Smash Bros. Brawl arrived at my door yesterday!
I was all prepared to blog about women who are hardcore gamers and how it annoys their husbands that they play so much. It was going to be a constructive look at reversed gender roles and everything. Then a French deliver man banged on my door and Brawl appeared, packed in a big box and everything. Actual thinking? Forget that!
So far my deep Brawl observations include 1) Sheik moves faster than she did before and 2) the new button configurations are messing with my mind. At the rate, I’ll never be good enough to beat my soon-to-be obsessively training friends home in the States via the wonders of online carnage. More giddy commentary to come though…
Bonnie Ruberg is a sex, technology, and video games journalist who contributes regularly to publications like The Economist, Forbes, and The Village Voice. By day she's also a comparative literature PhD student at UC Berkeley, where she studies French, English, gender, sexuality, surrealism and perversion. You can reach her at [her first name and last name, all one big word] AT gmail DOT com.
March 6th, 2008 at 8:50 am
I’m digging Brawl a lot, but that’s certainly to be expected. Less expected, then, are the few potential criticisms. The sheer number of control options makes it hard to figure out what play style works best; they leave it very open-ended, which is good in some ways, but bad in others. I prefer games which TELL me the best way to play them, rather than forcing me to figure it out myself.
The action also feels “floatier” in Brawl than it was in Melee. This could just be me not getting used to the controls quickly, but I feel less precise in my control (especially when it seems the slightest upward angle of the analog stick makes my character jump without asking; need to remember to turn that off).
Controls aside, the game’s huge, and packed with content. Certainly nobody can complain about that.
March 6th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
I never said I didn’t like that it was full of things. I just said that wasn’t enough :).
I totally agree with you about the random jumping. Then again, I’m still taunting instead of moving half the time. Someday my brain will get adjusted to new buttons… if I ever suck it up and decide with configuration to use!
March 6th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Smash Bros. Brawl is one of my favorite games and my boyfriend always complains that I play it too much, even though he is always playing his sports and fighting games. Go figure.
March 7th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
what controller configuration are you using? The customization for control input is well made, it’s foolproof, though getting used to the floatiness they brought back from SSB might take some getting used to.
http://www.smashbros.com/en_us/gamemode/various/various14.html
March 9th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I’m using the classic controller set up at the moment. I’m sure my mind will work it out eventually, but for now things like grabbing are a major pain in the butt.