Super Smash Bros. 3DS/Wii U

[AnOrdinarySonicFan]

The difference between Brawl and PM/Melee to me is like the difference between Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic 4 to alot of you around here. At face value, nothing is different, and to someone who's just sampling the game, it's a "promising return to form". But to anyone who knows better it's a damn joke. You can't just 'enjoy the overall experience', because you know it could be (and at some point was) better than it is, and it just feels a bit empty.

 

Well, comparing Brawl and PM/Melee to Sonic 4 and Sonic & Knuckles is not fair, considering that Sonic 4 is a truly bad game, but Brawl is still a good game, but I get what you mean.

 

Did these new feelings about Brawl come after you played PM, or did you have these thoughts after playing Brawl before first playing PM?

Edited October 2, 2014 by AnOrdinarySonicFan

[ila]

I've been a few more hours into the demo and I think I'm going to bite when the game hits the eShop tonight. The controls are starting to feel a little better to me, and as far as mechanics are concerned I don't care how close the game gets back to melee.

[BlitznBurst]

Brawl wasn't a bad game, it just wasn't a good competitive fighter at all. So many changes made to it seem outright anti-competitive and just boring to watch compared to Melee. The atrocious balancing certainly didn't help, though that's hardly exclusive to Brawl. Smash 4 actually seems to be a lot better on that account, there are no stand-out "broken" characters beyond certain strategies that players just haven't had time to adapt to yet, which is a natural part of letting a metagame develop, and so far Ike seems to be the only character most people agree is pretty bad.

[AnOrdinarySonicFan]

I've been a few more hours into the demo and I think I'm going to bite when the game hits the eShop tonight. The controls are starting to feel a little better to me, and as far as mechanics are concerned I don't care how close the game gets back to melee.

 

I'm calling it now, the eShop will crash day 1 of the release of Smash 3DS. It happened before, and it can certainly happen again.

[Serephim]

 

Did these new feelings about Brawl come after you played PM, or did you have these thoughts after playing Brawl before first playing PM?

 

My issues with Brawl popped up after I realized that I could apply knowledge and skill gained in other fighters to Melee, but not to Brawl. There was just no concept of mastery in Brawl....Melee's mechanics allowed a character to be more than just their smash attacks and recovery moves. True combos helped movesets be more than just ways to avoid stale move reduction. Tighter movement physics let you translate your thoughts into gameplay much more fluidly.

 

In brawl, lack of true hitstun combos force you to take every character's moveset completely at face value -- either an attack is good when hits them alone, or it's mostly useless. Floaty and restrictive physics remove fluid input from the game. Because hitstun combos are gone, the concept of pressure is basically removed, aggressiveness just becomes risky, punishes are more like wrist slaps.

 

There was barely anything emergent about brawl as a videogame. There are alot of things I wanted Smash 4 to do to move away from that aspect of brawl, to give it that sense of emergence back. But by building itself off Brawl's base, it just seems mechanically impossible that it will happen, because brawl intentionally designed itself that way.

Edited October 3, 2014 by Serephim

[AnOrdinarySonicFan]

There was barely anything emergent about brawl as a videogame. There are alot of things I wanted Smash 4 to do to move away from that aspect of brawl, to give it that sense of emergence back. But by building itself off Brawl's base, it just seems mechanically impossible that it will happen, because brawl intentionally designed itself that way.

 

Meh, I can see what you mean, because I found it hard to pull off elaborate combos in Brawl than in Melee. I assume that in Project M, combos are really easy to pull off. But again, you cannot make your conclusion based off of the demo alone and not the full game itself. Seeing as the game released today, you can get the game and see if your opinion stays the same. If they did not, then I cannot say anything more to change your mind about Smash 4.

 

On a related note, those of you who are spending the next 1 1/2 days glued to their 3DSes are lucky, as I did not get my copy day one. I'm getting my copy on Sunday. At least it will give me time to do an essay for US History, but I digress. Those of you who have the game, what are your opinions on the new modes and new characters?

[DimensionWarped]

Picked it up last night. So far I've unlocked Ness and... became incredibly disappointed how in spite of how awesome Mario feels to play, they somehow made Ness feel even worse. Why Ness, why can't they bestow you with that crunchy feel I crave?

 

I think I might be a Mario main in this one.

 

Played a few online matches and won just over half... the lag is quite harsh, just like it was in Brawl. Shame.

[Mr. Potatobadger]

I picked up the game yesterday.

 

I don't have much to say about it, except for this:
 

The starting roster is HUGE! I was overwhelmed! I didn't know who to pick! I wish the starting roster was MUCH smaller, and you had to unlock more characters. That would make the game WAY more fun, I love unlockable characters. It sounds like a weird complaint, I know, but seriously. It would have been way awesome to unlock a highly anticipated character like greninja after working hard for him after a while.

 

The physics are in-between melee and brawl, just like they said it would. I played a LOT of Project M before this came out, and I don't really feel a difference when I'm not actually looking for one. This is VERY good in my book.

 

My mains are still the same: (In order from use the most to least)

DeDeDe

 

Samus

 

Kirby

Sonic

 

I haven't had the game long enough to say a whole lot about it. Overall, it's pretty awesome, and online play is good.

 

[AnOrdinarySonicFan]

Played a few online matches and won just over half... the lag is quite harsh, just like it was in Brawl. Shame.

 

Really? My friend has the game, and he said that Online isn't laggy at all. Then again, Sakurai did say that you need to have a good connection to get the best out of Online for Smash 4.

[Serephim]

Meh, I can see what you mean, because I found it hard to pull off elaborate combos in Brawl than in Melee. I assume that in Project M, combos are really easy to pull off. But again, you cannot make your conclusion based off of the demo alone and not the full game itself. Seeing as the game released today, you can get the game and see if your opinion stays the same. If they did not, then I cannot say anything more to change your mind about Smash 4.

 

 

Well, combos were never really "easy" to pull off, but with hitstun canceling came the end of followups and moves that confirm into finishing blows. You really don't need to try and alter my opinion of the game, I'll eventually get enough playtime in myself. But ive seen plenty 1v1s from the final build of the game, overall it still resembles brawl a bit too much for my liking.

 

Mainly, the emphasis placed on fishing for hits at high damage, lack of abilities that combo into finishers, and blast zone/knockback scaling that STILL result in 1v1s where people get smash attacked and smacked around at 150% near ledges for like 3 minutes without dying until someone gets that lucky shot in. 

 

Just observing, it still feels like the game gives no reward for momentum, and is still heavily tilted in order to avoid ever giving someone an actual lead.

 

Edit:

 

 

 

See, this shit right here, from 5:04 onward. Like, really? Clean hits, floats right on back

Edited October 4, 2014 by Serephim

[BlitznBurst]

I've had pretty much no lag at all online, at worst I've had some minor slowdown when my connection isn't great.

[AnOrdinarySonicFan]

Hopefully my connection isn't crappy enough to have lagless online fights. Speaking of which, maybe we can have Smash 4 Tourneys here in Sonic United!

[DimensionWarped]

Really? My friend has the game, and he said that Online isn't laggy at all. Then again, Sakurai did say that you need to have a good connection to get the best out of Online for Smash 4.

 

A 'good connection' is a fairly nebulous concept. When matched with randoms from another country the odds of having a consistent latency below 100ms are quite low and it seems like the game chokes a lot more on a less than perfect connection than something like Blazblue.

 

EDIT:  Turns out I lied, Ness is still my man (though Mario is a real beast). Finally had one good match with minimal lag this morning. Sadly the other player only stuck around for one game. It was a Jigglypuff who really didn't know what they were doing... kept spamming rest, kept eating my fully charged baseball bat.

[Serephim]

Okay this time I got some time to get some REAL playtime in, with the actual game. Gwinnett Brawl in duluth, georgia, there was a day 1ish tournament and about 25ish competitors. Jumped into the SSB4 pools just because the guys I came with all entered into Under Night In Birth pools (which ive never played), they didn't have Blazblue (what i came for) and I dont like Marvel or SF4.

 

By the time the place was closing though, I got multiple dozens of regular matches in, got to try out everyone I wanted to, get acquainted with the physics more. 

 

---------------

 

I can surprisingly say, my opinion of the game is a sum of mostly positive things, with some things I don't quite understand and some things i find quite concerning balance wise. 

 

Here's a better recap of the game thus far from my experience, sereph wall of text go

 

 

Physics

The physics are...well, they're inbetween Melee and Brawl, but gravity really has little to do with the feeling of melee. What's important here is how responsive the movement is, and in that sense it's most certainly worlds over brawl. Fastfall and shorthop work in manageable ways now, and while it's nowhere as liberating as Melee, it works. 

 

Movement

Not only is dash dancing is gone, turning in general with any character is ridiculously slow. By the end of the day, most of my spacing was done through shorthops, which work decently well i guess, but micro-managing your space is still no longer possible. But this isn't really an issue anymore, for the next two points. Lack of momentum conservation really damages the feel of speedsters like Fox, Falco or Captain Falcon, but since I hated controlling them in smash 4, i didn't really put much time into them. 

 

Dodge roll is godlike
Fucking seriously, if anything became apparent through playing, dodgeroll and shielding are the new metaknight. This is why I said most movement options are irrelevant now. You can literally cross the stage dodge rolling FASTER than you can running with most characters. The animations are very fast and the cooldown time is nigh-nonexistant. Doesn't matter what it is, dodge rolling beats it.

 

Shield is godlike

Shielding is OP as well, because while brawl seemingly removed all blockstun from the game, Smash4 has seemingly removed that PLUS all knockback from blocking pretty much any move. So it does not matter what you blocked or how, unless they recover away from you, the move will be rendered pathetically unsafe and you're going to get shield grabbed or punished. Nearly any air attack on block = you're getting thrown, no exceptions.

 

I should mention though... it seems like the only attack consistently capable of dealing with dodge rollers and shield spammers (obviously) is grabbing. I dont know if it's just stupid fast or ignores the invincibility, but it's the only consistent answer i found.

 

Attacks, hitstun and combos

Alright so, this game has some combos, but they're almost all of either up-tilt variety or come from moves pre-allowed by the developers to definitely allow followup. Generally, Air > Ground hits are definitely possible at some percentages (depending on the move) but most ground hits will almost never confirm into an actual combo because of how far they blow the opponent. Most dash attacks now blow the opponent too far away to follow up, same with throws.

 

knockback and edgeguarding

As for knockback, it's from the brawl school of comeback mechanics. Generally, you can easily knock someone pretty far, but the blast zones in this game are HILARIOUSLY large. I've been Bair'd by shiek off Final destination, past the ledge, TWICE, at 130% damage, and was still able to recover. Most of my matches had us lingering into the 165-190% range before someone got KO'd. 

 

Landing Lag mechanics

 This is a pretty big deal for combos and feel in general, and the way it's been changed is both good and questionable. Obviously, L-cancelling no longer exists, so an unsafe air wiff is always an unsafe air wiff. But this time, it seems like some moves are programmed with pre-set landing lag, making some moves recover very fast (enough to continue follow up) and others downright unsafe (Link Dair, Falcon Knee, Zelda Lightning kick). This removes some older approaches, but adds new ones, and this is why I think it's a decent change from Brawl's idea to just ignore the concept entirely, completely breaking some characters. The meta will have to evolve to see how well it was implemented though.

 

 

As for character impressions

 

Link

Still my boy, he feels pretty solid in this game. The most significant changes to him comes in the form of his UpB now having decent KO potential in the air and his new Dash attack, which is EXTREMELY slow, but has massive KO potential, which is a very rare and useful tool to have. 

 

Marth, Lucina

Marth is still good. Retains Brawl range, but his tip attacks feel much stronger. Lucina is probably the only clone I like in this game. She's the character I used the most. Her damage is standardized and her sword has no sweetspot. Shield breaker is better.

 

 

Robin, Shulk, Rosalina

Robin, fun to use, but I had no idea how he worked, so meh. Shulk felt a bit too...laggy for me. Rosalina is...interesting, i'll probably use her more in the WiiU version.

 

Sheik *
Prediction for top tier material. I never played her, but I fought alot of her. She's one of the few characters in this game that have guaranteed follow ups, and one of those followups (Uair) can actually KO you. In one of my matches, a Shiek player Uair'd me and star KO'd me at 65% damage, which is UNHEARD OF in this game, where smash attacks can fail to kill at 130%.

 

Charizard *

Questionable design decision = Flare Blitz. It's really, really fucking good. It damages him for using it, but he's a heavy character and people live forever on this game. The drawbacks most certainly don't outweigh the positives. Not to mention his sidesmash, which easily KOs at 60/70% and edgeguards well. He's very good at gimping, so i'm going to call him top-tier possible as well.

 

Fox, Falco

I'm sure he may be good, but i just can't like him anymore. His reflector is no longer 1 frame and has pitiful cooldown now, and restrictive turn speed really kills his ground mobility. He doesn't feel fast in this game either. Falco Feels better than Fox i guess. His aerials are still good, but his infamous meteor now has a nice little delay on it. I don't remember if it's still full frame meteor (like melee), but it's certainly slower. Overall, since hes still good in the air where it matters, I like him better than fox.

 

Ike

Trash. Hot, shitty trash. He barely changed, his specials are still dreadfully terrible, his recovery cant cope with the likes of new abilities, and the new changes to blocking put your life at risk by simply putting the select curser over his portrait. 

 

Zelda

Guilty of playing her alot like PM/Melee Zelda, I rarely got to used DownB. Her lightning kick KOs well but has pretty bad landing lag on it, and her Nair has enough landing lag on it that I've gotten consistently punished for hitting someone with it. Which is very bad. I'd have to put more time into her, but she's decent to meh for me.

 

I really wish Dins Fire would return to the delayed version from Melee so you could use it as a read tool better. With the way the new roll and airdodges work, Dins Fire just sort of feels like pressure that is never really dangerous to me.

 

Edited October 5, 2014 by Serephim

[DimensionWarped]

Link

[...] his new Dash attack, which is EXTREMELY slow, but has massive KO potential, which is a very rare and useful tool to have. 

 

Plus it has a crazy tendency to jump over most projectiles. Playing the Demo I was constantly catching Megaman's metal blades while doing it and also going right over Mario's fireballs and Pikachu's jolts.

 

And the meteor smash on his dair is quite sweet too, especially when considering the new floor-bounce mechanic.

 

 

IMO, Fox never should have had a frame 1 reflector.  That move was broken as hell as evidenced by all those videos with shit like reflector jump cancel wave dash reflector jump cancel wave dash reflector jump cancel wave dash KO

 

Speaking of reflector, Ness's psi magnet no longer absorbs Doc's pills. Come on guys, that move wasn't already useless enough on every stage that didn't involve the world firing lasers at you?

[BlitznBurst]

I really have to agree on Ike. Ike was already terrible in Brawl outside of casual play and they made him worse. How the hell am I supposed to fight for my friends with this loser?

[DimensionWarped]

Switch to someone who doesn't suck. Or go Ike Climbers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCXABhlj3nI#t=97

[Serephim]

Plus it has a crazy tendency to jump over most projectiles. Playing the Demo I was constantly catching Megaman's metal blades while doing it and also going right over Mario's fireballs and Pikachu's jolts.

 

And the meteor smash on his dair is quite sweet too, especially when considering the new floor-bounce mechanic.

 

 

IMO, Fox never should have had a frame 1 reflector.  That move was broken as hell as evidenced by all those videos with shit like reflector jump cancel wave dash reflector jump cancel wave dash reflector jump cancel wave dash KO

 

Speaking of reflector, Ness's psi magnet no longer absorbs Doc's pills. Come on guys, that move wasn't already useless enough on every stage that didn't involve the world firing lasers at you?

 

Yeah about Fox, thats why I didn't just say he sucks, because it feels like i dont know the character anymore. I'm just a bit sad they didn't replace it with anything else, like maybe shift some of those speedy mechanics into SideB or something. Fox and C.Falcon have lost the most out of the shift in movement physics. Falco's shine was removed in brawl but he still has a speedy launch in his Dtilt and his aerials are still good. So he still kind of retains the core of his melee playstyle, which was to just get you in the air.

 

 

I was actually a bit peeved by link's Dair because now it no longer KOs over land, and In my matches I kept expecting it to happen but only got a bounce. It's still good though because its full frame, so maybe some gimmicks can arise there. He gained 2 finishers, which is significant in a game with rampant stale move reduction and comical blast zones.

 

 

And about Ness' reflector, thats just BS, unless you can pick up doc's pills. I was talking with someone who was complaining about him too. Apparently they removed the sleeper function on his yoyo altogether, something i really dont understand. Why would you do that.

Edited October 5, 2014 by Serephim

[ila]

Jess christ, just say you don't like it and be done.

[Neo Hazard]

Words

[Serephim]

Jess christ, just say you don't like it and be done.

 

Serephim, on 05 Oct 2014 - 2:12 PM, said:

I can surprisingly say, my opinion of the game is a sum of mostly positive things

 

 

I came prepared, get rekt

 

im only long winded when i actually care

Edited October 6, 2014 by Serephim

[ila]

I came prepared, get rekt

 

im only long winded when i actually care

I was actually referring to this post (and Brawl), which apparently my phone didn't bother to tell me there were 2 more pages after it. http://sonicunited.org/forums/index.php?/topic/133-super-smash-bros-3dswii-u/page-17#entry163579

 

Honestly I'm so sick of the "different from melee" argument that I'm ready to picket EVO.

[Serephim]

Honestly I'm so sick of the "different from melee" argument that I'm ready to picket EVO.

 

What did they do wrong? Really, both sides of the argument are fair, but the argument itself is Sakurai's fault. He made a conscious decision to rip the game from one direction into a drastically different one, and, unsurprisingly, it pisses off a lot of people invested in the series.

 

This game is still addressing those changes today, in fact Melee seems to have had more influence over most of Smash 4's changes than Brawl did.  

[ThatGuyNamedChancey]

This game is still addressing those changes today, in fact Melee seems to have had more influence over most of Smash 4's changes than Brawl did.  

That's because Sakurai is an independent woman who don't need no man ... unless the man is hot then she's fine with that.

Aka Sakurai wanted to please the Melee side of the fanbase, unlike when he was making Brawl, which was just developed as another Smash game.

Edited October 8, 2014 by ThatGuyNamedChancey

[Mr. Potatobadger]

I highly reccomend watching this video, it essentially says what I WOULD say here, if this video didn't say it for me.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxZH0fvfJaE

 

I think the video would be much better without the gimmicky chat sections, but nonetheless, it makes good points.

 

Basically, Melee wasn't the game Massivehero Samurai intended it to be, so he "fixed" it.

 

And guess what? Melee still exists. The Metagame can still play melee, it still exists. Plus, look at Project M. Who's to stop them for doing the same with Sm4sh if they wanted?

 

Plus, why not adapt to the current game? I'm sure brawl and Sm4sh have some sort of crazy exploits the metagame haven't even bothered to discover, because they're still too busy arguing about Melee.