Impressions of Super Smash Bros 3DS

The Super Smash Bros series has been a longtime staple in my party gaming lineup, ever since the original was released for the Nintendo 64 back in 1999. Super Smash Bros: Melee was the one reason I absolutely had to buy a Nintendo GameCube; my friends and I enjoyed that game so much that we played it nearly every weekend over the span of three years. When Super Smash Bros: Brawl came out in 2008, I found myself underwhelmed by its slow movement and clunky physics, yet friends and I have continued to play it on occasion to this very day.

By now, my enthusiasm for new Super Smash Bros games has waned to near non-existence, since each new game has been the same as the last but with more characters, new stages, and new tacked-on game modes. After 15 years of playing essentially the same game, it feels like I've been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt, but I simply could not resist the allure of the appropriately-yet-unimaginatively-named Super Smash Bros for Nintendo 3DS. After all, it's a timeless formula that I can now play when I'm away from home, on a platform I already own. What's not to enjoy about that combination of features?

I've had my copy of Smash 3DS for a couple weeks now, having unlocked all of the characters and stages and having tried each and every game mode, and I feel pretty confident in saying I like Smash 3DS a lot more than Brawl, and perhaps almost as much as Melee. It feels faster and more responsive than Brawl, and the controls feel right at home on the 3DS. The new characters are all really fun to play, and the plethora of unlockable content is enough to ensure a long lifetime of playability. And yet, after about nine hours of playtime, I've basically lost interest.

Super Smash Bros: Melee is Better Than Brawl

The Super Smash Bros series has been a longtime staple of my party-gaming lineup. Ever since the original was released for the N64 way back in 1999, my friends and I have always enjoyed getting together to blast each other into oblivion as our favorite Nintendo characters. Playing Melee after we all got off work on weekends was a regular pastime. We played the hell out of that game.

Seven years later, Nintendo released Brawl for the Wii, and I found it uncomfortable and underwhelming. The physics of moving and attacking felt weird, there weren't very many new combat mechanics, and many of the new features were downright bad or just not that exciting. Going from the original to Melee in the span of about two years was a phenomenal upgrade, but going from Melee to Brawl felt more like a step backwards, which is made even more distressing by the seven year wait. 

I'm sure there are ardent tournament players who could argue that Melee has superior fighting mechanics, but I was never that hardcore to be able to explain the precise details. This article won't be a detailed analysis proving once and for all that Melee is better than Brawl, but is rather the thoughts of a casual player of the series who was disappointed with Brawl, and who finds Melee the more entertaining experience to this day.