Everyone is here!- a review of smash brothers ultimate

The cover art for Super Smash Bros Ultimate

The cover art for Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Parker Robillard, Staff Writer

Super Smash Bros ultimate is a fighting game of video game mascots beating the tar out of each other for the approval of a God-like hand and it’s one of the best in the series.

The new Super Smash Bros has been out for a while, but its game modes and character roster have been keeping the game afloat. The word ultimate is more than just a tagline. It is more like a promise to be the best.

This installment in the Smash Bros series comes from the brilliant mind of Masahiro Sakurai and the hard-working folks at Nintendo (creators of Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda), Sora Ltd ( Kid Icarus Uprising), and Bandai Namco. (Dragon Ball Fighters Z and Pac-man)

Super Smash Brothers is a fighting game series that got its roots in 1999 with the release of Super Smash Brothers. for the Nintendo 64. Smash Bros deviates from the norm of fighting games. While most fighting games have life bars that constantly go down with every hit until it results in a KO, Smash Bros encourages you to fling your friends (or CPU if you don’t have any) off the screen to KO them, until time runs out or they run out of lives or take an adventure with your favorite video game character. This is the 5th game in the series coming after Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U.

A typical match of Smash Brothers

This installment of the famous series features more than 70 different characters, with some returning from past absences (Wolf, Solid Snake, and Ice Climbers). Some newcomers join the Roster as well. (King K Rool from Donkey Kong Country, Ridley from Metroid, Simon and Richter Belmont from Castlevania, and Incineroar from Pokemon) ultimate also rebrands existing characters as “echo fighters”, these characters are similar but different to an existing fighter. In the base game, there are seven echo fighters, ( Lucina and Chrom from fire emblem who are echo fighters of Marth and Roy respectively, Ken as an echo fighter of Ryu and Princess Daisy as an echo fighter of Princess Peach).  However as cool as it to see these many fighters it leads to a lot of Balancing issues, which makes sense that with so many charters some things would slip through the cracks. This does lead to some not-so-fun online matches being filled with overpowered characters.

The music of the game is great with over 800 music tracks with over 3 hours of music and with some cool features you can use your handheld Nintendo switch as a music player. While it is fun to use your switch in an unexpected way it’s very clunky and not very viable unless you’re on a three-hour flight.

This is the latest game in the Super Smash Bros to feature a story mode, coming after Super Smash Bros. Brawl story mode “The Subspace Emissary”, “World of light” as its called strikes a good balance between difficulty and fun. For a story mode, the story is ironically lacking. A new god-like being known as Galeem has killed every single fighter in the game (except Kirby, for some reason) now you have to free all the spirits and puppet fighters under Galeem’s control. (With a story like that it’s a wonder why the byline said “everyone is here”, it should have said “everyone is dead”)  It’s a lackluster story but, the gameplay of the mode makes up for it. A huge overworld to explore and tons of fights to do.

This game mode also introduces spirits into the mix. What spirits are is that they are PNG images of characters from a variety of other games that you can attach to your fighter before going into battle that gives them certain buffs like increased attack power or starting with a certain item. Spirits come in four types, attack, defense, grab and neutral and it adds a bit of strategy to fights.

A huge drag about this game is the online multiplayer. If you don’t have a stable internet connection you’re gonna have a bad time. It makes the game super laggy and to top it all off if you disconnect too many times from internet issues they will temporarily ban you.

 

To top it all off everybody only wants to play overpowered characters (as explained above). It’s not enjoyable.

Overall the game is very enjoyable and fun, with its many characters and fun gameplay and a fun story mode to boot. However, the lackluster story and the poor online experience knocks it down a few pegs.

Music gets a good 10/10 with some fan favorites returning and some really excellent remixes.

The gameplay gets an 8/10 most of the trouble comes from the balancing issues of the characters. But it’s still fun.

The story mode gets a 5/10 the actual story of the story mode is very unoriginal and uninspired but it is fun.

Overall I give the game the game 7/10.