It was a decent time, not as memorable or my favorite, especially since i believe Ultimate did everything better in it.

But regardless, love the new fighters in it, and the dlc reveals for it were hype, especially the Bayonetta one.

The 3DS version felt a little better tbh, it had the better single player modes.

It has some holes, but is altogether a very cohesive project. Smash has proven to be one of gaming pillars for how consistent it remains, even under the immense pressures the gaming industry puts on its workers. The mechanics are always on point, the stages are always creative, and the roster is deep and layered. Nothing is wasted, and everything is used to its full potential. It makes you wish other games would be more consistent. Although, sometimes some modes of the game turned out half baked, it still soars above most games.

It’s Brawl except with worse modes and Wii Fit Trainer.

I joke of course, it is actually pretty good.

It introduced online that actually functions and all the fighters introduced are great!

(Game pad usage 0 stars though)

A surge of existentialism washed over me when I first played the fourth Super Smash Bros. title during its release date back on November 21, 2014. I’ve commented in my reviews of the previous Smash Bros. games that every entry stamps a milestone of Nintendo’s history since the previous title was released on the former Nintendo console. Of course, six-and-a-half years since the release of Brawl on the Wii isn’t just a lengthy swathe of time reserved for Nintendo to advance their IPs and introduce new ones. Time is a constant that alters the circumstances of the world for everyone. Back in March of 2008 when Brawl finally saw the light of day, I was but a pre-teen boy in the sixth grade, the perfect age demographic to anticipate the next Super Smash Bros to the point where it was infiltrating my dreams. When the fourth Smash Bros. game emerged to represent the Wii’s successor on the aforementioned date in my first sentence, I was 18, almost 19, nearing the Thanksgiving break portion of my first semester of college. I became a legal adult that year and realized how my time as a teenager had all but passed since Brawl became an encapsulating source of joy as a twelve-year-old. My pubescent years were formative to how I perceived the world. I was a completely different person when Smash 4 came out, and the prominent sense of cynicism I had adopted during the growing pains of adolescence had affected my gaming habits. For two years of high school, until I graduated, I practically left the gaming world behind in favor of indulging in other interests of mine such as music and film. My intention in sharing this revelation is that I assumed that Nintendo’s brand had evolved at the same rate of rapidity as my life. New releases from Nintendo hadn’t been a concern of mine since I purchased an Xbox 360 in 2009 and joined my friends in the expletive-filled trenches of online gaming and Nintendo Power became a glad-hand, corporate shill of its former self. Upon playing Smash 4, I expected that I’d be alienated by all of the new Nintendo content the game would be highlighting and that playing it would serve as an educational tool for all that was trendy with Nintendo. Sadly enough, Smash 4 rather conveyed to me that poor Nintendo was experiencing a dry spell and only a crumb of the content represented was unfamiliar to me. Still, at this point, Nintendo could supplement their fallow streak of tepid splashes in the gaming zeitgeist by scrounging up a wider array from gaming’s past.

Can I just take a moment to express my utter disgust at the fourth entry’s name? Instead of continuing the pattern of finding synonyms for melee to convey how rambunctious the bouts between Nintendo’s characters are, the developers opted for a god-awful pun that will never hesitate to make my tongue shudder upon saying it. I’d snarkily ask how hard it is to find a thesaurus (quarrel, skirmish; I’d be over the hill if the game was called Super Smash Bros. Donnybrook.), but really; I admit that “Smash 4…” may be an appropriate title from a practical standpoint. The corny wordplay is actually used to differentiate between the console release of Smash 4 on the Wii U and the handheld version of the game on the 3DS. Yes, Smash 4’s greatest point of innovation is that one finally could kick the shit out of Sonic as Mario (or vice versa) while on their morning commute, during a hearty bowel movement, or if they’re feeling reasonably antisocial around a family reunion. In the time that I had turned my head away from Nintendo, what astounded me when I shifted my gaze back was that a handheld system could competently support a Super Smash Bros. game in its three-dimensional splendor. As novel as a mobile Smash Bros. game is, I ultimately decided on the console version because the impetus to purchase every subsequent Nintendo console is based entirely on its Super Smash Bros. entry (for me at least). That’s why the Wii U version is also going to serve as the base for this review. While sticking with the blocky piece of hardware that is confined to a home television isn’t as hip or convenient, rendering any game on a console as opposed to a handheld is always going to come with a few nifty perks. For one, Smash 4 on the Wii U is the first game in the series depicted in glossy HD, truly a landmark feature that ushers it into the modern age of gaming. Obviously, high definition helps all of the characters we adore shine like diamonds, especially since Brawl had adopted that murkier shade that seemingly plagued every game in its generation. On top of that, the developers decided not to let the natural 720p visual fidelity simply speak for itself, as they rendered Smash 4’s graphics with cel-shading. Like with most video games rendered in this animated aesthetic, Smash 4 looks lively and effervescent. One cannot discern every seam of Mario’s overalls anymore, but applying a realistic graphical tint to a game revolving around a collective of Nintendo’s cartoonish characters duking it out was always a misguided decision on Brawl’s part.

But the charming, buoyant visuals are but a mere perk of Smash 4. I think it goes without saying that the core aspect of Super Smash Bros. that causes fans to hyperventilate is the prospect of who is going to join the Smash Bros. roster among Nintendo’s revered cabinet of characters. As far as broadening the representation of a franchise that already exists within the Smash Bros. canon, everyone could figure that Mario and Pokemon would again be the highest priority for another character stimulus. Fan favorite fully evolved water starter Greninja from the (then) latest iteration of Pokemon games will now swiftly swing past unsuspecting combatants with his slippery, amphibian reflexes akin to the Japanese agents of ninjutsu his name alludes to. For Mario, Super Mario Galaxy offers its entry exclusive; the mother of the cosmos Rosalina, who is accompanied by one of her squishy Luma guardians she can use as an accessory for long-range damage. Technically, the implementation of the Koopalings hovering around in their mechanized clown cars as skins for Bowser’s legitimate son, Bowser Jr., swells Mario’s representation and the total roster with EIGHT characters. To my surprise, the preexisting franchise that exports (technically) its characters as prominently as Nintendo’s top-earning captains is Fire Emblem. If what was a Japanese-exclusive series merely represented in Melee as a lark or an eastern brag has surpassed its obscure status and has been promoted to an executive position among the likes of Mario and Pokemon in the time I was estranged from Nintendo, five total representatives in Smash Bros. seems like enough logical evidence to infer it. Anyways, the gender-neutral sorcerer Robin revels in summoning elemental spells to damage foes from a distance, while Lucina is essentially a gender-swapped Marth. I groan at the continued influx of clone characters seeping into Smash Bros. after I thought they had learned their lesson from Melee. Dr. Mario’s significant footnote as the first returning character to Smash 4 after a one-game absence conveys that they’ve learned absolutely nothing. At least Dark Pit, the edgy, mirror image foil to Kid Icarus’s protagonist, Pit, offers a noticeable level of variation on the saintly original. Speaking of Kid Icarus, the fully-characterized goddess Lady Palutena from Uprising extends the presence of her series as well, now that a new entry has given the series more than one personable character in the first place.

The slew of new characters that are bound to generate more excitement are ones that represent a deferred Nintendo IP, and the ones that the developers have chosen to further highlight their illustrious history range from essential to…interesting. The first trailer for Smash 4 saw a male villager from Animal Crossing snatching up Mario in his bug-catching net, and the representative from Nintendo’s homespun simulation series can be adjusted to several other shades of the avatar if the base male doesn’t fit your fancy. I can’t imagine anyone clamoring for a reminder of Nintendo’s whole peripheral fitness craze that came with the casual audience of the Wii, yet both the anemic male and female Wii Fit Trainer is here to pump you up and remind you to stretch your calf muscles. Representatives dug up from Nintendo’s archives are the plucky Little Mac from Punch-Out, as well as a combination of a familiar basset hound attached to a mallard as a combined duo called “Duck Hunt.” Shulk from Xenoblade Chronicles seems to be the sole representative from a franchise that debuted during the timespan between Brawl and Smash 4’s development, and his status as a proper Nintendo brand figure is debatable.

While digging deeper into Nintendo’s vault for some fresh faces is neat, Brawl showcased an exhilarating evolutionary aspect of the series by including Sonic and Solid Snake. The category of characters that fans expressed the greatest excitement for were the potential third-party gets, and Smash 4 has acquired two that rival the reputability of the ones from Brawl. Nintendo’s partnership with Bandai Namco for the task of developing Smash 4 practically calls for their mascot, Pac-Man, to enter the fray, and the 3D iteration seen in Pac-Man World is the choice depiction for the seminal, pie-shaped glutton. One of my wishlist characters, Mega Man, is the other gaming icon visiting from beyond the Nintendo pond, and his inclusion is the one announcement that sparked ecstatic feelings within me. I’m glad that Nintendo and Capcom have let bygones be bygones (look up “the Capcom five” for a quick laugh) and settled on an agreement to let their robot boy out to play, who is a requisite third-party pick as far as I’m concerned.

Because the roster is gargantuan at this point, Smash 4 unfortunately had to trim down some selections from the roster. The licensing rights for Solid Snake evidently expired, the afterthought of Wolf to include another villain wasn’t expanded upon, and the saddest omission is the Ice Climbers due to some technical discrepancies in the 3DS version. How else are the couple going to pay the bills if they’ve been axed from Smash Bros.? Deleting the trio of pokemon commanded by a Pokemon Trainer has been slimmed down to a solo Charizard, which is a commendable shift on all fronts. One might be wondering why I’ve neglected to mention a missing Lucas, who is probably absent so Nintendo can backpedal and create a Mandela effect for American audiences knowledgeable of Mother 3’s existence. The reality is that he’s merely unavailable on the base roster. Another innovation Smash 4 debuts is expanding the total number of playable characters beyond the confines of in-game unlockables to the realm of DLC, and Lucas soon became purchasable as supplemental content for a small fee. Suspending the brief absence of Lucas is certainly relieving, but I was really jazzed when the DLC granted both Mewtwo and Roy a second wind after I expected them to be indefinite Melee exclusives. But let’s be real here: the full potency of DLC is not limited to resurrecting old fighters. The possibilities of DLC content that made every fan erect with anticipation was the prospect of doubling, no, tripling the number of third-party characters. Firstly, Smash Bros. was practically the only crossover fighting series that Ryu from Street Fighter was denied entry from up until this point, so he’s a shoo-in. Cloud from Final Fantasy VII and “Dante in drag,” aka Bayonetta, are certainly bound to shock and awe. Concerning the unorthodox foreign guests invited to the shindig via DLC, I mentioned when speaking on Brawl that Nintendo seemed to neglect the movesets of both Sonic and Snake comparatively to their own flesh and blood IPs. Considering Cloud’s super move meter that the player can manually charge and Bayonetta’s slow motion counter maneuver with an incredibly long window of sluggishness for those entrapped, the developers overcompensated and put some serious juggernauts for Nintendo’s characters to watch out for. Oh, and I guess adding the therianthropic dragon Corrin also made for a neat DLC purchase, even if it means that Smash 4 will be bursting at the seams with Fire Emblem representatives.

The developers thought that both versions of Smash 4 sharing the exact amount of characters was an inalienable factor that should bond the two. Regarding the stages, however, the selections couldn’t have been any more dissimilar. Unfortunately, I think the Wii U version received the short end of the stick with its new stages. No, the Wii U version does not suffer because the developers proposed to create stages “based on console-related games” and “handheld titles” for each version respectively. Where the enhanced graphical power of a fully-fledged home console is a blessing for the Wii U version, the developer’s inability to restrain themselves from crafting stages that flaunt the superior hardware equally amounts to a curse. The majority of Smash 4’s stages on the Wii U are a collective of the busiest, bothersome, and bombastic 2D fighting arenas across the entire series. Firstly, a select few stages in Smash 4 bring out a colossal, antagonistic character related to the series the stage stems from, and their presence has designated their arenas as “boss stages.” Ridley, Metal Face, and my arch nemesis, The Yellow Devil, will join the player who tests their might in their domain like a yappy little mutt submitting to the alpha dog who bites them on the nape of the neck. Beneficial as these bosses can be, I can’t think of anything more distracting or unfair than an outlying contender introducing themselves with neutral stakes in the battle at hand. They supersede the element of a regular stage hazard to the point where they eclipse the bout entirely, and no one signs up for Smash Bros. to fight giant NPCs like its Monster Hunter. This isn’t to say that the other stages introduced in Smash 4 don’t include features that will prove fatal if the player isn’t fearfully cautious. The WarioWare-inspired stage “Gamer” emulates a common sensation of staying up past one’s bedtime as a child to covertly play games or engage in some other activity while the tension of being caught by a parental figure looms overhead. The arena is the room of the hyperactive video game savant 9-Volt, but the fighters are the ones who pay for his disobedience. His mother’s watchful gaze will stun anyone in its sight and deal out an inordinate amount of damage. The “Peckish Aristocrab” is sure to knock the block off of any contacting fighter in “Garden of Hope,” and the eclectic array of Pokemon types found in the “Kalos Pokemon League” will inconvenience everyone with their elemental abilities. As fervent as the opposition towards scrolling stages as the Smash Bros community has vocally expressed, the pervasive complaints have not halted the production of them for future Smash Bros. releases. I didn’t mind the scrolling stages in Melee, but now I regret not standing valiantly with my Smash brethren to protest Poke Floats and Icicle Mountain when they were relevant. Their scrolling stage offspring featured here in Smash 4 is significantly worse, unchecked by the developers as if they are totally unaware of how maligned these types of stages really are. PAC-Land is a faithful depiction of the arcade game of its namesake, but the journey through the three levels doesn’t exactly gel with the flow of combat in a fighting game. Likewise, taking the player on a grand tour of a Star Fox level in “Orbital Gate Assault” is fine and dandy rendered in the rail shooter genre, but the extreme firepower of an ongoing space battle encompassing both the foregrounds and background of the stage practically makes surviving the stage the objective. A Smash Bros. depiction of “The Great Cave Offensive” hides all pretenses of glorified stage gimmicks as the first legitimate novelty stage. Still, one doesn’t have to settle for Punch-Out’s “Boxing Ring” or the curved “Mario Galaxy” for a fight with no distractions to speak of. Somehow, the new implementation of the “omega stages” displays an understanding from the developers that Smash Bros. fans simply wish to duke it out on a still platform suspended over oblivion with a Smash Bros. franchise theme in the background as a wallpaper.

I didn’t make the correlation between Sakurai’s relationship with Kid Icarus: Uprising when I first played Smash 4. Upon playing Uprising for the first time last year, I stated in my review that the game was so exemplary that Kid Icarus should headline the next Smash Bros. game with the popular IPs serving as opening acts. Of course, this statement was somewhat glib because realistically, placing Kid Icarus front and center in a Smash Bros. game would’ve been career suicide for Sakurai. However, besides the gorgeous (and exceedingly large) Palutena’s temple immaculate enough to be the subject of a Sistine Chapel painting by one of the Italian Renaissance masters, Sakurai integrates features from his misunderstood bundle of joy into minor facets of Smash Bros. such as the items. The blustering Ore Club, the mannered X Bomb, and the handy back shield all appear from Pit’s sole 3D iteration to highlight Uprising’s existence. Smash 4 also includes Link’s Beetle and the Gust Bellows gadgets from Skyward Sword as complementary offensive tools, as they were arguably the most admirable aspect of that particular Zelda title. The charging Cucco chickens and bombchus from the respected, older Zelda titles also appear as items too. The chain of fireballs that rotate clockwise in Bowser’s Castle from the first Super Mario Bros. game is weaponized like a sword, the beehive the Villager unknowingly knocks out of trees in their Animal Crossing community will swarm fighters with irritating stings, and the Boss Galaga ship that sucked in the player’s ship in the classic Namco arcade title will abduct a fighter and carry them off-screen. Sakurai takes further opportunity to extend the occupancy of Kid Icarus: Uprising in Smash Bros. by adding supporting characters from the game like Phosphora and Magnus as attacking assist trophies, as well as other notable secondary figures from Nintendo’s other franchises like Ghirahim from The Legend of Zelda (Skyward Sword), a Starman enemy from Earthbound, and the Chain Chomp tethered to the ground by a stake from Bob-Omb Battlefield in Super Mario 64. I recognize maybe a couple of the new Pokemon that emerge from their pocket-sized cocoons, for I abandoned that franchise long before I passed by Nintendo entirely. Still, whenever I’m feeling freaky and decide to press the on switch to unleash the items, I become well acquainted with Pokemon like Zoroark and Abomasnow because of getting upset at their pension to dish out far more damage than should be allowed. This is discounting the fact that most of the new additions to the Pokeball item are vigorous legendary Pokemon, who seem to appear as frequently as the regular Pokeballs despite their synonymous status with rarity. Still, it doesn’t seem to matter because every item I’ve mentioned in this paragraph offers enough combative potency for the player to use as a crux to victory. The items the series has stacked since the first game have officially overstepped the boundaries of supplementing the combat to overshadow it completely to total reliance. Fortunately, honest players should find the base combat using only the character's movesets to be far more agreeable than the flighty controls in Brawl. It feels as if the developers have finally honed the pacing and balance of combat they’ve always wanted.

It’s especially opportune for Smash 4’s platform fighting gameplay to feel so adroit and nimble because it doesn’t have the spectacle of a Subspace Emissary campaign to fall back on. Miyamoto pulled the plug on offering another side-scrolling story mode because, and I quote, “people were uploading the cutscenes on YouTube and spoiling it for others.” I’d poke fun at Nintendo’s supreme leader for being a fuddy-duddy luddite except for the fact that I watched the Subspace Emissary’s cutscenes exactly in this fashion because the ache of experiencing the game in some capacity was paining me. I was not disappointed that another Subspace Emissary wasn’t awaiting me on the menu, for Smash 4 still supplies plenty of new ideas intended to accentuate the essentials of Smash Bros. while the Subspace Emissary admittedly distracted from them. The difficulty of the tried and true Classic Mode is split into specific 0.10 decimals points, and conquering the randomized challenges in the harder regions of the scale will unlock an additional boss fought after Master Hand that will even prolong the climax of Classic Mode into a whirlwind of another level to be finished. The trophy gallery’s visual representation of highlighting information on the history of Nintendo’s various franchises and their characters is displayed as a museum exhibition with the best sense of organization thus far. For fresh features unseen beforehand, the player can create their own fighter using a Mii, rounding out the total roster with a character whose moveset is in conjunction with shooting, brawling, and sword tropes as the collective “Mii Fighter” figure. I’d protest this feature in Smash Bros. because my own creations are usually my standby fighter in any other game in the genre, but I suppose this factor of Nintendo history should be featured in some sort and this is the most creative way to implement it. Other than the character customizability, the other new subgame is something I do not recommend trying. “Smash Tour,” a minigame that mirrors the board game gameplay of Mario Party, is by far the most half-assed, boring, long-winded, and unfair extra mode featured across any Smash Bros. game. The fact that it’s featured so prominently on the main menu signals how much faith the developers had in this, which is just embarrassing on all fronts.

It’s about time that Nintendo recognizes that the demographic for their Smash Bros. series can be likened to a group of cats. You can buy your feline friend a bed advertised as state-of-the-art in kitty comfort, but the ungrateful furball will always tend to rest inside the box that the expensive piece of furniture came in. Because the fourth Smash Bros. title didn’t expand on the narrative-intensive campaign that Brawl offered as what seemed to be a vital point of progress in the series, I assumed that Smash 4 would take the time to emphasize the basics of Smash Bros. to craft a game that would make the hardcore Melee purists get with the times and update their Smash Bros. habits. In the finished product, the developers perhaps injected too much content into its base with the items, stages, and unnecessary features to the point of an overdose. I don’t think Smash 4 is going to make the Melee loyalists trade in their CRTVs anytime soon and put away their Gamecube for the (then) newest Nintendo console. Still, those who give every subsequent Smash title a trying chance will find it smoother and more complementary as a bonafide fighting game than Brawl. That is if one manually omits all of the excess themselves, which is a conscious effort I did more fastidiously than in any Smash Bros. game before. I guess this results from a series that only accumulates properties and ideas instead of picking and choosing them to indicate the full extent of how Nintendo has grown. After all these years, Nintendo's history is getting too prodigious to curate in one game.

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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U delivers the chaotic fun the series is known for, boasting a massive roster of iconic characters and a wealth of stages. It expands upon the previous games with features like 8-player Smash, improved online play, and a variety of modes to keep things fresh. The HD visuals are a treat, and it's the perfect party game for frantic multiplayer battles. While the single-player content may lag somewhat behind earlier titles, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U is an essential experience for fans of the series.