Dannyboy-the-Dane

This new feature seems interesting. I only hope you have the opportunity to go back and get stuff you missed the first time. I hate "one chance" games where you've only got one chance to collect certain items and where you have to restart the game altogether if you miss them. It really reduces the replay value. The more freedom in an action/adventure game, the better.

This game has potential, but may as well be screwed up. Only time will tell.

Amazing review! I've actually never read a review that positive before. I mainly avoid reading reviews because they tend to be negative most of the time.

It's a little hard to compare, as the Wii is aiming at a much larger market. Yay, Matrix!

I'm trying to be just as optimistic as you guys, but we have to keep in mind, however painful it may be, that there is a possibility that we will be disappointed. It happened for a lot of people with Twilight Princess, and for many this game is even more hyped. It DOES look very promising, and it's always very positive that the people working on it are just as much fans of it as we are. Smash Bros. is one of the most popular games series in Nintendo's library, and they will do anything to make this game good, but in the end we may end up disappointed, because we tend to get our hopes higher up than what is actually expectable. I'm sorry to sound so pessimistic like another certain individual in here, but I just wanted to remind people of this possibility. Yeah, they usually announce the big updates on Mondays. Like they charge up over the weekend.

Haven't got a top 5 list, but I would like to see some more characters from Star Fox, especially Krystal. Could Falco return for Brawl?

Yeah, and hopefully we can take pictures directly in battle mode like Zell mentioned - i.e. not having to go into that stupid camera mode. All the cool stills you get are often results of incidental pausing of the game - but you can't snap them as you aren't in camera mode.

I really don't know anything about the game. I didn't try to defend it, only to comment on the Nintendo-screwing-Europe topic. But I seem to have commented on it in every single debate I'm in in here, so I guess I'll calm down a bit.

[sARCASM]Oh, wow! We also got Mario Strikers Charged Football before the US! How on Earth can we keep complaining?[/sARCASM]

Definitely online mode for me! Trophies were cool, and the stickers seem ... less cool - but it honestly isn't important for me. It would be cool - but not a necessity.

It's not the point if people want it or not, it's the point that Nintendo is screwing those in Europe that DO want this game - or any of Nintendo's games, for that matter. In that area, Nintendo is as much a money-focused company as Sony and Microsoft are. But that doesn't make sense, does it? Europe is a potential bussiness area - if they just focused more on us, they could make more money over here.

I'm really starting to get pissed at Nintendo for screwing us Europeans. They even think they can make up for it by giving us ONE single game before the US. Don't they care about us or what?

Isn't there a picture of an on-screen sticker in the update?

Hm, interesting discussion, actually: Items vs. No Items. Items can easily give an unfair victory, but some might say it's a part of the game and therefore should be included. I don't really know. It could be more interesting without items, but if the players aren't almost completely even matched, it will get boring, as one player will quickly gain the upper hand and keep it for the rest of the match.

Yeah, but some of the others didn't seem to catch my point and it seemed to be because I used the word "straightforward". Therefore, I tried to re-explain it. My definiton was pretty much the same as Patch's. I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. Do you mean that elite players don't use items, or ...?

Well, maybe I could have worded my point better. Let me try to put it more clear: Smash was never about having to think strategically and tactically to win. Compare it with for example Chess. There, you have to be very tactical to even stand a chance. You have to memorize all the pieces, their movements and special rules. To win, you have to think two steps ahead of your enemy, preferrably without him knowing it. In Smash, you have all the knowledge you need to win from the start: Knock the other guy out before you get knocked out. Of course, when you get better, you learn to use the moves, items etc. to your advantage - in a way, strategically. The rules are straight-forward, but the gameplay is not. If you turn it Pokémon-RPG-style, the rules aren't straight-forward anymore. And that was my point.

So is Brawl ... no, wait - IT ISN'T! Sorry, got sidetracked. I meant that Brawl also has pretty nice graphics.

Why exactly does it make you laugh? I thought I had an OK point. About the new update: I had actually expected another piece of information about the Pokémon Trainer. But maybe it'll come tomorrow, like they did with Ike.

Of course, having fun is the core of any video game, but that doesn't mean the difficulty should stay fixed. For me, a large part of the enjoyment of games comes from improving my skills and gradually being challenged more and more. The feeling of achieving a goal that you didn't dream of achieving earlier is for me a central part of games, so difficulty is an important aspect of the gameplay. "The greatest opponent is yourself." Of course, some games are only meant to be fun and time-passing and should not be difficult to play. And that's the whole point, I guess: Finding a balance between fun games and challenging games.

Okay, so the plot won't be a problem. But if the plots are as interesting as you make them sound, I will probably get the other games as well.

I'm not exactly sure about the rules regarding advertising in these forums, but you've got a great point. This reminds me I should probably get around to preorder Brawl.

About the Pokémon weakness thing, I don't think it's gonna happen, nor do I think it's a good idea. I mean, sure, it would be more realistic, but remember, Smash Bros. has always been about very straight-forward gameplay, about learning and mastering a character's moves and using the items and environment to your advantage. For some reason this weakness thing seems just a tad too RPG-like and tactical to me when put up against the more straight-forward gameplay of the Smash series, where success almost entirely rested on a player's skills. In the previous instalments, almost none of the characters were weak, they just had different strong and weak sides, except maybe for Pichu, but even this tiny Pokémon could be deadly in a master's hands - and that's exactly my point. No character had predefined weaknesses against other characters - in the end, it all came down to who mastered their character best. Maybe I'm just rambling, but I think I've got a point somewhere in there.

I think this is one of the best updates yet. I mean, this was completely unexpected (on my part, anyway). But it looks very cool. And Excelle, aren't you overreacting just a bit? I mean sure, there are some Pokémon stuff in this game, but I really don't think it's becoming "Super Pokémon Bros. Brawl". If you don't like Pokémon, I can see why this update isn't a "yay!" for you, but don't make it worse than it is.

Well, we'll see about Corruption. If it's really good, I might consider getting the other games. If I really can't follow the plot, Wikipedia's always there for me.

But that's exactly my point. Developers doesn't seem to have realized the full potential of the Wii and so they don't put the effort they could into developing for it. The part with Microsoft was just to show how a lot of people still think about the Wii, and without many really good third party games and Nintendo being really slow in getting the big hits out, the Wii's reputation and thereby also its progress are indeed hampered. Of course there have been good games for the Wii, but they haven't been eye-opening enough. I fear the Wii may go the same way the GameCube did.