Having been luckily able to attend E For All Thursday Only, the Rooster was able to get in and play a few of Nintendo's upcoming titles including Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy, Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 as well as saw a decent amount of footage concerning the Subspace Emissary.

First let me talk about Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the game many fans are attending E For all to play. The only methods avaliable to play the game were the Wii Remote and the Classic Controller. Surprisingly, the Wii Remote edged out the Classic Controller making the game experience far more enjoyable than trying to figure out the crazy control scheme on the CC.
I got a chance to play as a variety of characters including Mario, Ike and Meta Knight. Meta Knight (predictably) was my favorite as he was so overpowered that it wasn't even far to compare him to the other characters. Mario was very similar to his attack scheme in Melee so it doesn't require that much to talk about him. Ike on the other hand SUCKED! He's far to slow and heavy, much more so than Ganondorf and Bowser! His attacks cannot be pulled off against any character with any kind of speed.
Back to the gameplay itself, the game moved very quickly and was pretty similar to Melee on the Cube except that it was noticeably slowed down. Techniques like Wavedashing did not work at all and it remains to be seen if these techniques will be usable with the Gamecube Controller.
The game's only bad point were the load times which were extremely bad especially from Stage Selection to the actual battle! But once the game got up and running it ran smoothly and was as intense as Melee.

The stage selection was pretty decent with my favorite stages being Yoshi's Island, Delfino Plaza and Lylat Cruise as they were the most gorgeous looking of the ones avaliable. Other stages like Battlefield and Smashville, while enjoyable, still didn't have as much attention as some of the stages were stuff actually happened in the background.

Next I'd like to discuss the Final Smashes. Yes it's true, they are overpowered. But the good news is that if you beat someone quickly before they use the Final Smash then you can still get it yourself as it shoots off of their body and floats about the stage. In order to get it you have to beat it over and over again until it breaks and your character starts to glow. Then it was a simple matter of holding down the special move button to unleash your uber attack.
The most useless final smash had to be Zero Suit Samus'. All she does is shine really brightly and then revert back into Varia Suit Samus.

Overall, the Brawl demo was very enjoyable and attracted a lot of attention with the gamers. Surprising the lines weren't that long and I got to play plenty of times with both the CC and the Wiimote. The Wiimote was my favorite and was the favorite of many people that I talked to that day.

This is the end of the The Rooster Talks

Sounds like it's a good thing the game got delayed; more time for balancing. As for the lines? It's only the first day, so of course the attendance is going to be sparse.

I say you go check out Metal Gear Solid 4's booth next!

This post was last modified: 10-18-2007 10:41 PM by Badwrong.

In your opinion?

I wouldn't say he's overpowered... according to many people, he's the "easy-to-access" character. In a lot of vids I saw, if he missed the 'ultra kewl fast sord combos' he just stood there slicing the air. That's worse than lag after an attack! :p

In your opinion?
Everyone else says he's about the same speed as Roy... were you running or walking? Double tap to run! ^^
Now that's just a skill issue. =\

It's been established that WD'ing was cut, seeing as air dodging no longer gives you any momentum.

Maybe it was just me but I thought FS's were about right. Link's FS got Ike to 66% from 0%. Powerful, but not "omg" powerful. Also, Samus' FS doesn't even inflict a lot of damage, it just pushes them back quite a bit. As I said though, it's just my opinion.

You're very fortunate to play though! I wish I had a chance to play. =\
*marks calendar for 2/10*

Sigh...

I want to play so..bad. : (

Ricky I thought you were going?

I'm going to SF instead. =/

Yes, San Francisco. (didn't want to make another post)

This post was last modified: 10-18-2007 11:48 PM by Ricky.

San Francisco?

Pity there were no GCN controls for use, due to that being the scheme I'm going with.

they probably did it so they'd think that ppl wouldnt try the wiimote and CC.

This sounds pretty interesting. I am actually looking forward to this game coming out, now i just need to remember to get my wiicode off of my wii and post it so i can actually get some people to play with besides complete and total strangers.

mhhhhhhhhhh...
Sounds interesting...

I guess the delay was good for something then...

Who the heck have you been talking to? Ike is about as fast as Roy on 2x slow in training mode with a metal box on. And it was not just a skill issue. I know how to play the damn game. Yeesh.

and yes the final smashes are overpowered. For example, Link's. You get hit with it, you're dead. No questions. No ifs ands or buts. You're just done. at least that's what happened every time I saw Link's (around twenty or thirty times)

and meta knight is so overpowered. No matter what the lag behind his attacks. A good player won't miss and that's the point. His attacks don't stop, they keep going on.

Oh yes and the whole review is my opinion (except for the facts). Isn't that a majority of all reviews?

This post was last modified: 10-20-2007 01:01 AM by Rooster.

Okay, on the Metaknight issue. He may be able to unleash a stream of attacks but there is an important thing to note. He unleashes a stream of pissy attacks. Sure, they hit often but they they do bugger all damage. And from what I've heard his only killing move is Fsmash. Is that bad? No, it just means he isn't as good as many would have hoped. And also, apparently his moves are easy to Smash DI out of.

Ike as slow as Roy? From what I've seen his running speed isn't too bad. But I've definitely heard that his attacks have so much lag that its not funny. Plenty of problems for any determined low tier player to overcome much like Roy.

The way Ike looks, he is definite low tier material. Metaknight looks mid-to-high tier material.

you played with the CC? I don't remember seeing that anywhere...and all four days we were there we visited Brawl...the only control system they had playable was the Wii Remote.

he may be slow and heavy, but it's leveled out with the power of his attacks. you've seen them...if he lands a good one on a player, you can definitely expect damage. and lots of it.

a little snooping can go a long way. load times are not going to be that long in the game, it's just for the demos that they put out for the con.

reasons for that as well. Battlefield kept having terrain changes, rather than background changes. if everything was just a background change and maybe the addition of or disappearance of a platform, the game wouldn't have any variation.

we actually couldn't find anybody to get to Zamus' final smash, but from what you say, it makes sense. she regains what she gave up and lost the first time. i don't think this will be too big an issue, because in a 2 min match, the most smash balls that made an appearance was 3, on two occasions. and only once did someone get the smash ball more than once (link got the balls all 3 times in one of those matches). half the time, people didn't pay attention, and didn't use the smash balls once they got it...

my guess is that since they didn't announce how the controls were going to work for the other schemes, they didn't want to show them off.

uhm...the whole point of it being a final smash is to have a finishing move, or open the floor for the player to get a finishing move in. either the move created HUGE damage to the player(s) that got caught in it, or it dealt instant death. I think that overall, the final smashes matched their characters. speedy vs powerful vs peach.

This post was last modified: 10-22-2007 01:18 PM by ...i.

Well when I went on Thursday they had both the Brawl Tournament as well as about five or six televisions set up on the outside with Brawl playable with both Wii Remote and Classic Controllers in 1v1 matches with the 2 minute time limit.

geez everywhere i go saying stuff about me not liking Ike I get mauled by everyone. I admit that he has some serious punch behind his attacks but it means nothing if it cannot land on the opponent.

nope. Meta Knight's smash attacks were killing moves as well. and Ike is definitely slower than Roy.

but you're right about pretty much everything else.

*facepalm*

Calm down Rooster. Seriously. Although you may know how to play the game, no one else had a problem hitting fast characters, which led me to say "it must be a skill issue". Is it not? If others are able to and you can't, then the only thing I see wrong with hitting quick characters is you. Can you blame me?

No, Metaknight isn't overpowered. There's a video of him dying at 4%. He may be quick, but hell, dying at 4%? No thanks. Also, a good player won't miss? Well, maybe if he was Neo and he could slow down time he wouldn't but IIRC there's a move in Smash that let's you roll out of the way, and it has no lag. Are you saying a dodge roll is NEVER going to work on Metaknight? Exactly. He's bound to miss, and when he does, he swings at the air forever.

Link's FS automatically kills? Really? There's a video of Link using his FS on Ike in the "Video/Gameplay thread" and he comes back. Quite easily as a matter of fact. People believed Metaknight's FS was auto-KO as well, but again, there's a video of Ike coming right back from it. So by what I saw you really aren't "just done" now are you?

Now where you ARE actually right (omgright?) is where you say reviews are opinions, so I apologize for saying "In your opinion?".

*raises hand*

I would miss

But from what i'm assuming every character has strengths and weaknesses and and characteristics that go with ones playstyle.

A word of advice, Rooster. Smash Brothers is serious business!

Lol i'm starting to think that i should maybe not go online for quite awhile when i get that game, me thinks me needs to practice lots so i don't get slaughtered.

This isn't some super competitive game we're talking about - sure, it has that scene just as any other game does, but for the vast majority of the Wii's fanbase hardcore play is the last thing on their minds!

This post was last modified: 10-23-2007 08:16 AM by Badwrong.