Smash Brawl came out yesterday and I haven't been more excited about any console game ever in my entire life. Melee was a staple of my college career and the game's next generation is the event I've been dying to experience since I first heard about the Wii. Lets get right into it; the VERY first thing I noticed is that Marth's shield breaker (when you hold down B and charge up the sword) is no longer an arcing attack. Instead the shield breaker is a stab, making it much harder to hit with. Yup, that was the first thing I noticed, I was a huge Marth whore. What can I say?

The trick to using any "charged" move in Smash well is to use them in the air. Jump and hold down B while you fly through the air with Marth and you can release the stab as you fall past the enemy. The same trick works with moves like Falcon Punch. It's almost impossible to hit with a long charge up move like Falcon Punch if you try to do it standing still on the ground. Jump towards your enemy and hit Falcon Punch right as you leave the ground and you will find you are no longer vulnerable when doing it + can dynamically attack with the move. If you are looking to improve your Smash game try experimenting with these type of moves in the air and you will find great success.

The new characters I found viable as possible tier 1 fighters were Diddy Kong, Wario, Meta Knight, and Pokemon Trainer. Diddy is just nasty with air kicks and his move where he grabs onto the enemys face! It seems like smaller low weight characters are going to be MUCH more viable in this game. It was truly a flaw in Melee that any small character would be unplayable because they got sent so much more easily. They seem to have increased the small characters utility more to make up for this fact. Meta is another smaller character who is just nasty! The down B move he does can be spammed in the air and the missile attack he does if you hit side + B is very nice. The only thing I found with Meta is his moves don't really send the enemy, I had to resort to just standing next to them and doing a side smash each time. I think there is some element to him I was missing that will be a nasty finishing move.

I am fairly sure my new "main" character is going to be the Pokemon Trainer. Squirtle is utterly disgusting with his long ranged water attacks. I was using Up + B to great effect in 4 player games because it can easily hit all your enemies at the same time. The character also has a huge benefit of being able to switch move sets based on the situation. Charizard was the weak link, reminding me a lot of Bowser from Melee with his fire breath and swipe melee attacks. I always hated Bowser in Melee and I pretty much hate Charizard too.

Final Smash moves are something I really don't like. The smash ball comes out and whoever gets the final blow on it (it takes about 3) gains it's power, which they can then unleash by hitting B. For some characters this shoots a giant beam covering a large percentage of the screen. Others like Wario gain insane speed and invincibility for a short period of time, but it's really long enough to dominate your enemies. Wario may have the most powerful final smash of any character! The bottom line with these is that they are pretty skill less and annoying. I'm sure it just takes getting used to, I didn't really know what it even DID for every character my first night, so avoiding it was really just luck based; over time that effect will be mitigated. I used to play Melee with hammers and heart containers turned off because they were just too powerful, so I might end up preferring to play without Smash Balls eventually too.

The online play definitely lagged, but that was pretty much to be expected. Nintendo is just now gaining the knowledge about how many people are playing online and will undoubtedly put some of the revenue from the game into upgrading their infrastructure. The first night everyone was sure to be on hammering away at their bandwidth. It was pretty horrible when games slowed down to 5-10 frames per second, but I'm guessing the problem will go away pretty soon. If not I will be disappointed and you can all say I was wrong, but yeah they have to fix it so they will! Nintendo has their act together. If you play vs friends who live near you the problem isn't nearly as bad as playing random people on the net. Perhaps the answer is to better sort people by geographical proximity and only allow low ping matches.

I've been working today on little sleep because of last night, but I honestly am going to run home and play pretty much all night again. I haven't had this feeling about a game where I want to be one of the first to master is so badly since WotLK came out. If anyone wants to play message me your friend code or post it as a comment here.