Super Smash Bros. 4

So yesterday was a very stressful/exciting day. The New Smash Bros, Super Smash Bros. 4, finally got released in the U.S. Knowing this game was coming out on Friday, got me through the week. I had it all planned out that I'd come home and see the Amazon package sitting on the table, I would open it up, rip out the game, and start playing the rest of the weekend. Sadly, that wasn't the case.

My game actually came around 6:30, much later than when I come home. Those few hours were awful. I didn't know if my game was going to come on time or not. This may not seem like a big deal to some, but if you love SSB like I do, you'll understand.

Finally the game came and I almost cried tears of joy. I opened up the game as fast as possible and started playing. This game is so great! I love the new roster. Sure we could go without Dr. Mario and Dark Pit, but overall Nintendo made good decisions on it. My favorite characters as of now are Greninja and Zero Suit Samus. I mained as Zero Suit in Brawl, and she's been buffed extremely in SSB4, so i'm definitely excited for that. As for Greninja, when I got Pokemon Y I chose my starter to be the cute little frog and took him all the way to the Pokemon League. After that, I was planning my competitive team and realized he'd be a perfect fast special sweeper, especially with Protean. When I heard he was being released in SSB4 I was ecstatic. He's become one of my favorite Pokemon of all time and now I get to continue to fight with him in another one of my beloved franchises.

Greninja

Zero Suit Samus

As for physics, it feels a lot like Brawl rather than Melee which I know most people were hoping for. At least the excessive tripping was fixed. Also, it feels a lot faster than Brawl did. Running is so much quicker, and heavies like Bowser don't move at the pace of a snail stuck in molasses. Sorry, to those who expected something more like Melee this game, but Nintendo realizes that it has a lot of casual gamers who don't care about the technicalities that Melee has, but instead just want a fun and unique beat em' up style game that is fun to play with friends.

Going along with mechanics (sort of) is the new customization feature. This allows you to customize every character in the game how you want to play them using items that increase stats in Attack, Defense, and Speed. This is one of my favorites, because I love fast characters. In a game like this I need to be super mobile. Some of my favorite characters, for example Ike, are so freaking slow. His attack is amazing, but his speed kills it. Now I can add a few speed items on him and he'll be running around as fast as Toon Link. Sadly, the items have drawbacks. Each stat that the item increases, has one that it decreases. Speed decreases Attack, Attack decreases Defense, and Defense decreases Speed. So in order to make Ike a fast murderous machine, I have to put at least one Attack item on him, which sadly takes away Speed and Defense because I take up an item slot I could be using for Speed. Even with this drawback, this works really well. I can make Zero Suit even faster and even stronger than before.

Mario, being customized

Another mechanic that goes along with customization is moves. You can now customize characters special *B* attacks. If you want Zero Suit to dash toward an enemy, rather than using a whip you can! It's amazing that Nintendo added all this customization to characters, rather than just having us use these already molded characters that we have to bend to. Sadly, these two features are not able to be used online. They can be used with Local Battles between friends, but the world wide connectivity doesn't support this.

Specials

There are tons of new game modes such as Smash Run where you pick a character and run around beating up random enemies for 5 minutes to collect boosts to your stats. After the time is up, you then face a challenge that puts those stat boosts to the test. It could be any challenge from a regular battle, to a race across a map. Other game modes include Multi-Man, Home-Run Challenge, and a new Bomb Challenge similar to Angry Birds. Nintendo adding all this stuff to the 3ds version of Smash was an amazing move. The DS is a portable system, so allowing these short game modes to be played on it, fits with this device very well.

Overall this game has met my expectations. The character roster is awesome, almost solely because of Greninja and Rosalina, but there are other good characters too. Sticking to a Brawl formula was the best move Nintendo could make, and I was better at Brawl to begin with so I'm not complaining about that. The new game modes are wonderful, allowing someone to play a quick. The customization is probably my favorite part. It allows for such a different way of playing, and can lead to characters that work better for a specific person, or crazy combinations such as a tanky Toon Link, or a super fast Bowser. SBB4 is an amazing game, and after playing it for about a day I'm blown away. This is a great game for everyone, whether they've been playing since the N64 version, or just starting out.