Today I had a few people over and one of my buddies (Org, for people who know him) showed up with a trophy in his hands. When I asked what on Earth he had in his hands, it turned out that he went out to the GameStop in his hometown for the Midnight Madness release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and took part in the in-store tournament that apparently most locations were holding: he won at his store. Details for the tournament can be found here. Apparently he now moves on to the District Finals next weekend in Manchester, CT - should he somehow win there, he would move on to the Regional Finals where I’m guessing the location would be New Hyde Park, NY. The true Finals are in San Jose, CA. Now, I know the guy is a good player - and I don’t know if he could make it as far as the true finals - but I think it would be kind of neat to take a spur of the moment trip to CA with a buddy to go watch him play in a tournament for this. ;)  Definitely best of luck to him though.

While he was over, we definitely got some game time in of it and it definitely aims to please. In some ways it felt like it was “more of the same” for the franchise, but I don’t think any fans of the franchise would think of that as a bad thing. Some of the new levels are definitely interesting, with the Mario Kart level bringing karts from different directions (and actually letting you place a well-timed hit to send a kart off the track and at an opponent) and the WarioWare level forcing you to take part in minigames as you fight. Some of the new items are very neat as well, such as the 3-part rocket of death you can only use if you happen to pick up all three pieces during a fight, or the “break me” ball that will allow you to execute a Final Smash move with a simple press of the B button (which, by the way, some of the Final Smash moves are simply devastating: Ike’s Final Smash will likely send you if you have any damage taken before he gets to you).

I liked it, I really did; but I’m still on the fence about whether or not I will be going out to pick up my own copy. It’s a great party game but I only get to hang out in person with people who would be willing to play it once in a blue moon, and the draw of online play is tempting but I know I won’t be able to consistently put together online games with those people either - which means dealing with the powergamers out there who can beat me blindfolded and/or the 12-year olds who would rather turn their Wii off and disconnect from the match rather than face a true loss. We’ll see. I still have Metroid Prime 3 to play through and beat anyway since the DS has been keeping me really busy lately, maybe I’ll get back into that for now and bide my time until Kart comes out.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.