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Rating: Average Super Smash Bros. features a great concept marred by poor execution. The concept of Nintendo's classic characters beating the living crap out of each other is one that I think we've all wanted to see in a game for years. Unfortunately, Super Smash Bros. commits one of the biggest sins a fighting game can commit- being a button masher. Sure, one could take the time to master the game's numerous moves and techniques, but they probably won't bother. Why should they when they can just pound on the buttons randomly and win just as often? The game rewards luck over skill and button mashing over strategy, which are generally two signs of bad game design. Another sign of bad game design is when a freakin' hand can serve as the game's final boss. It felt downright silly for me to get slapped around by a hand after I just demolished a dozen of Nintendo's best characters. It also brought back painful memories of Hasbro Interactive's Glover. The horror... The game's fighting arenas are themed after its characters (for example, Link fights on a Hyrule Castle level), and this helps to spice up the game's environments. The environments are also multi-tiered, but this is more of a pain than a nice addition because of the often questionable control. I found it very frustrating to die just because the game didn't respond quickly enough to my input of jumping. In addition, Super Smash Bros. is fairly unbalanced. A select few of the game's characters are noticeably better than the rest. Killing the enemy comes by throwing them off of the playing field instead of visibly killing them. The player can throw his or her opponent off the playing field at any time in the match, which makes it way too easy to win out of nowhere. Also, sometimes when I was thrown off the side of the playing field, I was able to magically float back onto it by partaking in a little button mashing. When I wasn't able to do this and I fell to my death, I felt like I did nothing differently from when I survived, probably because there's not much skill involved in button mashing. Super Smash Bros. can be a mindlessly fun time for a little while as a multi-player game, but it is still plagued by its lack of depth and balance in the end. It's still a heck of a lot better than Mario Party, though...
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