Why Melee Is Better Than Brawl

[BP]

I have heard something about something or other. No one knows everything and I'll never claim that I do.

[Boo Dudley]

If you're gonna be a resident something, you have to know EVERYFIN.

[Zarkanthesmasher]

I wouldn't call any classify any character as something along the lines of "bad." While Sonic's final smash may be very powerful, he's still a good character without it. He may be harder to play than some other characters, but with the right strategy, he can beat down tough foes easily. He only has a few powerful attacks, but if you use a good strategy, you can nail opponents with them.

I agree - I just can't get over the fact that Sonic just don't seem that good to me. The blue hedgehog is overall extremely one dimensional as a character in Brawl, with three of his four special moves being basically the same - and that to me makes him far less appealing than most of the other characters. I know there really wasn't much else you could do with his character based on his moves in his main games - but they've made up moves for plenty of other characters in Brawl. Why couldn't they have done the same for Sonic too?

Also, part of me would be willing to agree with Lizard Dude only because I can't stand that Captain Falcon has been nerfed. Yes, I know he didn't mention that, but this is my personal falling out with Brawl - since the Captain was my main in the last two games. It didn't take much time for me to switch to Donkey Kong, and after that I continued to have tons of fun, but it still annoys me. Captain Falcon was one of the best characters in the last two games, so why did they have to make him far less enjoyable or playable in Brawl?

[Markio]

Markio wins the Greatest Nerd Lifetime Achievement award for intelligently discussing a point of a video game and using a reference to Harry Potter in an effective manner while doing so.

This always happens.  I say something valid, followed by just one post acknowledging I said something, and then someone else brings up something else controversial and they steal my thunder!  Or lack thereof, considering I hardly ever argue... but still!

Well guess what!  I think prostitution should be legalized!  I killed a man once because he looked at me the wrong way!  And I prefer Melee to Brawl as well!  And I'm starting sentences with conjunctions!  So there!

And I thought Boo Dudley was saying that the batting mistake originated in Earthbound, meaning that the game does not know everything, like how to swing a bat.  Besides, baseball is western culture anyway.

[Chupperson Weird]

Baseball is what the Japanese love more than Americans do nowadays.

[Jman]

I have never been able to get on to the WiFi when it comes to Brawl.

[jdaster64]

I don't own Brawl yet, but I have played a fair amount and like and don't like it...

For one thing, SSBM and SSBB's key feature is their unlimited Vs. mode possibilities.

SSBB's good points - tons of special melees, items, and other gimmicks.

HOWEVER... if you want to do an item-less 3- or 4-stocker (like everyone should),

SSBM- faster, more accurate control.

This alone, IMO, makes for a better item-less, no-gimmicks battle.

Also, the characters I liked have nearly all been ruined in some way or another in SSBB...

Mario- Spin attack (b-down) replaced with FLUDD,
Marth - B move now juts straight out (that's just sad),
Jigglypuff - B-down now OHKO's at a much higher %.

Not to mention that ROy and Dr. Mario have been removed, and replaced by a bunch of characters mainly from random games no one's heard of. And Sonic in a Nintendo crossover, that's just wrong! :(

I probably would like Vs. Mode and the whole game a ton better if they hadn't messed with the roster or movesets at all!!!

</rant>

[BP]

HOWEVER... if you want to do an item-less 3- or 4-stocker (like everyone should),

Borin'

random games no one's heard of

To hear, one has only to listen.

Edit: How can you complain about Marth, a character you like, being nerfed, then hate on characters you've never heard of? You heard of Fire Emblem before Melee or what?

[Markio]

Bird Person, never underestimate someone's ability to hate what they don't know.

[MaxVance]

HOWEVER... if you want to do an item-less 3- or 4-stocker (like everyone should),

So why should everyone want to do it this way?

SSBM- faster, more accurate control.

This alone, IMO, makes for a better item-less, no-gimmicks battle.

I've never seen Brawl's controls as less accurate than Melee's. If perhaps by "faster" you are talking about Melee's physics, you should consider that Brawl's were made in such a way that the various characters are far more balanced than in Melee. This gives the players far more choice in fighting style while still keeping it mostly centered on individual skill. (Remember that the characters were probably made with the default two-minute timed match settings in mind, so some of them will not be effective in your "item-less 3- or 4-stocker" that everyone should so favor.)

[WarpRattler]

I've played Brawl all of once, at my brother's friend's house while I was hanging out there waiting for my dad after we got back from a journalism competition. I tried Classic once using Yoshi to see how well I liked the new jump - all I really found out was that I don't like the battle end slowdown stuff and that New Pork City really is as bad as everyone says. I also played Coin Shooter because, y'know, shmup.

Random games no one's heard of? Fire Emblem, Pokémon (and I can't believe I'm defending Lucario here, but still), Sonic the Hedgehog, Metal Gear, and Star Fox are all obscure? Since when?

Anyway, Melee at least has better stages than Brawl does, even if the latter has the stage editor. I haven't played Brawl enough to make a decision myself regarding it, so I'm not going to try to.

[CrossEyed7]

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet: Melee was a much more dramatic upgrade, released after a much shorter waiting period. Melee came out just over two years after 64, had beautiful graphics, added several fundamentally new game modes, and more than doubled the size of the roster. Brawl came out almost seven years after Melee, marginally improved the graphics, grew the roster by less than ten slots, and was basically just a more polished version of Melee. Whereas Melee was the definitive upgrade to 64, there's no major reasons to upgrade from Melee to Brawl.

I stand by my Windows analogy. 64 was Windows 98: a bit ugly and buggy, but worked well enough. Melee was XP: significant upgrades in usability and stability, and dramatically better-looking. Brawl was Vista: took seven years to come out, after innumerable delays and huge amounts of hype, and didn't make any major changes, yet still cost as much as the last one.

Also, we weren't expecting to know all the exciting stuff about Brawl months before it was released. Pretty much all the interesting new characters were revealed on the site long beforehand, and most of the unlockable characters in the game were veterans.

But my biggest pet peeve with the game (aside from the trophies) is how obvious it is that Sonic was a last-minute addition. There's no excuse for that. Sakurai and Sega should have been sitting down with each other from the day development started. It shouldn't have taken until the summer of 2007 for one side or the other to go "Hey, as long as we're putting third-party characters in there, how about Sonic?"

[jdaster64]

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet: Melee was a much more dramatic upgrade, released after a much shorter waiting period. Melee came out just over two years after 64, had beautiful graphics, added several fundamentally new game modes, and more than doubled the size of the roster. Brawl came out almost seven years after Melee, marginally improved the graphics, grew the roster by less than ten slots, and was basically just a more polished version of Melee. Whereas Melee was the definitive upgrade to 64, there's no major reasons to upgrade from Melee to Brawl.

I stand by my Windows analogy. 64 was Windows 98: a bit ugly and buggy, but worked well enough. Melee was XP: significant upgrades in usability and stability, and dramatically better-looking. Brawl was Vista: took seven years to come out, after innumerable delays and huge amounts of hype, and didn't make any major changes, yet still cost as much as the last one.

Also, we weren't expecting to know all the exciting stuff about Brawl months before it was released. Pretty much all the interesting new characters were revealed on the site long beforehand, and most of the unlockable characters in the game were veterans.

But my biggest pet peeve with the game (aside from the trophies) is how obvious it is that Sonic was a last-minute addition. There's no excuse for that. Sakurai and Sega should have been sitting down with each other from the day development started. It shouldn't have taken until the summer of 2007 for one side or the other to go "Hey, as long as we're putting third-party characters in there, how about Sonic?"

Thank you! Took the words right out of my mouth. Brawl should have been 3.5x as much better than SSBM than SSBM was better than 64! (Okay, that's pretty impossible, but still; they could have done a lot more, or at least kept all the characters from Melee in it and not nerfed a lot of the good characters.)

[Zarkanthesmasher]

Thank you! Took the words right out of my mouth. Brawl should have been 3.5x as much better than SSBM than SSBM was better than 64! (Okay, that's pretty impossible, but still; they could have done a lot more, or at least kept all the characters from Melee in it and not nerfed a lot of the good characters.)

Like what? Melee was such a dramatic upgrade that nobody could seriously expect Brawl to be just as big an upgrade, unless they expected Brawl to be a completely different game  - which would have upset all of the fans that loved Melee so much. You see, the reason why Melee was so highly praised was that it was simply better than the original - the control was far smoother, the game played faster, there was many more attack and defense options, etc - basically, it was nothing like the original except in basic format. And for the most part, people loved the change.

Now, if the developers applied the same logic to Brawl, we would probably end up with a game that played nothing like the previous two Smash Brothers - and also probably wouldn't be an actual improvement. Some people might like it, but for the most part people would be angry that they didn't stick close to the highly sucessful Melee engine. You just can't improve much on something that's already near perfect, and that's why Brawl is so similar to Melee.

But, in the process, we also got a huge mass of unlockable content unlike anything else we've ever seen in a fighting game, many wanted characters, removal of characters that were usless, many amazing new stages, and far more options than ever before - just to name a few things. Sure, Quantity doesn't always equal Quality, but since the core game of Brawl is just a small upgrade to an already awesome game, I think a lot of us can say that it DOES apply here.

[Glorb]

Something I would count as a huge upgrade to Brawl while still being welcome would be adding only a few (really cool) characters while keeping every single character totally unique. That means no repeated moves or final smashes whatsoever, as well as some really, truly unique movesets and characters (look to the Mvesets topic for inspiration). That way, every single character is totally unique and fun to play.