How I see Brawl vs. Melee

So what's up?

I been real busy with high school graduation affairs lately, but I been meanin to make a new blog for some time. This is somethin that came up on Basil a few times in the last week, and I realized I had alot to say about it, yea. Some people instantly assume Brawl is a superior game to its predecessor in every way, shape, and form. To that I say nay! Learn your facts before you make such a claim, and make sure you played through both games [single and multi-player] 'fore you judge anythin.

Some background

I was lookin forward to Brawl ever since it came out, and I had my eyes set on playin Metaknight ever since I saw pictures and footage of him in the game. See, not only was I always a big Kirby fan, and viewed MK as one of the BAMFs of the Nintendo family,

buuuuut…for years and years, my Melee character was Kirby, and my best friend Jake always handed my ass to me with sword characters. The whole spectrum. Link, Young Link, Roy, Marth, and throw in Zelda, Sheik, and Ganondorf jus to make me feel worse.

I always thought, "Goddammit! If only Kirby had a sword, then I could fight Jake on equal ground!"

In the end I gave up Kirby [playin aggressively, which is my natural fightin style, with the little guy, does not suit Kirby very well. You die waaaay too often]. I had found out by pure chance playin random characters that I greatly enjoyed Samus [still raging that they gave all her speed to Zero Suit in Brawl, but anyways], and I got really good with her. In fact I can't recall losin to anybody as Samus in the time that I was still a Melee fanatic, which was before I had ever picked up Brawl.

As for me and Jake, we had concluded that it was impossible for me to beat him as Kirby, so we jus did team matches for somethin like 2 years on end. One day I invited him over my house, but this time was different, this time was the first time he'd see me play as Samus. At this point his characters were Zelda and Sheik.

I wiped the floor with him.

Fast-forward ro the fall of '08, that's when I had first started playin Brawl. It was over my friend Owen's house, in a group with my friend Evan and occasionally Owen's older brother Emmett. I always lost to Owen. I realized that Samus's change in attack, moving, and falling speed had crippled my skills with her. Hell, all it took was the change in fallin speed and I was already too fucked up to control her right.

So point 1, my friends, is that 100% of your Melee skill does not carry over to Brawl. And that's truly a shame. 😐

The good ol' days of Melee

Remember those Trophy Tussle event matches that would kick your ass?

Well, they certainly kicked my ass. Jake's too. Final Destination was a bitch-and-a-half to unlock, as were some of the characters. Falco had you survive the 100-man Wire Frame fight, and Mewtwo had this crazy thing about combined vs. play time. I got what it meant now; you jus gotta plug in as many controllers you can, start a vs. fight, and leave your game on overnight. But back then, me and Jake jus opted to do the 700 vs. matches thing. And that was a royal pain in the ass.

What I'm tryin to say is, characters had a variety of assigned tasks used to unlock em. There was no "play through Adventure Mode and meet all of them" option.

When I saw how that's the way you unlock characters in Brawl, I asked myself:
What the fuck?

I mean that's cool and all, but you don't even get a chance to fight the people you unlock from Subspace Emissary. And reducin the number of "A challenger is approaching!" events really draws away from the spirit of the game.

The List – comparisons

Brawl's advantages over Melee:
Attempt at a cohesive storyline enveloping all the game's characters
Existence of online play [still subpar compared to other consoles' online play, but okay]
Final Smashes
Easier to pick up and master [Smash Bros. newbs rejoice!]
Noticeably slowed down [mainly fallin speed; pro or con, who knows?]
Bosses
Facilitated picture-taking mode
Ability to save replays of matches
More characters
Assist trophies [could be seen as a pro or con, but I consider it mostly a pro]
Better graphics
Stage music customization
Stage builder
Multiple taunts per character
The cutscenes in Subspace Emissary are pretty well-designed, and some are even kickass [the story overall still sucked though]

What Melee has on Brawl:
No attempt at a cohesive storyline enveloping all the game's characters
Event matches had the potential to be extremely challenging
Stages overall were better [less suck stages that most people jus write off from the outset]
Adventure Mode gave you a trophy per character [rather than the character -rolls eyes-]
Adventure Mode was not overly long and complicated, but rather a Nintendo world tour [this is independent of the storyline itself]
Gameplay was much more fast-paced [see below]

Single-player modes awarded you a list of titles after completing each stage [these were fun to read, achieve, and unlock]
Lottery system of gettin trophies > that fucking 2008 remake of Asteroids
Why the fuck do I need this many stickers? Get em outta my face, I'm glad they aren't in this game
Tournaments could reach up to 64 players
Mewtwo
Home-Run contest was actually a challenge, not jus "throw the bat a few times and then swing"
Related to the last point, Brawl's Target Test was also streamlined to a one-size-fits all attitude. Melee's style of havin it customized to fit each character was way cooler.
Doesn't focus on obscure "team" forms of play [Multi-Man Brawl, Home Run Contest, and in Brawl you can't even break a checklist item if you play with another person. These should not be 2P.]
The Pokemon in this game do not suck [and there's more of em >_>]
Does not have Diddy Kong

You wanna fight about it?

Any disputes are welcome. I don't pay much attention to tiers, I don't visit allisbrawl, and I never bought into the technical stuff about Smash Bros, so I can't relate to any of you guys who are into wave-dashing or L-canceling [whatever the fuck those mean]. It's obviously a running list, but in my humble opinion, the games are equal. Brawl is not automatically better because it's newer. The strides Brawl has in multiplayer are compensated for by its suck-tastic changes in 1P.