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Brawl Seven Months Later: Your Thoughts

cjrocker

Smash Ace
Joined
Jul 28, 2008
Messages
564
Location
West Coast
lol neither game is 'balanced'. the balance argument is flawed and stupid, as no game ever made has been perfectly balanced. starcraft (iirc) is the closest thing to balanced, and that's because of years of hacking making it what it is.

except maybe pong. even then the right bar could wavedash to get to the ball quicker.
We have a winner.
 

SamuraiPanda

Smash Hero
Joined
May 22, 2006
Messages
6,924
Wow. Your entire post was just making general blanket statements with little to no facts behind them, combined with your opinion instead of hard evidence, to make conclusions that are irrelevant and erroneous. I don't have the time (or will) to write a thorough debunking, but here is a quick taste of where your argument falls flat: In Melee, wavedashing was discovered by the developers before the game was released. According to you, they should have removed such a blatant design flaw. Some flaws are good and some flaws are bad. And some may not be flaws at all; I'm fairly sure D3's chaingrab was intentional.

Brawl is not a "competitively inferior" game by any means, nor should it be compared to any other game at all. It is a fundamentally different game from its predecessors. Also, you say that skill doesn't matter in the game, and that losing isn't fun. The second is just subjective and specific to yourself, while the first is just blatantly wrong. Although there isn't as blatant of a skill gap between people that are good and people that are bad, it most definitely exists. If you can't see it, then that simply means you don't understand the game well enough.
 

Steelia

Smash Champion
Joined
Sep 23, 2007
Messages
2,523
Location
Home.
Can't believe I had to read this thread to finally realize that Brawl actually IS frustrating. :laugh:

Very good points, and I believe where you're coming from.

Brawl took one step forward, but two steps back, for the n00blet players... AKA people just being introduced to video games (being the Wii's selling so rampantly). That's what killed it for us more hardcore players.
I was completely fond of Melee's fast-paced action... Why taint with such a perfectly good formula? Granted, it had its flaws, but at least it wasn't anywhere near as broken as Brawl is.

Perhaps my biggest (and only) complaint is the cutting of characters. I was hoping Brawl wouldn't go in that direction, given all 12 original characters from Bros. 64 made it into Melee (despite how close Ness came to being booted off). Leave it to Brawl to be the first, and thus far the only, Smash game to disappoint me greatly. I love the characters on the roster... but there just aren't enough. Too much time was made on de-funning it, too much time put on Subspace Emissary (which I really only played once), too much time put on too many other things.

I don't know what Sakurai and co. did wrong this time around... I guess it has something to do with Sakurai leaving HAL Labs, I don't know. But either Sakurai picks up his game and quits with the obvious bias he has (Meta Knight and Snake for top tier!), or we just get a new director for the next game.

Melee for the win. This topic for the win.
 

Jam Stunna

Writer of Fortune
BRoomer
Joined
May 6, 2006
Messages
6,451
Location
Hartford, CT
3DS FC
0447-6552-1484
Okay, I changed the thread title, hopefully that will make it easier for people to understand what I'm looking for in this thread. Also, I put this in the OP, but I'll put it here as well:

Jam Stunna said:
The goal of this thread is to share your thoughts on the current state of Brawl, not your thoughts on what other people think of Brawl.
Basically this is the kind of post I want (it doesn't have to be as long, obviously):

http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=5607192&postcount=20

And this is the kind of post I DO NOT want:

http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=5608575&postcount=25

No one has ever changed someone else's mind on the internet, and this isn't the thread to try it in. Share your thoughts and feelings about Brawl's metagame, tournament scene, pros, cons, whatever. There are plenty of other areas on this site to argue. I (and I suspect some other people as well) want to know what you think, not why poster A is right or wrong.
 

HeroMystic

Legacy of the Mario
Joined
Aug 3, 2008
Messages
6,473
Location
San Antonio, Texas
NNID
HeroineYaoki
3DS FC
2191-8960-7738
Neutral

Let me first start off by saying that I am, without technicality involved, an '08er. However, I was introduced into the competitive Smash community upon Melee, but that was only about a year before Brawl's release. During that, I thought it would be useless to train myself in Melee because everyone would transfer over to Brawl.

With the introduction of Brawl, I knew that I was here from the very beginning, and I knew I could contribute to the competitive smash community by any means. However, I had a big problem. No one in my area liked playing Brawl. In fact, it was pretty much a dead zone for Smash in general. I was an oddball gamer that had no one to train with. All I had were CPU's, and everyone knows that you cannot get better by those.

A lot of my early days of entering the competitive Smash community has been by using WiFi and Smashboards' Friend Finder. Lag johns or not, this was the only way I'd be able to connect with others and test what decent skill I had with my Mario, Ike, and Link. Despite it being WiFi, the skill level indication was usually always clear. I was only a decently-skilled player and I knew I had to play against better people in order to improve.

Come September, I moved to college. As it turns out, the college network is pure crap. So WiFi is no longer an option. Pretty much, I was stuck, until I searched around and noticed there were -a lot- of people who played Brawl. A handful of those people also played Brawl competitively (and we're currently in the process of making a competitive Brawl club), and we usually have "meetings" where we all sit down, talk about strategies and play against each other. Thus far, we have four people, including myself, who meets up regularly, and have true mains.

I play Mario, with Ike and Link on the side.
Binz mains ROB, with Jigglypuff and Pit on the side.
TRA mains Marth and only Marth.
2+2=5 (funny name) mains Lucario.

Some others just comes and goes, only happening to "show up" most of the time. In that case, we sometimes go up against a Diddy main who also uses Yoshi and Falco, and a G&W main who occasionally plays Capt Falcon. We also watch videos of other top players to see what to expect upon tournament play, and sometimes we even try to adapt other playstyles into our own for better improvement.

At this part, my Smash life was very grand, until last week, when I went to my very first tournament.

Meeting other people was great, seeing other people like us made my group feel comfortable, but when it was time for our tourney matches, everything changed. The seriousness increased into a higher level, and the jokes ended. I personally, felt my stomach churn and my mind go frantic from all the boiling intensity of my matches. Upon the end of each match, my hands were soaked with sweat, I was mentally exhausted to the point where I easily grew hungry, and I was in desperate need of a break.

This to me, was entirely new, because I could play friendlies for five hours straight without breaking a sweat, with the jokes flying around and the laughter consuming us all... but when something is on the line, everything changes. There is no longer any "funny" moments. There is only the intensity of the match and your will to win.

This allowed me to gain an epiphany when I thought back years later when Melee was still at it's prime, and I compared it to now. There were a lot of people who played Melee and didn't know a thing about the ATs. I at the very least knew about L-canceling and Wavedashing, but had the belief Wavedashing wasn't useful (how wrong I was) to practice in. So you can say my old group of friends were "Competitive Casuals". Out of that group, I usually proved myself to be the best.

Where am I going with this? Well, there were times when I was beaten. I still played as Mario, and one of my friends played as Falco, and well, he was constantly good with spiking. I eventually grew frustrated with fighting Falco and tried to use other characters. That's when I picked up Link and used him to combat Falco. Somehow, he proved to be quite good against my friend's Falco. After that, I had for a time constantly used Link against my other friends, and I was once told that, whenever I played as Link, I seemed to go into a zone of seriousness that made me not fun to play against. That's when I lightened up and began to go back to using Mario more, and in the end I was actually able to defeat the Falco player with my Mario.

When I compare that time to now, I actually see that the intensity level between Melee and Brawl, for me, is no different. They're exactly the same. As long as something is on the line, as in wanting to prove yourself to the world that you're one of the best, then the competition is there, and there is nothing that will dwindle it.

For me, Brawl and Melee are the same, although I will say that Melee has the greater options for it to be the better competitive game. However, that doesn't make Brawl an inferior version to Melee. It is instead just an alternative option to Melee. In reality, both games were not meant to be competitive at all. However, the Smash community detoured Nintendo's ideals for their own, and made it competitive. Brawl, with all those intents and purposes in mind, is the Exact. Same. Way.

Personally, if I went back to Melee, then there is nothing I could prove because in it's lifespan, there are already the awesome people who play it, the ones who train for years to be to the top. If I joined in now then I'd only just be aiming to prove that I'll just be another great player. At least in Brawl's short lifespan, there is something more I can aim for. I want to be one of the best players out there, and I want to prove it with using my mains, not with all the advantages/disadvantages counterpicking characters and such. I want to prove that I can win with the characters I choose, no matter how bad it gets, especially with Mario.

As long as I have that to aim for, then I won't stop playing Brawl.
 

Ayaz18

Smash Champion
Joined
May 8, 2008
Messages
2,052
Location
Canada, ON, St. catharines
I love Melee, and dislike Brawl

reason being because Brawl is so defensive it becomes boring. Don't get me wrong I like the types of defense in brawl, it makes for a more fair match. There is however a major flaw in Brawl from what I see; the characters. Some of the characters that are in brawl are completely ridiculously overpowered, and some characters a laughable at best. Brawls engine isn't the most fun, but technically makes for a a more fair match, which therefore makes the game more competitive. Aside from the mechanics however, everything else is unbalenced making a poor tournament game.

at least mewtwo or Pichu could combo fox's and falco's, in Brawl C.Falcon has no chance against MK
 

Lord Viper

SS Rank
Joined
Sep 26, 2007
Messages
9,023
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Detroit/MI
NNID
LordViper
3DS FC
2363-5881-2519
All I can say is that when I played Brawl for one day, I forever put away almost all my GameCube games, I almost forever put away my GameCube but seeing Nintendo Puzzle Collection can't be played on the Wii, that's all the good my GameCube can do. XD

Bottom line, I enjoy playing Brawl too much, the music, the looks of the stages, Kirby kicking azz again, Lip's Theme in the game, "if I contenue it will never stop. ^_^;" And I don't get mad when I lose. :D


 

alejo_

Smash Rookie
Joined
Oct 10, 2008
Messages
15
I love n64 smash, I love melee, and love brawl. I can play brawl for hours on end and have just as much fun as i did in melee. The game is actually pretty balanced, campared to other fighting games where most chracters were banned from tournament play. Sure they dumbed it down a bit, and added tripping... But who cares. Just keep playing.

The MK domination could be solved VERY easily if Nintendo would invest some time into there games like other companys do. Im not sure if any of you play world of warcraft. But when a class has a NOTICABLE advantage over all others, that class gets punished by something we call a PATCH!!! All major competative games use them. Why not smash? We have the online capabilities... Why not use them to there full potential?

Patching smash would be great. In almost every other game i looked forward to it. Its almost like getting a new game. Give some chracters that need help some help and make toons that are to strong a weakness. I think that would fix brawl for sure.

My advice to everyone? Just keep playing. The game has more playablity than any other wii game out now. It was well worth your 50 bucks.

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?p=5628332#post5628332
 

CloudGer

Smash Rookie
Joined
Mar 12, 2008
Messages
12
Location
at home
I'm not sure if my feelings about brawl really changed since I bought it... First I was very sceptical about the gameplay without WVing Lcanceling etc. and because I'm from europe I spent the first half of the year watching videos and tried get as much information as possible before it finally would be out here.
What I saw kind of dissapointed me, the fights I was watching weren't as breathtaking as what I was used to from melee vids. So on the one hand I thought it would be good for me if there was less technical skill in brawl (I always sucked at ATs, at least compared to good players) and I maybe had the chance to finally become a pro on that game... On the other hand there wouldn't be a challenge to master all that stuff, that always kept me playing melee. There was always this urge to become better and I was scared that couldn't be the case in brawl...

...anyhow, the game was finally released in europe and my first impression was:"Whoa, I like it!"
Graphics and music are really satisfying (I don't care much about graphics though) and the 1 player modes are just great. I also liked playing against my friends and my brother, but after a while, I don't know why, it got boring. In my opinion normal versus matches aren't as varied as in melee, as I said I have no idea why, but after 5 fights with the same person, it seems just to be always the same.
Also the gap between the bottom and the top of the tier list appears a lot bigger now, and there aren't any rewarding advanced techs as in the past to bridge it... Unfortunately all my favourite characters (Ganon, Capt. Falcon(...), Bowser) seem not to have real chances against equal players, who are using MK or Snake.
First I was optimistic and hoped I could compensate this with practice, but I realized it's hopeless. There are sure some people who can beat Snake with Falcon, but I'm not a pro and things like the lack of time I have to play (school started to become serious) and also the lack of tournaments in my region hinder me to become one.
I think for multiplayer fun and also competitive play melee's still the better choice, but if you like matches with various chars, awesome music and graphic effects, crazy items and funny stages brawl serves it's purpose. Also it has a far better single player and more possibilities such as stage builder, taking photos everytime, wifi, 2 player events etc...
For me both SSBM and SSBB are great games, but they also are totally different games that have to suit your taste.

Sry for possibly some weird sentences.... my english is kinda limited.
 

crewster

Smash Lord
Joined
Jul 18, 2008
Messages
1,660
Location
UK
Brawl is the best game on the wii currently(GHWT might eaqual it)!
There simple
 

fromundaman

Henshin a go-go Baby!
Joined
Sep 26, 2008
Messages
6,416
Location
Miamisburg, OH
NNID
Fromundaman
3DS FC
2105-9186-1496
Personally, I love Brawl. It took some of the things I hated in Melee and rectified them. Unlike a lot of you guys, I actually didn't like the Melee air dodge system at all. It seemed if you went in the air, you were a sitting duck.
Also, the lack of true combos in Brawl is, in my opinion, a good thing. A lot of characters have attacks they can chain together, but for the most part, they can be avoided if the opponent plays well/intelligently. That is something I couldn't seem to do in Melee. To me, this is a fix, but then, that's just my opinion.
OoS options also seem much better in Brawl, allowing for more defensive options and the opportunity to punish an opponent's mistakes, something I couldn't seem to do much in Melee.
In Melee, I used to play Ganon, Jigglypuff, and Kirby, and due to a lack of an air game, as well as the limited punishing capabilities, I was pretty much incapable of punishing my friend's Shiek, no matter what he did. Even if I did a perfect dodge, or I shielded an attack, if he made a mistake, or something like that, he would always be ready with another attack, and it seemed I just couldn't reliably land hits. Maybe this was because he was better than me, yet in both 64 and Brawl I **** him, and he's no slouch in either.

Yeah, Brawl isn't perfect either (even if it were, we'd still complain), and right now we are seeing a huge different in ability from certain members of the cast, and yet, it seems if a player is good enough, he can usually win regardless of the character he/she uses. A good example of this would be ZeonStar's Ganon.
Also, with the exception of MK, all characters have at least one bad matchup. I didn't pay as much attention to the metagame in melee as I do for Brawl, but it seems to me like that wasn't the case back in Melee. This allows for more strategy (picking your opponent's bad matchups.
And finally, to end this rant, allow me to say that the game still isn't all that old. There's still strategies and techniques being discovered, and who knows, maybe in another 6 months MK won't be the beast we all thought him to be. Then again, maybe he will be and end up banned... Only time will tell.
 

smash superstar

Smash Ace
Joined
Jul 23, 2005
Messages
654
Location
Taylorville, IL
well with hacks if we really want brawl to change, maybe we can now.



Because after over a year of this game and nothing new being discovered, I could see its newness wearing off
 

SleeplessInKyoto

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jul 7, 2008
Messages
161
Location
Europe, England
If the only way you can see the Smash Bros franchise is only in a competitive sense, then i am sorry to inform you guys that you are in the minority. Dont get me wrong, i am literally obsessed about Smash Bros and i love reading all the guides, essays, and spend hours watching the videos, but the one thing you have to realise is that it is extremely niche.

The one thing about competitive smash (or tournament smash) is that it shuts out anyone who cannot face the heat and the challenge of learning their characters inside out. Its not easy, and some of us can do it, but the majority cannot. You would argue that this is because it is a competitive game.

But i would argue that the idea of competitive videogames in itself is flawed. You have to dedicate an insane amount of time just to get good at the game, and like it or not, most people do not have the time. The people who usually DO have the times, are the people who are either very passionate about videogames, or the younger people who dont have as much to worry about in their lives. BOTH audiences are in the minority. From Nintendo's standpoint, why should they make a videogame that caters to a very niche minority?

Games are (and should be) for everyone, not just for hardcore smashers. Nintendo is saying this because it fits in very well with their philosophy.

I'm sorry if this comes across as condescending, but the world does not revolve around competitive smash. Sakurai, most certaintly, does not revolve around you guys, and he isnt subject to you guys either.

If you dont like it, then stop playing it. The evolution is coming, and the old dinosaurs who refuse to change their ways will simply die out and become extinct.
 

RoboticTuna

Smash Cadet
Joined
Jul 22, 2008
Messages
48
Personally, I find Brawl more fun than Melee from a casual standpoint, tripping aside of course (may whoever thought of this rot in hell. ;) )

Crap like Smash Balls, the massive character/stage roster, and the item variety makes it a lot more casual fun than Melee was in my opinion (more fun stages, less exact clone characters.)
 

PK-ow!

Smash Lord
Joined
Mar 28, 2008
Messages
1,890
Location
Canada, ON
Don't think I'm happy though, because as I see it, the Smash community is in a lose-lose situation. We either push ahead with a competitively inferior game, or we put ourselves to the impossible task of convincing new tournament players to take up a game that is almost seven years old. Those are both pretty crappy options.
This. :urg:

10urgs

No wait, another comment: Your wife doesn't even like the game from a casual standpoint? Yet she is a gamer. So what happened there?

Also, it seems to me that to get people into Melee, we could have stratified tourneys. Tourneys where people of a certain record can't attend. Like a Junior Series. I don't know about the details, but the idea is to get new people into the vast metagame that is Melee. See, newbs don't have a chance at beating veterans just form the sheer volume of data that's been amassed, and perfected before them. So you have to separate.

But how to execute this idea, I don't know.
 

IWuvGeno

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Feb 5, 2008
Messages
77
Location
West Coast USA
Brawl is a worse game both casually and competitively. It is a mind-numbingly slow game with little involved and frustrating gameplay. I can't believe anyone would enjoy where Brawl has taken this series. Amazing.

All of my friends played Melee casually, and I did the same for years with them. On the other hand, Brawl only lasted for a couple weeks in our group. Two short weeks on a game we waited years for! I managed to go for about a month, practicing and reading the forums - hoping that something would change. It was sad after that because, for a few months' time, there was a huge gap where Smash used to be. We've now returned to playing Melee on occasion, which is so much more satisfying to play despite the long history we have with it.

Brawl+ signifies hope in my mind, and I've been waiting for something like this for almost as long as I've owned the game.
 

n88

Smash Lord
Joined
Oct 10, 2008
Messages
1,532
I played Brawl before I ever played Melee, and I love Brawl slightly more than I love Melee. There is more content, more stages, and clones are less similar in Brawl, which is all I want. In my experience the people I know who don't have fun playing Brawl but have fun playing Melee do not have fun playing Brawl because they refuse to have fun due to the changes in gameplay. I'm not saying this is true of everyone who prefers Melee, but there are people like this. I also prefer the lack of combos in Brawl, as I believe that it adds more strategy to the game
I don't see why people say it's not fun to lose at Brawl either. It's not fun to lose at anything (I lose at everything, trust me, it's not very fun).

On the other hand, I can also see why Melee is better for competitive play. Characters are more balanced, and there are more techniques. It plays like it was tested more than Brawl, as well.

Overall, I like Brawl.
 

-Hoggle-

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Feb 7, 2008
Messages
243
Location
Labyrinth
Would it be possible to have the "hacked" version of brawl become the competitive standard for tournaments?
 

Jam Stunna

Writer of Fortune
BRoomer
Joined
May 6, 2006
Messages
6,451
Location
Hartford, CT
3DS FC
0447-6552-1484
This. :urg:

10urgs

No wait, another comment: Your wife doesn't even like the game from a casual standpoint? Yet she is a gamer. So what happened there?
She just doesn't like it. Mario Kart Wii is her favorite game now.
 

cjrocker

Smash Ace
Joined
Jul 28, 2008
Messages
564
Location
West Coast
If the only way you can see the Smash Bros franchise is only in a competitive sense, then i am sorry to inform you guys that you are in the minority. Dont get me wrong, i am literally obsessed about Smash Bros and i love reading all the guides, essays, and spend hours watching the videos, but the one thing you have to realise is that it is extremely niche.

The one thing about competitive smash (or tournament smash) is that it shuts out anyone who cannot face the heat and the challenge of learning their characters inside out. Its not easy, and some of us can do it, but the majority cannot. You would argue that this is because it is a competitive game.

But i would argue that the idea of competitive videogames in itself is flawed. You have to dedicate an insane amount of time just to get good at the game, and like it or not, most people do not have the time. The people who usually DO have the times, are the people who are either very passionate about videogames, or the younger people who dont have as much to worry about in their lives. BOTH audiences are in the minority. From Nintendo's standpoint, why should they make a videogame that caters to a very niche minority?

Games are (and should be) for everyone, not just for hardcore smashers. Nintendo is saying this because it fits in very well with their philosophy.

I'm sorry if this comes across as condescending, but the world does not revolve around competitive smash. Sakurai, most certaintly, does not revolve around you guys, and he isnt subject to you guys either.

If you dont like it, then stop playing it. The evolution is coming, and the old dinosaurs who refuse to change their ways will simply die out and become extinct.
This. People constantly need to be reminded that this is and always will be the case.
 

Plum

Has never eaten a plum.
Premium
Joined
Jun 28, 2008
Messages
3,458
Location
Rochester, NY
I loved SSB64. I loved SSBM. I love SSBB.

Each game was less than a continuation of a series, but rather a brand new game carrying a similar name and idea: Take Nintendo characters, and let whoever buys this game beat the crap out of each other in a pure chaotic fest, or controlled test of skill.

Each game has a plethora of weapons that could easily break the game but provide a fun time.
Each game has stages meant to be fun, stages meant to be balanced, and really give the player the option of how they wanted to play.

64 was a great frame into what the future would become. It had a relatively small choice of characters, and certainly some issues but what game can truly be 100% balanced? With the exception of say Starcraft, who has so many years of patching into it that it becomes one of the most balanced games out there, no game can claim to be truly balanced.

Melee was leaps forwards, perhaps because it was completely new. The developers of the game took the structure that 64 had, and completely changed what that structure was supporting. Eventually some abuses of the games physics were found and competitive levels soared. Essentially the house the developers built had some walls torn out, additions put in and rooms redone. It was a new game. But this new game had many flaws to my personal liking and I will say that later.

Brawl strayed from what Melee became and the developers tried to bring it back to what they wanted it to be. The game could still be a demonstration of who is better by purely skill. If it was meant to be only a game of fun, the developers would have left the options to turn items off, which stages could be picked through random, training mode, creating specific character playstyles and giving each character specific advantages and disadvantages out of the final game. Nintendo had every chance to turn it into a pure party game but they left competitive options in the game.

I loved having fun with 64. That's all the game ever was for me. Fun. Melee came out and it was like that for a year or two when the friendlies with my friends found there way to a local gaming oasis - Arena 51. The people there were competitive. It's owner owned my best characters with Mewtwo and Pichu. He chain grabbed me to hell with Ice Climbers. He wavedashed around me and destroyed whatever option I could ever think of. He knew my move before I did. It took a 3 on 1 match with my friends and I against him to take him down. In a 4 stock match he 3 stocked me over and over, 2 stocked if I had some lucky breaks.

What happened after that? I still found Melee fun but the level I saw people take it ruined the general joy I held. It was fun to play against my friends but with anyone else I loathed it. I could have taken the time to learn all the AT's that the people at Arena 51 used; and I did try. I learned how to wavedash, L-cancel, but of course I couldn't do it as well as them. However hard I tried to get into the scene, I was put down by the fact that the local players had been using the AT's longer then me and when I took a step forward, so did they so I was forever in the same place.

I found a way around the problem. I played Jigglypuff. Jigglypuff spent so much time in the air that he didn't need to rely on wavedashing. I used L-canceling for aerials and that was all I really needed. Was I ever as good as the Arena 51 players? No, they dominated with Fox, Falco, Sheik, whatever top rated characters out there. But it did keep me somewhat in the local scene of Melee and I was finally satisfied, or at least to a high enough point to live with.

Brawl was perfect for me. Melee was simply too complex for me to have fun. I entered the local scene too late to gracefully merge in. It didn't matter how much I ever practiced, I would never be able to beat the local competitors, let alone top level players. So I guess to me Brawl was that fresh start and a chance to get into the scene. I played every game since it's release but Brawl would be different in that I would keep up with the competitive scene and wouldn't let that gap in knowledge ruin this chance.
I joined the Smashboards. I lurked for a while, reading up in the Melee days, and I decided that what better way to keep in the loop then to be part of it?

What made Brawl so perfect for me was that I didn't need the technical level that Melee required. It ruined the experience for me. I do believe in true skill level but I don't think that it is measured on your ability to input buttons a certain way to give you an instant advantage over the opponent. Call me a purist then. I believe playing to win exists but when you abuse the game to such an extent then it ruins the experience. When Brawl took out these abuses I was oh so happy. So essentially the game boiled down to my favorite thing in video games. The reason I play with my friends. Mind games. They were in Melee but Brawl relies more so on them. Because there is a lack of true combos, the fact that you can escape from your opponent makes the game rely on getting into your opponents mind.

To succeed in Brawl you have to predict. Know your opponent. Get in his head. Make him feel like they can't do anything. Melee used this to get that first hit in then the rest relied on your ability to input the buttons correctly. In Brawl yous still must input the buttons correctly, but you have to think more. If you make a false prediction you mess up and that is how I feel the game should be.

To me mindgames make the game. I'm a Team Fortress 2 man. I love the game. It is a perfect first person shooter in my opinion. When I play as the Sniper, I'm not playing as him because of his killing abilities, I play as him for the thrill of a Sniper vs Sniper battle. Predicting where my enemy will be while also predicting where I think he thinks I am. I stay out of where I think he thinks I am, and at the same time try to find where he thinks I don't think he is. He is doing the exact same thing and it is a battle of wits. Same goes for when I play the Spy. The Spy is about outsmarting the other team as a whole. Blend in with them, make them think you are on their side going for the same goal and the moment they step in front of you they end up with a knife in the back.

A battle of wits is what I seek, and a battle of wits is what Brawl gives me.
Melee didn't provide that experience for me. My hands couldn't keep up with the inputs of my opponent and I lost because of it. In time I learned how to read my opponents. I knew what they were going to do but the game's pace was so fast that I couldn't react in time. I had the ability to outsmart my opponent but not the speed and usage of physics abuses to do anything about it.
Brawl's slower pace allows me to get the experience I am looking for and that is why I love it; why I consider it not better than Melee, but a game made for me.
 
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