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[Blademasterbobo]

UPDATED
Ok, folks: We're all going to be meeting in the TIGIRC (link below) for this, as it's the easiest way to get things running smoothly.

I figure we don't need a set time, really, just come on in and it can go on for the entire day. (Maybe longer?  )

The Beatdown begins THIS SUNDAY!

Event:
TIGSource Super Smash Brothers Brawl Tournament

Date:
March 9th and whenever it's released in Europe

IRC (The meet-up location)

[idiotmeat]

I am down.
Thank god for no work on Sundays.

[Lazer]

if I get a hold of a wii you can fully expect me to thrash some skulls.

[skaldicpoet9]

Sign me up!

I am buying this the day it comes out, I will fight a army of monkeys if I have to.

[Blademasterbobo]

Haha.. You'd fight an army of monkeys, but what about.... Nintendo fanbois!?! 

[skaldicpoet9]

Bring 'em on :D

[spellcaster]

Sign me in.

[Alex]

There's no release date for Australia =(

[Tanner]

If I get it by then, I'm using Olimar. He's going to be the most pro character of them all.

[Blademasterbobo]

Well, if the first one did well, we could do one the next week for the late buyers, and then of course we'd have another for when it came out in Europe/Australia.

[MekanikDestructiwKommando]

I have played this In Australia
(Are any of you from Sydney?? I'm Xeno on Smashboards.com, hi) )
It's kind of gay.
E-mail I sent to people at work describing my experience:

Code:

Me and the rest of the "Sydney Smash Scene" played downloaded copies of Brawl all day Saturday.
One line review: Much slower and simpler then Melee & other fighting games. Don't buy, play Melee or wait for SFIV.
Ok.. much different from Famitsu magazine's "40/40" review. I'll explain.
Game speed: Much, much slower. Perhaps if I drank a bit I could slow down to the game speed, but the delays between significant inputs were on average, vast.
Complexity: Three techniques from the previous Smash games that allowed players to reverse or change certain types of motion, and speed the recovery on certain attacks, are now gone.
(For those who played, that's wavedashing, dash-dancing and lag-cancelling).
New Techniques:
Anything new to replace it? Sort of. The new physics engine allows you to slide (by dashing), then turn around, allowing you to to say, move right and face left in the air (airel facing is significant in the smash series, as forward and back-air attacks are different).
That allows a new form of attack, but it is not a new way to fake out your opponent.
Another new feature: Because of the new inertia based physics system, you cannot control the direction you air-dodge. You can however, attack and jump after you air dodge, so you can effectively use the air-dodge as a "dodge, then counter" manuever in the air. A welcomed technique, in my opinion.
There are several new methods of animation cancelling, however their perceived use is very low so far (as you are fairly vulnerable to them, they might work as occassional counter-manuvers, but done against a stationary opponent would find you getting nailed).
Other:
The "Feels weird" component, spoken by the Sydney Smash Scene and many members of smashboards.com who have played the game.
A fair amount of hitboxes have ranges decievingly larger then their animation, and many attacks are QUITE meaty (the hitbox exists for many frames). Several times I acutally walked into hitboxes, assuming that I would walk in as the recovery initiated. Counter-intuitive, but not a bad thing. Just requires the moves to be learned.
Floatiness: Characters generally stay in the air longer then Melee. Feels strange, but not bad (it doesn't, in itself, reduce the complexity of the game).

Is the game fun? I would consider it "half-fun". It's something I would try playing for another day to see if my mind changes, but my initial day of playing did not entice me.
Please note all my games were without items. Items completley randomize Smash matches, and the game switches from a fighting game to a half-action half-fighting game, with a lot of luck involved. Personally it's not my thing.

If you've never been skilled at Melee, Brawl might seem "fine" to you the first time you play, as a lot of the stuff that's missing is regarding mindgames // cancelling momentum and attacks. The beginner level of option selecting (picking which attack to do) is still there, and works fine. Combos are much harder to pull off in Brawl (because the technique used in previous games to escape combos is now incredibly easy to perform),  so there is not as much complexity in the option selecting (that i can see. I'm sure with enough skill, players could figure out combo "mindgames" and select the right move to connect into another, etc (fyi there are extremely few automatic "link" combos in the Smash series).

Well that's my review, from a day of playing.. hope it's useful.

-name

Code:

I forgot to add a lovely new feature. Whenever you initiate a dash, you sometimes have a random (as far as everyone can tell) chance of tripping. Yes, you fall over and are vulnerable. Decidedly un-tournament level play. 

[PowRTocH]

Reversals/wavedashing are gone? Noooooooo

Actually I think that I'm so used to Melee that anything else will seem awkward by comparison. I'll have to play it sometime I guess.

[Melly]

I forgot to add a lovely new feature. Whenever you initiate a dash, you sometimes have a random (as far as everyone can tell) chance of tripping. Yes, you fall over and are vulnerable. Decidedly un-tournament level play.

If there's no option to turn that off I'd probably stop playing based on that alone. Seriously, I hate arbitrary random screw-up-the-player effects. Or any arbitrary effect that takes complete control away from the player.

[idiotmeat]

If there's no option to turn that off I'd probably stop playing based on that alone. Seriously, I hate arbitrary random screw-up-the-player effects. Or any arbitrary effect that takes complete control away from the player.

There's a 1% chance of it happening when you're at 0%, and it increases very gradually as you take more damage.

IMO, I think it's too early to dismiss the lack of melee's features as a negative for brawl.  After all, if the same tricks worked in brawl as they did in melee, why play brawl?  Give it time.  I'm sure people would figure out other advanced techniques for competitive play.

[Melly]

There's a 1% chance of it happening when you're at 0%, and it increases very gradually as you take more damage.

It's still based on chance, only it makes trying to recover from taking too much damage even harder. I bet it would be very frustrating.

[Montoli]

IMO, I think it's too early to dismiss the lack of melee's features as a negative for brawl.  After all, if the same tricks worked in brawl as they did in melee, why play brawl?  Give it time.  I'm sure people would figure out other advanced techniques for competitive play.

This is an excellent point - it DID take a while for Melee to reach the level of play that it is currently at.  Wave dashing, and other strange things were almost certainly not part of the original design, and were (as far as I could tell) an interesting application of how game systems interacted.  As they close that one, new ones will doubtlessly be discovered.


Side note:  I  know this may not be the most popular of opinions, but I feel like trying to expect Smash Bros to be a tournament fighter is sort of like trying to use Mario Kart as a competitive racer.  It's a testament to both games that you can make it work, but it seems (to me, at least) like both games were designed more as "fun multiplayer chaos" than as a serious 1v1 test of skill.  Random events like items seem specifically included (in both games) as a way to give even less skilled people a chance to influence the game's outcome in a meaningful way.  Good people still tend to win more than worse people, but they introduce enough deliberate noise into the system that upsets, where worse players best better players, are still possible.


Either way, got to play it at GDC, and this has only whetted my appetite.  Can't wait for March 9!

[Movius]

What, they're making the game fun? instead of deadly serious business? UNHEARD OF!

[MekanikDestructiwKommando]

Well, I heard somewhere that in the debug mode there's an option called "air dodge special".. referencing to wavedashing. Physics side-effect or intentional gameplay mechanic aside, wavedashing IS in melee, it speeds up the gameplay, doesn't break it, and makes things more interesting. The fact that wavedashing, l-cancelling and dash-dancing is out doesn't bother me (ok, lag-cancelling should be in. come on  )
What bothers me is there's no apparent NEW techniques to trick your opponents out.. whenever we played Brawl, we had all read the "brawl advanced techniques" thread on smashboards.. and most of them are dead useless (like reverse grabbing). Run > back-airs look alright.

My enjoyment of wd, l-cancel and dash-dancing is simply that they make the fighting more dynamic. All of us who played are fairly experienced Melee players -- no one's pro but none of us suck (a few of us took stocks off Ken's Marth in money matches a few months ago. I didn't bother MM him haha). Most of us there have played other fighting games and are at least decent at them, we are all skilled learners/gamers etc. My point is, lack of fake-out, cancels and empty links (doing an automatic combo without hitting, like marth's side-b), COMBINED with very definite SLOWER gameplay, means that whenever someone does an attack, it is much more static on what will happen next compared to the dynamic Melee. The game's half-"fun" IMO. But less dynamic combat sucks, really.

Thanks for clearing that up about the random tripping. That's pretty gay. It happened to me 4 times that I can remember and I just ate forward-smashes each time..

(ok to be technical some characters can dash dance but they get no movement out of it so it's completely useless).

As another point, SFIITurbo doesn't have any complicated cancels or momentum-reversals. Normal>Supers and pixel-dancing (moving forward/back repeatedly). So why didn't it suck? Because it was damn fast. Brawl lacks speed and opportunities to reverse or change what you are doing.

Oh, and serious business IS fun. 

[Genisi]

Meh. To me, the whole serious business stuff in it is the cancer that kills the experience for me. I'd just want to play it to have fun, and not care so much over every single little thing in an attempt to win no matter what.

If you just care too much about the serious business, then thats your choice, but for gods sake just try playing it to have fun.

[Stij]

Meh. To me, the whole serious business stuff in it is the cancer that kills the experience for me. I'd just want to play it to have fun, and not care so much over every single little thing in an attempt to win no matter what.

If you just care too much about the serious business, then thats your choice, but for gods sake just try playing it to have fun.

I couldn't agree more. I've never really understood the SRS BIZ people...some of them are pretty normal, but a lot of them are super uptight and consider "casual" to be a deadly insult. SSB was never meant to be a hardcore fighting series, IMO, but more of a platformer-styled party game that's easy to jump into.