As some of you might be aware and remember, back in December 2014, I reviewed all the Super Smash Brothers games I had, to celebrate Smash WiiU’s release. One that didn’t get a lot of attention, but I felt like I had to review due to its stature in the Smash Bros community is Super Smash Brothers Melee. I've never owned an actual Gamecube before, I've owned a Wii, but until recently I hadn't obtained all the parts I needed to play Gamecube games off of it... ok I say recently, it was last year. As to why I've been putting it off, well this is going to be a short review because there isn't much to say about it, mechanicly at least. You'll see what I mean in a bit though.
Like many games before it, Smash Brothers sequels don't do much to reinvent the wheel, however Melee is the closest the series has come to it. Thanks to the gamecube controller having more buttons and the c stick, the modern day fighting mechanics of Smash was born. More moves were added to the existing fighters, more characters were added, brand new stages, its your traditional expansion to a fighting game. It was what was changed ontop of that which gives Melee its fond memories. The speed of fighting was improved which does a lot to make fights far more interesting. When playing Smash as a fighting game, these tweaks are a lot of fun. When you're not playing Smash as a fighting game though, that's when the problems start appearing.
Smash introduces Adventure Mode, a mode that adds more single player content to the game most people play for multiplayer. You go through a mixture of platforming challenges and Smash arenas themed after most of the franchises in the game. Mushroom Kingdom, a Tri Force hunt in a Zelda esque dungeon, sprinting along a highspeed hover car racetrack, you get the point. These platforming moments were not fun for me. As a platformer fan, they just felt sluggish. To do something I know people will hate, I liked Brawl better in that aspect. Say what you want about Subspace Emmisary, mechanicly its not a slog to play through. Now the amount of levels on the other hand and where they are on the world map, yeah that's a problem it has and a point I'll give to Adventure Mode. Instead of a world map, progression plays more like Classic mode did on the N64, its for the most part fixed, though playing well unlocks more levels to play in that run. While I'm not a fan of the execution mechanicly, its still a solid mode that I'd love to see return.
It's hard to compare Melee favorably in other aspects of the game simply due to its age. Yes it has a great soundtrack... that gets outclassed by Brawl and 4 (overall). The roster is nice, but a lot of the fighters that anyone cares about are in later games, be it built in or via DLC, and the later games have far larger rosters. Same with the stages. Again, none of these are Melee's fault, its just a matter of time. Visually the game looks great for a Gamecube game, even if its a launch window game. Only problem I have that's a somewhat large one is the controller. I personally play Smash with a Classic Controller Pro (started with Brawl, remember?), its what I'm personally used to so the Gamecube controller feels unnatural for me. Not an absolute deal breaker, but a point I felt I should bring up. At the end of the day though, I can understand why people love this game, and I'd love to get it digitally on the Switch, where the button layout's closer to my prefered layout. To check out the most recent post on the Mediaholics Toybox: https://mediaholicstoybox.blogspot.com.au/2018/02/new-york-toy-fair-2018-better-late-then.html and coming up here next week, I start the, and you can blame Marissa for this one, the Mini Mega Man Marathon March Mania
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