Super Smash Brothers Melee

The very first review for VGCritics has arrived, Super Smash Brothers Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube! This game is the sequel to the Smash Brothers N64 game from a few years ago. This game is not your average beat 'em up, this is a fighting game with adorable Nintendo characters. Mario, Link, Bowser, Mewtwo, Zelda, Samus, enough characters to play with. But does this make it a good game?

Let's start with the gameplay. The controlls are excellent, and instead of punching an enemy to a pulp as in every fighting game, you have to kick their ass to give them more damage so you can slam them out of the stage with a Smash Attack. This is a very original idea, and works great. Smash Attacks can also be used when you begin with your fight, but they become really usefull when your enemy has taken some damage, since you will then be able to smash them out of sight to knock them out. You can also use a ton of items and weapons to give your opponents more damage. Some stages are also very interactive so some stages will make it easier to KO your opponent(s) then other stages. In this game you will have a 25 character roster. You start with 14 characters and you will also have to unlock 11 secret fighters to make your roster complete. Unlocking the secret characters is fun. There are many different ways to unlock them, finish the game with a certain character, playing tons of VS Matches and other things are required to unlock them. These characters are very good and the Nintendo fan will enjoy to fight with all these classic characters. You also have 29 stages to choose from, 18 from the start, and the remaining 11 have to be unlocked. Unlocking stages is pretty similar to unlocking fighters. Now let's move onto the game modes.

This game has a few modes, a classic mode which contains normal fights against other fighters and some special battles ( like a team of three fighting against a giant enemy ). The Adventure mode is very surprising and extremely fun. You will have to fight through certain side scrolling stages from Nintendo games. You will fight your way through the Mushroom Kingdom, you will run for your life on the F-Zero Racing Track,you will fight Kirby in the Green Greens and more. Some of these stages are very fun, others are boring and uninspired. Now the Event Match Mode, this is without a doubt the most interesting mode. You will have to fight all different sorts of Event Matches, normal fights like Mario VS Bowser, fighting against a All Star Team, KO'ing a enemy in a few seconds, fighting against a giant enemy, all sorts of fun challenges. Then we move onto the pretty useless modes of the game, Home Run Contest, Multi Man Melee and Target Test. Using a baseball bat to send a sandbag flying for distance is what you need to do in Home Run Contest, fun at start, after that it gets boring. In Multi Man Melee you will fight faceless wire frame characters which are KO'ed easilly in different modes. Target Test is more interesting, you will have to break all targets as fast as possible with every character, some are easy, others require some strategy. You can also exchange coins you earn in the game and use them in the trophy lottery to collect trophies. Trophies are replicas of game characters, stages and other things from Nintendo's history. Some trophies can also be picked up during normal fights. The last mode is the All-Star Mode which you'll have to unlock later in the game.

However…. This all sounds very nice, and pretty cool, the game can get boring after a while. The Multiplayer is where this game really shines. The 1 Player modes are entertaining, but get boring after a while, the multiplayer is fun and stays fun. This makes the score a bit lower.

Conclusion – A very fun game, with tons of stuff to unlock, but the game's 1 Player modes can get boring after a while. The multiplayer is way fun though, making this a great party game.

Rating: 87 / 100

Reviewed by Justin