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To start with the obvious, Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out today. This is a game many of us have been waiting for for a long time, and as is customary, we now ask ourselves: was it worth the wait?

Yes.

Okay, now that that's out of the way...The festivities started last night with the GameStop tournament. I went to my local store, and found a crowd of about 40-50 people waiting to play, and after some last minute preparations, the tourney was underway. Personally, I wouldn't have gone with one-minute, point based matches, but no doubt if they'd gone with stock, the thing would've gone on forever. There were some decent players in attendence, but most people seemed to be getting used to the controls as they played. Worst of the lot was the first contender, who was still futzing around with the wiimote's wrist strap until the match was half-over...by which point his opponent had been beating on him the entire time.

To cut to the chase, I picked Link (along with half the rest of the players), and made it to the semis where I was beaten by (yup, you guessed it) another Link, who broke our tie with a Final Smash. The atmosphere was competitive, but friendly, and each guy I faced, at the end of the match, turned to me to say "good match" and shake my hand. It reminded me a lot of my wrestling days, a comparison that was influenced by the trophy that the winner got.

Of course, since the tourney ended at around 10:30, I still had an hour and a half to kill, and the rest of the mall was closed, so I picked up Chains of Olympus and started up a game while I waited. Not going to go into detail here, but it rocks, as would be expected.

So, a couple hours later, and I had the game in my hand. Did I rush home, and burn the rest of the night playing through Subspace Emissary?

Hell no, I'd been up since 5, I went to sleep. I got up at around noon with the intention of writing something here about the tournament itself, but decided to give the game a try instead. Look at the time I'm posting this, and you can figure out what happened.

Unfortunately, I, like most of the rest of the continent, apparently, couldn't manage to get any online gaming going because the servers are full. So instead, I jumped into SSE, and I have to say, this game is freaking epic. There's virtually no dialogue, but everyone's got more than their fill of badass moments, even Ness and Diddy Kong, shocking as that may be. Instead of feeling like just another mode, SSE is practically another game all to itself. It's really cool to actually see the different characters really interacting with eachother, rather than just battling it out, like how Link flips out when he sees Zelda's been captured, or Peach giggling to herself as she follows Shiek through the Halberd. It adds a nice layer to  already outstanding gameplay.

And that gameplay, dammit, it just gets better each time. The physics are slightly altered from Melee, but it's nothing a few minutes of play won't fix. Most all of the changes are fairly subtle, like making wall-jumping easier, and letting you attack after an air-dodge, rather than leaving you vulnerable. Speaking of the air-dodge, you don't slide in any direction when you do it, which means the (in)famous "Wave Dash" technique is gone. I could never do it anyway, so I'm kinda glad.

So far, I've only done Subspace Emissary, and I haven't even finished it yet (Yes. One mode of Brawl is longer than a lot of stand-alone games.), so I'll be busy for awhile yet.

I just hope that the online game is up and running soon, cuz I'm looking forward to busting some heads. 

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