasa said:
Anyone disappointed with the graphics? Looks good but not as good as I thought it would. The leap is about as big as melee ta brawl, n that was on about 1.5x stronger hardware
Click to expand...

Well, you have to take into consideration that it has up to four characters in a single given time, as well as backgrounds, so there should be focus equally.
 
Azure Dream said:
It'd be nice if they changed the city to match AC New Leaf. (No GracieGrace, for example.) They changed Nook to match in the CG trailer, after all.
Click to expand...

My theory is that the Wii U version takes inspiration from City Folk and the 3DS version from New Leaf.

Jackano said:
What's that? Yellow Final Fantasy cactus thing?
Click to expand...

Gyroids. A figurine (of many different shapes and sorts) that makes different sort of creepy noises.
 
It's a little sad people genuinely still think the 3DS version won't be happening. Stop trying to make it not happen. It's going to happen. And it'll be happening.

And I can play Smash on the bus and not shell out monies for a Wii U
 
FreeMufasa said:
Anyone disappointed with the graphics? Looks good but not as good as I thought it would. The leap is about as big as melee ta brawl, n that was on about 1.5x stronger hardware
Click to expand...

Nope. The stages are all using the aesthetics from their particular game series though, so people may mistake that for poor graphics. The character models though are all spectacular
 
Tookay said:
Here's where we differ: I don't get why people need to be offended when someone bashes a game they like the least. Especially when they articulate their reasons why they like it the least.

It is after all a game. And this is a discussion forum. Breaking down why we think certain ways should be applauded.

What I "don't get" is when people who prefer Melee are stereotyped into being nutjobs or elitist tournament-players just because they have an opinion over a game. I don't see that coming from Melee fans towards Brawl players. I don't try to ascribe ulterior motives to them for why they have their preferences or discredit their point-of-view because of those preferences.

And I understand that there may be a certain fatigue among the internet community over this "Brawl v. Melee" discussion, because it's been going on since 2008. But that doesn't give people carte blanche to engage in strawmen or actively denigrate posters instead of arguing games. And I'm not really saying that you're part of this group, it's just that your post is sort of a launching point for something that's worth mentioning.
Click to expand...
At least once per time in numerous Smash threads leading up to E3 you'd have somebody demanding Sakurai be banned from the franchise and at least a few others lamenting how shit Brawl was, even though it's pretty obvious it has a similarly large if not larger fanbase that like it for different reasons (since I'm not going to pretend it's somehow remotely as competent a fighter as Melee is). That's something I can pretty easily Google search through GAF and bring up if you don't believe me too. I know there's similarly obnoxious people even in this thread going on about how elitist Melee fans are without any real provocation (I guess besides that one guy flat out 'challenging' people to argue why Brawl is better than Melee), but acting mystified as to why there's hostility in the first place seems like almost intentional nativity in my opinion.

Both sides of the debate present themselves poorly overall in a ton of different circumstances while caricturising each other with increasingly half-arsed strawmen in an attempt to belittle somebody they don't even know online over how they play their cartoon nintendo fighting party games. I don't think either side comes out looking better than the other ultimately.
 
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