Does anyone seriously enjoy competitive/casual brawl?

Does anyone seriously enjoy competitive/casual brawl?

On a serious note, does anyone enjoy playing this pathetic excuse for a successor to melee? For the longest time I didn't really understand why people who play melee always hated on brawl and disliked the game. I mean, i used to play melee myself but I've found more success in brawl, but I've always loved melee more just for the game play of it all. This is not a brawl/melee discussion though, this paragraph was only meant to finally understand where melee players are coming from since I finally understand it.

Now back to the point of this blog. I honestly can't remember when was the last time I enjoyed playing this game. Well I guess the last time I enjoyed playing this game was during spring break with some friends back home while we were all wasted. Apparently that's what it takes to enjoy this game rofl. Going to tournaments lately feels extremely boring. Its just the same thing over and over again. It pretty much feels like deja vu really. Even smashfests that I attend feel boring to a degree only until we hit the wii power button off.

I remember one of my friends asking me whether he should pick up mk and abandon wario as his main. I told him yes, that he should probably drop wario since his mk is better, but advised him to pick up a different top tier rather than mk such as falco or diddy, preferably falco. His response is why should I bother with that when I can just pick a character that has infinite amount of options and it is so much easier to punish your opponent with. I said, "well are you fine with not having any random elements at your disposal since everyone plays mk and knows whats to expect?" His response is, why have random elements, when I can just outread their gimmicks since my moves out prioritize it? Me personally, I love having a few gimmicky moves at my disposal to use when its least expected and such, but now I look back and it and think, huh, maybe he was right. I mean, I kind of question why I don't just do the same really.

Adding to this...
When I watched the stream today for WHOBO, it was about the most boring **** I've ever watched. Matches that I recall watching before I couldn't stand watching it anymore were redhalberd/dojo, ally/dojo, razer/adhd. I remember hearing comments through out the matches like that was a good f-smash or a nice shuttle-loop. Like really? Nice? The **** is so basic, there's nothing nice about that garbage. Its the same **** you've been seeing for the past 3 years, there's nothing new about it. The stream was about as interesting as watching ants walk. The current metagame for brawl seems to already hit its limit and at this point its just expanding at that by more and more players going all mk. When I look at all the nationals, It's always a mk that places 1st. Sure there was apex and mlg dallas, and DC but it seems to just went down the drain right after mlg. Like, is that really what it takes to win a national? You HAVE to go metaknight? I mean you could maybe argue well theres diddy kong or theres snake or falco, but the chances that they win are so rare and when they do, usually right afterwards theres a huge slump in tourney placings later.

Edit: On another note, I heard about will's planking tactic with DK with the 185 ledge grabs and what not. My thoughts on it, kudos to him, if that's what it takes to place top 7th with a chracter like that in a national, then so be it. It sure does beat switching to MK ill give him that. He simply is adjusting to the current metagame for what it is and adapting in the only way possible that his character allows him given the conditions.

Like, I remember when I used to watch the melee streams for mlg, that **** was so enticing. Watching ken vs pc chris, i've probally watched the aneheim video atleast more than 5 times. I always enjoyed watching ken,azen,pc-chris,chudat,m2k. It was always something new and different, and it left endless possibilities for new metagame for the next couple of years. I honestly don't see this for brawl in the future since I really never really liked watching brwl vids to begin with for the longest time.

So I guess what it all comes down to is, do you really enjoy this game? If you do, then why? What's your justification? Because honestly I have no idea why I continue with this and would like to know from others their viewpoint to perhaps look at another view to maybe enjoy the game so that maybe I could progress with this, even though it seems pretty pointless from my viewpoint.

"On a serious note, does anyone enjoy playing this pathetic excuse for a successor to melee?"

Don't really think that was necessary, at least not so harshly explicit.

Reading the title "Does anyone seriously enjoy competitive/casual brawl?" - Why yes, yes I do. I have never played competitive Brawl, so I really have no say what goes down there. I do quite enjoy the casual play of Brawl though, and I have talked to several people who love Melee who do admit casual Brawl is fun. They all seem to agree that competitive Brawl is what hurts Brawl, but I have no opinion on the matter concerning competitive.

"Do you really enjoy this game? If you do, then why?" - Hard to answer. That's like asking a swimmer why they like to swim, or asking cook why they like to cook. It's just one of those "just because" scenarios I guess. I find joy in playing Brawl with friends or whatever, and seeing myself get better at the game. I like seeing my favorite characters being in the game, as well as featuring some great remixes of my favorite game-music. Don't really have an exact reason as to why I like it, I just do.

Just pick the bat and spam b and you'll easily be the best in casual play. You'll see your skill rise significantly. Obviously when you become competitive, if you do, it requires more than just b, but for your scenario, b is all that matters and perhaps some d-smashes.

Brawl is a whole different game from Melee that requires a different take in playing it competitively. IMO, I find Brawl matches enjoyable.

DewDaDash said:

Just pick the bat and spam b and you'll easily be the best in casual play.

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I'm afraid with this setup no video game will be enjoyable for you.

But is that not the truth? And I do enjoy other videogames, melee was always fun despite never really placing extremely high, and PSO is definately my favorite video game. Unfortunately for melee, the game is too old for me. having alrdy played it competitievely for 4+ yrs and with the old community gone, I don't really feel like its worth coming back to.

High level play in Brawl is more about careful reads and extreme game knowledge. You need to know every answer to every situation, and Melee was never like that. Combos lend to safe muscle reactions, but in Brawl you can't follow up most moves, so it's the thinking persons game. That's why I enjoy it. When you get hit in Brawl, it's because you did something unsafe and it wasn't the proper answer to the situation. Melee is like this occasionally but usually leads in to silly strings and hit-confirmed deaths. Watch a Melee Marth vs Falco game sometime, it's nothing but who gets the first grab and then oh look, Marth fair'd Falco off stage and spiked him. Brawl is like Chess, you need to think far ahead and consider every single option, and learning opponents habits mid-game plays a big part as well. If you like combos and the hype that comes from them, then you won't like Brawl. If you think that Brawl is so terrible then you haven't tried high level Brawl play, which while it's occasionally stupid (Melee had problems as well), can still be intense to the players battling.

i am with u on this Dew. i used to be into melee then started with brawl, i liked brawl at first but now i cant stand it. the game is all camp and spam this makes it to tedious to watch and mind numbing to play. but unlike you i went back to melee and i am having a great time again, i understand u might be hesitant to go back since some of the old community is gone but i will tell u two things. 1: a lot of old pros have come back, even azen went to a major tourney recently. the only pro who seems to be gone for good is Ken. Melee is a hard game to quit everytime i have quit it something about it keeps bringing me back in. the 2nd thing is: Its kinda a exciting time for melee lower tiers are starting to do things in tourney such as axe placing 4th at pound 5 with pika and vman making it out of pools with yoshi. Also i know peach is high tier but still someone placing 2nd in a national with her hasn't be seen for years. Now i know that axe and armada have been placing for a while now but i honestly see potential in other low tier characters showing viability which excites me b/c when i got into melee in 2006-2007 it was all marth,fox,falco. So i understand maybe not wanting to come back to melee after being gone and playing for 4 years but the community is still nice and things are imo getting kinda exciting

edit: to person above me brawl is not a thinking persons game it is a game were defense wins and attacking and taking risks are punished. the reward system for getting a hit in brawl is terrible. brawl is not like chess at all in chess it doesn't matter what color u play as while in brawl try picking most characters against meta knight and see what happens. out thinking doesn't win safety wins

edit edit: not saying melee is chess ether just that brawl is not

I enjoy Brawl because the differences teach me new ways to play Melee.
The game itself is ok but Melee is way better.

I'd personally say that I'd rather play Brawl than do some other things because I enjoy Toon Link's and Metaknight's movesets. They're slightly different than Melee.

It's not a bad game. Heck, it's even not that bad of a competitive game. And I don't mind playing it. But given the choice to play Melee instead? Melee, of course.

I like being able to get up from the ledge right after grabbing it (rather than having to wait for half a second). I like being able to waveland on and off platforms fluidly. I like being able to air dodge up onto the stage (with Puff for recovery, and simply just as a mix up with other characters). I enjoy Falcon being able to do wicked combos/tech chases. I like how Sheik's down air sends them upwards (regardless of it not making sense) and that down air doesn't force you to go to the ground. I enjoy jump->shine->turn around->double jump->waveland off platform. I enjoy wavedash out of shield.

But yeah, Brawl isn't that bad, Dew. Also, keep in mind that some people play it because their favorite character isn't in Melee or isn't the same in Melee. My friend likes Brawl primarily because Yoshi can do a rising double jump aerial, rather than DJC'ing in Melee; and can do rising egg bombs.

Well what do we have here? Another Melee vs Brawl topic with a clever title that implies otherwise...

BTW Nagace, in high level Chess the white pieces are known to be more defensive - your goal as the white pieces is to draw out the game so your opponent doesn't score, your goal as black is to win the game and score. You can score as white aswell, but good luck with that. To say Brawl isn't a thinking person's game because defense wins is putting the foot right in your mouth pal - what happens when both players are defensive? Well the player who can keep their defenses tight while making correct offensive choices wins. Sounds alot like chess doesn't it?

Yeah we need more of these threads, the more threads I'm in the faster my epic fanbase will grow!

Please realize that this isn't one of those threads.

Anyway, Casual Brawl is a blast when you want Brain-dead fun, especially with high speed Warioware.

It seems that competitive Brawl still heavily favors defense with nearly no reward for going on the offense, since even with correct prediction choices, going on the offense is not rewarded and sometimes punished.

I'm quite surprised, considering that I thought the metagame would move past this phase.

So if I read a spot dodge and grab at the correct time to punish it... I don't get the grab?!?! WHAT?!

10 years after Melee is released, Dark of Chile releases Perfect Dark, a combo exemplary combo video showing how Melee is still being revolutionized day by day, incessantly evolving and becoming harder, better, faster, and stronger.

Be honest, do you think anyone could ever do that for Brawl? 7 years from now, no less.

To be fair, Melee didn't start with a scene as big as with Brawl and instantly digging into the game hoping to discover every single tech there ever was.

This thread is stupid.

DewDaDash said:

Just pick the bat and spam b and you'll easily be the best in casual play. You'll see your skill rise significantly. Obviously when you become competitive, if you do, it requires more than just b, but for your scenario, b is all that matters and perhaps some d-smashes.

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LOL, so if you use the best character and a semi-competitive related strategy, you're not expected to win against casual players? Casual play generally deteriorates into spamming a couple good moves and roll, because players don't know how to control space. You're approaching a casual scenario, applying a competitive mindset, and wondering what's wrong, LOL. Tornado doesn't suck, but I don't really find it too much of a hassle anymore (God knows how easy most MKs would be if they DIDN'T have it). Dsmash is overrated as hell. It's designed to slay noobs. I can understand why you hate this game if you're still bad against MK's Dsmash.

I love Brawl.

I genuinely enjoy competitive Brawl.

The only things that ruin it for me are the Ice Climbers and Meta Knight. Diddy to a certain extent, but if I take control of his nanners, suddenly I have all the momentum.

Not saying that I have any problem with Brawl or Brawlees. Do whatever you want, live your life. I can respect your decision to play a game that isn't my game. Whaterrh.

To be fair, it's really not a bad game casually. I played it for a month or so, and if it didn't have tripping, I might have kept it a little while longer. Beating Melee was a tall order for Brawl though. There are some characters that I miss and would love to have in Melee.

this topic is not even about melee vs brawl. Troll some other topic and read the whole thing b4 you actually post. it clearly says after the 1st paragraph this is not a melee vs brawl discussion, it only understands where melee ppl are coming from.

This is a discussion to analyze the current metagame and where it is headed, I don't know why there is such a off-topic discussion.

Pierce7d said:

LOL, so if you use the best character and a semi-competitive related strategy, you're not expected to win against casual players? Casual play generally deteriorates into spamming a couple good moves and roll, because players don't know how to control space. You're approaching a casual scenario, applying a competitive mindset, and wondering what's wrong, LOL. Tornado doesn't suck, but I don't really find it too much of a hassle anymore (God knows how easy most MKs would be if they DIDN'T have it). Dsmash is overrated as hell. It's designed to slay noobs. I can understand why you hate this game if you're still bad against MK's Dsmash.

I love Brawl.

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TBH this thread isnt even too much about casual play. I mean what is casual play at the end of the day? A smashfest? Two people duke it out, one consistently wins, the other doesnt. Then the other one gets salty and goes MK then the other one goes MK and there's your casual smashfest. I only really said spam tornado because that is probally all a "casual" environment as you're describing requires. It is not a competitive mindset at all. I'm bad at this game because of Dsmash? When is the last time you have placed? I'm only saying where the current metagame is headed to. I mean, you watch the same videos I do most likely if not more of all the nationals. Tell me when was the last time 1st place didnt consist of 95%mk/4%diddy/1%falco?

When the OP makes constant comparisons to brawl and melee you kinda are making a vs topic between the games.

Either way I like brawl because melee has this unnessecary interest in arbitrary tech skill that makes getting into it flat out tedious. Brawl has a much more varied and colorful cast than melee. I like brawl because the gap in character viability is not as small as melee.

Brawl is just more fun to me

There is only one comparison in this whole thing about melee, not many constant comparisons as you describe. The gap in brawl is not as small as melee, its even smaller. In melee you had a wide amount of characters dominating, sheik,peach,ics,CF,fox,falco,marth,jiggs. In brawl there is MK,diddy and about 1% falco/snake you could argue. Tell me how this gap is smaller cuz if you've been keeping up with brawl, ud know its smaller than melee.

Once again though, this is not melee vs brawl. I made that comparison only to show the diversity of characters between the two. I don't care about the tech skill, the muscle memory combos, etc.

a true champ plays both

both games ****

A true champ rage quits in both

haha jk <3

Do you know when you'll be down in FL? I wouldn't mind hitting up some training sessions.

Kanelol said:

10 years after Melee is released, Dark of Chile releases Perfect Dark, a combo exemplary combo video showing how Melee is still being revolutionized day by day, incessantly evolving and becoming harder, better, faster, and stronger.

Be honest, do you think anyone could ever do that for Brawl? 7 years from now, no less.

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I like this.

Edit: and no. I don't enjoy competitive/casual brawl as a player or as a spectator. It breaks many formulas which I saw smash bros. as.

Pierce7d said:

LOL, so if you use the best character and a semi-competitive related strategy, you're not expected to win against casual players? Casual play generally deteriorates into spamming a couple good moves and roll, because players don't know how to control space. You're approaching a casual scenario, applying a competitive mindset, and wondering what's wrong, LOL. Tornado doesn't suck, but I don't really find it too much of a hassle anymore (God knows how easy most MKs would be if they DIDN'T have it). Dsmash is overrated as hell. It's designed to slay noobs. I can understand why you hate this game if you're still bad against MK's Dsmash.

I love Brawl.

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Pierce, I love you.

To answer DewDaDash's question: Yes, we do. I played all day saturday doing practice reps with GIMR, Slikvik, Lie, and EE, and it was awesome. I got so much accomplished with my metagame. I

Mew2King said:

a true champ plays both

both games ****

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thisthisthisthisthis

Seriously. Thank you for posting this.

I personally play Brawl because the game requires less tech and more thinking. This is a generalization, but it's the point. Also, Melee's been out longer so I'd have more catching up to do if I played Melee. I def enjoy both games tho.

tl;dr for all BvM topics: Brawl is the better game. Melee makes for a better sport. Neither is better or worse than the other overall... they're just different.

TheTantalus said:

Pierce, I love you.

To answer DewDaDash's question: Yes, we do. I played all day saturday doing practice reps with GIMR, Slikvik, Lie, and EE, and it was awesome. I got so much accomplished with my metagame. I

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Care to explain? Is it just because you understand the metagame more with mk, or do you actually learn something about the metagame aside from mk? I mean plenty of others feel they learn the metagame to a degree, but at the end of the day you take a top mk player, make it vs another top player of a different character , and chances will be mk wins. I know this isnt the case 100% of the time, but it generally is most of the time.

By any chance were you practicing this into your metagame? http://allisbrawl.com/blogpost.aspx?id=106424

I put the game down two weeks after it came out. I hear a lot about this no tech skill = more mindgames. I beg to differ, since the person with the better strategy mostly always won in melee anyways. Look at Ken, Azen, PC Chris that were technical savy guys, but played their character so fluently. M2K mastered both the and skill and was a monster. What Dew is saying after all this time playing the game. It hasn't changed at all....

The ceiling appears to have been reached already. What I loved about melee was that practicing paid of, I can pick up Brawl right now and still be as good as I was last time I played it. If I pick up melee ill be playing like butt.

I tried to get into it, but it was just too boring :/.

HOLLA

Casual Brawl is really fun as long as you keep things fair. In other words, no MK. At competitive levels, MK is broken, at casual levels, MK should be a crime punishable by 20 years in prison. MK damages competitive Brawl, but MURDERS casual Brawl.
Quite frankly, I don't know why EVERYONE doesn't use MK. Maybe if you seriously enjoy another top tier character, but MK has so many more options, he's usually the most fun character too...

But honestly, Brawl is a good game. It's more mindgame oriented than Melee, IMO. It may not be as fast, and there may not be as many techskills, but it is fast, and techskills haven't completely died out. Still, I've noticed competitive Brawl becoming campier and campier. Overall, however, Brawl is a great game. Admittedly, I do prefer Melee, or at this point Project M, but Brawl is still very fun.

Brawl is a decent game. The whole purpose with the game was to entertain, Sakurai didn't intend to make a competitive fighting-game.

In my opinion, Brawl is a game you play when you are a couple of friends who want a multi-player with some crazy and random elements. Those glorifying moments when something amazing happens are not too rare and it's those moments that make this game really fun and worth picking up.

I am sorry all competitive players out there, but if you want something more hardcore I would recommend Street Fighter or Melee : > Although I agree that the competitive elements are very important for a great gaming experience and it is possible to play serious matches in som degree, I find Brawl being a fun game from a different perspective.

I did enjoy competitive Brawl for a whole year, then I got bored and started hating the game. It was actually sooner, but I still gone to tourneys to see people I like.

No regrets of playing it for all of that time.

No regrets on dropping it though.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: I wouldn't say that it's a torture for me to play it, but I wouldn't want to go anywhere just to play brawl. It is simply too slow to be fun for me and no moment in the game can provide you the rush and excitement that you feel for doing something awesome - the reason why watching matches is so dull. When beating similar-leveled opponents, you don't feel that that you played better or that you are "a bit better" than them, you feel that you won because a hidden obscure chaos factor that made your opponent take more hits in general than you (I'm not calling it luck, I'm talking about the tiny movements you and your opponent do while being just outside of hit range of each other, whiffing "safe" attacks in order to find an opening).

Sorry that I have to bring up the melee vs brawl subject again but I must or I'll explode:
I have no idea if people actually believe what they are saying when stating such "Facts" as "Brawl is more mindgame oriented/has more mindgames" but you really should stop deluding yourself and wake up, brawl lacks in more easily comparable aspects such as techskill, claiming it is superior in harder to compare aspects such as mindgames only to convince yourself that it is not 100% inferior to melee is embarrassing. (I am not personally saying it is 100% inferior to melee)

Also, since the game is so much slower you get the illusion that there is more thinking involved, but in reality less stuff happens in a given time frame so you "think more" on what to do when a certain event occurs compared to when the same event happens in melee.

And if it wasn't obvious, these are personal opinions, when I write something such as "watching matches is so dull" it means I think they are dull.

brawl isn't really meant to be competitive...yes that's true, as per sakurai's translated statements...but it doesn't even seem to be meant to be casual

as dew said, nothing changes, the game speed is far from stimulating, and there's about 8million ways to better spend time, also do people who really play this game for entire days on the weekends really improve as drastically as they say? brawl will always look the same...so will the people who are "improving"

in response to the idea that "brawl is like chess"...please...at best, brawl is like checkers...

FlowinWater said:

I put the game down two weeks after it came out. I hear a lot about this no tech skill = more mindgames. I beg to differ, since the person with the better strategy mostly always won in melee anyways. Look at Ken, Azen, PC Chris that were technical savy guys, but played their character so fluently. M2K mastered both the and skill and was a monster. What Dew is saying after all this time playing the game. It hasn't changed at all....

The ceiling appears to have been reached already. What I loved about melee was that practicing paid of, I can pick up Brawl right now and still be as good as I was last time I played it. If I pick up melee ill be playing like butt.

I tried to get into it, but it was just too boring :/.

HOLLA

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Word, except people were saying the ceiling was reached in 09, and 09 skill levels aren't even comparable to today's -_-

In fact, since the vast majority of people have proven that they don't comprehend Brawl on a level high enough to even analyze it properly, I suspect that Brawl's metagame will continue to evolve for the general population for a long time, even after the top players have maxed it out.

Brawl is misunderstood.

In my personal thinking, Brawl is more about spacing and poking then anything else. Not saying that spacing in brawl is more important than in other smash games, but it does take a larger part of the metagame than before.

It has a very limited movement options, with lack of jumps conserving momentum from dashes, dash dance, with small initial dashes and overall low vertical air speed. Games like that(limited in movimentation, not necessarily due to the same aspects of brawl) tends to overcentralize on spacing, however, the original Smash gameplay mechanics doesn't fit that characteristic as perfectly as the Street Fighter mechanics do.

IMO, of course. Some people think otherwise.

AlphaZealot said:

I enjoy playing Brawl a ton.



Funny story here, he made those statements in reference to making Melee.

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Very true, but the difference is that there was much more action to remove competitive viability.

Brawl is indeed misunderstood, and that's part of the problem, especially when it comes to mid-level play.