Basic Info: Super Smash Bros. Melee was first released in 2002, as a successor to the 1999 N64 surprise hit, Super Smash Brothers. It is a fighting game focused on characters from Nintendo's greatest franchises. The stages in the game also sport themes from the different games.
Summary: Like I said above, the main purpose of this game is to beat up Nintendo characters with other Nintendo characters. The game sports 14 different characters initially, with 11 unlockable characters. These characters come from franchises including Mario, Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Earthbound, and Pokemon. It features both single-player and multi-player modes. As far as single player offerings go, there are the Classic, Adventure, and Stadium modes.
In Classic mode, you fight against CPU controlled characters, and advance to the next battle once you win. There is also a level in which you must jump around breaking targets. This stage is called "Target Test," and is important to unlocking one of that later characters. When you defeat all of the enemies, you get a trophy of the character your using. (This brings me to trophy's, which I will talk about later.)
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| Mr. Sandbag |
Adventure mode is similar to Classic but it adds in some platforming levels and slight variations into the mix. For example, in one match you might have to face an all-metal Mario, while in the next you have to fight an army of Kirby's. When this mode is finished, you get a different kind of trophy of the character you are using, called a "Smash" trophy.
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| Some of the Wire Frames |
In Stadium mode, you have several different options of what you can do. Three different options in fact! Target Test (Which I mentioned earlier), Home-Run Contest, and Multi-Man Melee. As I said above, in Target Test, you try to break 10 targets scattered around a stage as quickly as possible. In Home-Run Contest, you attempt to do as much damage as possible to a sandbag, then hit it with a baseball bat. All within 10 seconds. How far Mr. Sandbag goes depends on how much you damage him before you hit him. The final mode is Multi-Man Melee. In Multi-Man Melee, you must fight off creatures called "Wire Frames," and there are variable difficulties.
In all honesty, as fun as the single-player is, the multi-player is where this game is best. This game is perfect for any kind of get together, and it's amazing to beat one of your friends and rub it in their face. There are three different modes in basic multi-player. Time, Stock, and Coin. Time mode is simply a timed match, and the person with the most points at the end of the time limit is the winner. The point system is simple. If you KO somebody, you get a point. If you get KO'd, you lose a point. Stock mode is also simple. Each player starts with a set amount of lives, and lose a life every time they are KO'd. When you run out of lives, you lose. In Coin mode, you must... well... collect coins. Coins will randomly drop onto the stage, and you must collect them. Every time you get hit, you lose a few coins, and every time you get KO'd, you lose half of your coins. When time expires whoever has the most coins wins. All of these matches can also be done in teams, or solo. In these multi-player matches, you can play with up to four friends, but if you have less then that, you can always add in some CPU controlled characters. They can be set to different difficulty levels, from 1-9. Beyond these basic play modes, there are several modifiers. These range from Giant melee (where everyone is huge) to Lightning melee (where everyone moves crazy fast) to Metal melee (where everyone is metal). These can really make a difference in the battles and are pretty crazy.
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| The Mario Trophy |
Finally, I'll talk about trophies for a bit. As you do different things throughout the game, you will unlock trophies of things from Nintendo's past. Each trophy also has a bit of text talking about the trophy itself. Even if you don't unlock a trophy when you do something, you get coins which you can buy trophies with. All in all, there are 290 trophies in the game, and it takes quite a while to get them all (I haven't done it.)
The Good: Just about everything in this game is perfect. Seriously. All of the characters are very balanced, and none seem to be copies of each other. All of the stages are amazingly designed, and are all completely different. The character models are beautiful, and the attack animations are just as good. The single-player is the easiest way to unlock things, but it is also possible to unlock everything through multi-player which helps the game's balance. All of the different game modes, whether single or multi-player are really fun and addicting. This game has incredible replay value, which stems from the trophies, the many unlockables, and the gameplay itself.
The So-So: The backgrounds on a few of the levels are not the prettiest. After hours and hours, the game does get old. But it takes HOURS. Like, 200+.
The Bad: Well... uh... nothing.
Given what I have said above, I will proudly give this game a...
9.5/10!
This review is written by Caljoones.
