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3DS ‘Smashes’ into battle!

‘Super Smash Bros. 3DS’ review


Dan Medeiros
Connector Contributor

“Super Smash Bros.” for Nintendo 3DS is the fourth game in Nintendo’s hit fighting game series, and the first to have been released in six years. “Super Smash Bros.” has been a much-loved series for both casual party and competitive tournament play. In many ways, Nintendo’s latest entry in the series lives up to the legacy of its predecessors. However, it has a few expected and unexpected flaws.

“Super Smash Bros. 3DS” hosts the largest character roster of all four games, with 51 characters compared to the 39 in “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” (Wii, 2008). Some characters, such as Snake from “Metal Gear Solid” and Ice Climbers, did not make the cut. However, there are plenty of returning characters and 15 new characters, including Wii Fit Trainer, Villager from “Animal Crossing,” Greninja from “Pokemon,” Mega Man and Pac-Man.

One of the coolest new additions is Little Mac from “Punch Out.” His fighting style is heavily focused on ground combat, where he is incredibly powerful. To offset this, he is incredibly weak in the air.

Pac-Man and Villager are really fun new characters with very quirky fighting styles. Pac-Man switches back and forth between his 2D and 3D versions for his different attacks, while Villager utilizes a multitude of odd items for his attacks, such as a bowling ball, a butterfly net and turnips.

The single player for the game admittedly feels lacking. The Classic and All-Star modes make a re-appearance, but the story mode was removed in favor of the new mode, Smash Run. In Smash Run, four players run around a large map fighting hordes of enemies from different games (think things like Goombas from “Mario” and Octoroks from “Legend of Zelda”). The whole time, they are collecting boosts to their stats. At the end of five minutes, the players compete in either a battle or race with their newly-boosted stats.

While this mode is certainly fun for a while, it does grow fairly frustrating and repetitive. The lack of a story is fairly disappointing, but it can be overlooked. There are challenges to complete that unlock equipment, trophies and maps, which help provide something for the player to strive for and encourage them to keep playing.

The gameplay seems to find a nice balance between that of “Super Smash Bros. Melee” (GameCube, 2001) and “Brawl.” It still provides a lot of fun for the casual player, but also provides more for competitive players than “Brawl” did. Some interesting things of note are the removal of random tripping and increased fall speed. “Smash Bros. 3DS” feels less floaty than “Brawl.” Also, large characters, such as Bowser, have been given noticeable improvements.

The new character customization is interesting enough, more so for the new Mii fighters. It is now possible to use Miis in battle and dress them up in different outfits, giving them different powers and bonuses from equipment. Miis can either be based on a martial arts brawler, swordfighter or an arm-cannon gunner.

Customization for the other characters in the game is interesting, though one may wonder if it will see much use outside of casual play. Players can create custom versions of characters using new powers and equipment for stat changes.

The main and most important issue of the game lies within the multiplayer mode. Every map has a normal and competitive version that is playable. There even exists an online multiplayer option called “For Glory,” which allows players to compete, without items, on competitive versions of the maps. This is a fantastic decision on the developers’ part, but there are some serious issues with multiplayer performance.

While noticeably better than the online capabilities of “Brawl,” “Smash Bros. 3DS” can frequently suffer connection issues online. In a one-on-one fight, it is almost rarely noticeable. For many competitive players, this will be fine; once you increase the amount of players, though, the game can become near unplayable due to the connection problems.

The issue is not even limited to online play. Occasionally there are annoying local connection issues, which leads into another issue: the fun of a group of friends sitting around the TV together is lost when everyone is playing on different handhelds.

Finally, it should be noted that not having a 3DS XL could severely hurt you for this game. With an XL, the controls are easy enough to grasp after a little practice; a normal 3DS can be uncomfortable and more difficult to use due to its smaller size. It also makes it harder to keep track of everything on the smaller screen.

This latest “Super Smash Bros.” is a welcome addition to the series. That said, if you own a Wii U, you might want to wait for that version to get the most likely better experience.
Final Grade: B-

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