| IIIIITHE1IIIII said: On the second half of 2014, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U was released to the worldwide gaming market, with the latter receiving critical acclaim and a Metacritic score of 92,2/100. Well received aspects of the game include the wide arrangement of single and multiplayer modes, a roster of great variety and improvements over gameplay mechanics in previous entries. While the sheer quantity of features indeed is a valid point, I will hereby inform you of why it all falls flat as a direct result of poor mechanics, poor planning and poor execution:
1. The new ledge mechanic is even worse than the original Few people would dispute that edge-camping (to preserve invincibility, as seen in Melee and Brawl) and edge-hogging (to gimp opponents, as seen in all previous Smash games) are present because of flawed edge mechanics. However, the solution brought by the new mechanics are far from satisfactory: The sweet-spot range for grabbing the edge is still very long (same as Brawl) which, combined with air-dodging, means that edge guarding more often than not will get punished, as the almost guaranteed recovery results in an invulnerable opponent once he or she makes it back. Essentially, this means that no matter how far you hit your opponent, if he is not off-screen, he will make it back and punish you if you attempt to stop him. The new edge system is clearly better, as it does not allow for broken strategies like MK's edgeguarding. The argument that players make it back 100% of the time (or anything close to that) is ridiculous. Airdodging isn't a get out of jail free card. It leaves you vulnerable, and it can be baited. You have less ledge invincibility, it comes into play later, and you can't simply hang out on the edge to ensure you get back on the stage safely. I've gotten plenty of kills offstage. Of course, gimp kills are harder now, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. A few characters in Brawl were completely unusable due to bad recoveries, and now will be viable (Ike, Mario, and a couple of others). 2. The A.I. is ridiculously unbalanced Frame perfect shields, frame perfect air dodges, frame perfect reaction speed, and plenty of intentional mistakes more or less sums up Smash 4's vision of challenging A.I. As such, they are useless to practise against unless they are the only opponents that you intent to fight. Of course, those familiar with previous Smash games will notice some similarities, but failing this greatly to create realistic A.I. opponents in this day and age is simply unacceptable. I'm not sure the AI is meant to be realistic or approximate human intelligence. Honestly, I haven't played any fighting games that have really done so. As long as you have internet, you have human opponents to practice against. I'd like the AI to be better, but it's no worse than most fighting games I've played. 3. Counters are overpowered Not only is the move in effect as soon as it is performed (as we are all accustomed to), but the effect lasts for an unreasonably long amount of time. This flaw becomes painfully obvious when considering the previous point on this list. The previous point on the list? How is this related to AI? At any rate, no counters are not overpowered. They're moderately useful at best. I'm pretty bummed out I have to use it online with Palutena instead of her custom. It doesn't matter how long counter lasts. In fact, it lasting longer just means you have more time to get into position to counter attack. A missed counter gives your opponent the oppurtunity to hit you with whatever they like. If powerful moves are getting countered on a regular basis, you're being predictable. I haven't seen any tournament players using counter more than two or so times per match. The only top character than has a counter is Lucario (whose status as a top character is debated) and Greninja maybe (even more debated). If you're having trouble with counters, I have a hard time taking your opinions on Smash seriously. 4. Defensive play is far too rewarding Almost all moves that are used on a shield will get punished either by immediately dropping the shield and attacking (if the opponent's move has a lot of ending lag) or by simply shield-grabbing the opponent. The end result is that offensive play, unless accompanied by projectile camping or unskilled opponents, is not a viable strategy. Especially considering how low the hit stun is compared to the first two games of the series, which makes strong reads (the act of predicting your opponent and punishing him with a strong hit) and strong hits in general less rewarding because of how unlikely they are to lead into a combo - In addition to combos becoming rare in general. Smash professional PC Chris said it best when he, referring to Brawl, stated that it was less about beating up your opponent and more about who gets hit less. Don't use those moves on shield. Most characters have a pretty decent array of attacks that are safe on shield when spaced properly. Characters in general have much safer options than in Brawl. Hitstun is increased by far. In Brawl characters could airdodge after 13 frames or so. In this game, hitstun is increased proportionately to the knockback. If you think hitstun is weaker, just ask your friendly neighborhood Captain Falcon main. Up air actually combos into fair. It's no joke. To top it off, airdodging into the ground now has lag, making it harder to safely land after being popped up which makes hits more rewarding. It's hard to say how the metagame will develop, but so far, more offensive characters have been better off. There really aren't any characters like MK, Olimar, or ICs who really could dominate defensively. At this point, the game is far more offensive than Brawl was based on tournament play I've seen. And yeah, getting hit less is a good way to win in basically any fighting game. 5. Final Destination is the only stage in For Glory mode This is yet another example of the developers failing to recognize the desires of people who play Smash competitively. Limiting the stages to Final Destination alone heavily rewards characters with projectiles, and does nothing to compensate for the characters who don't have this advantage. In addition, it makes the whole experience more bland than necessary with this lack of variety. I'll agree with this one. I'd really like more stages in for glory. That being said, this hasn't been a huge issue for me so far. Falco's lasers have been slowed down, Diddy has only one banana, Dedede's gordos are reflectable, Snake is gone, and so on so forth. There are few characters who can really lock down the stage with projectiles. Still, this is my biggest complaint with this game. Still hoping for a patch, but that probably won't happen. 6. The Rage mechanic Outside of Lucario in Brawl, this is the first time a mechanic of this sort is present in this series. Simply put, the Rage mechanic makes characters with higher damage inflict more knockback with each of their moves, serving as a means of letting losing players make a comeback more easily. Effectively punishing players who perform well. Indeed, a more appropriately named mechanic is hard to find. You're assuming that the player with the higher percentage is losing, which is not always the case. If you KO your opponent first, then you'll be at a higher percentage, and have the lead, so this can put you in a good position. The jury on this mechanic is still out, but huge comebacks haven't become a thing yet. 7. The balancing is terrible While the three previous points were supposed to serve as automatic balancing mechanics, three characters in particular have managed to take advantage of these mechanics and shape the whole meta game. The two most prominent examples are Shiek and Diddy Kong who, with their particularly fast out of shield- and guaranteed follow-up options, dominate all major tournaments. The third prominent example is Lucario who still has his aura effect (retained from Brawl) which, in combination with the rage effect, makes him insanely powerful at high percentages - enabling him to K.O. opponents that are under 40 percent with his smash attacks. Guaranteed follow up options? Thought this game has no combos. I don't think Diddy has very quick OOS options aside from his grab. Sheik a bit more so, but her low lag aerials are more what makes her good. Lucario hasn't really been dominating, and has some fairly exploitable weaknesses. At any rate, this game has been out for about three months at this point, so it's hard to talk about balance. Sheik and Diddy are the best right now, but we'll see how the game develops. Certainly seems to be more balanced than Brawl. Also, keep in mind that at a similar point in Brawl, Dedede, Game and Watch, and Rob were considered top tier characters. 8. There is no equivalent to the Subspace Emissary As one of the few things that Brawl did right, it came to everyone's surprise when it was announced that this feature would not be appearing in the newest installment of this series. The excuse for its disappearance revolved around the ability to see the whole story on youtube without buying the game, but as many were able to point out, this was just an evasion. And the real reason would soon make itself apparent. It's really not missed. The game has more content and modes than most other fighting games. 9. The game was rushed The Wii U home console's struggles forced Nintendo to push this game through the gate as quickly as possible, and after going through this list, the devastating consequences should be apparent to anyone. However, the most devastating result has yet to be mentioned; the result which is by far the most vital mistake made during the development of this title: I believe the game started shortly after the game went gold, so it had about 2 and a half years in development. Pretty reasonable timeframe. Of course, every company wants to get their big games out quickly, but there is little evidence of this being particularly rushed. 10. The game was not developed by Nintendo While it is true that Sakurai oversaw the development of the title, fact remains that all the hard work was done by the people at Namco. Sakurai mentioned that it was his intention to bring back the same competitive audience that disliked the changes made in Brawl, but ultimately he had no choice but to accept the work that was made by Namco's hundreds of employees, if nothing else to meet the deadline and release the game in time. And while Namco does not strike you as the average money-grabbing third party developer, their polish and eye for quality evidently stand no chance against Nintendo's expertise. As a result, this series will forever be taintet by this entry. This really isn't a new thing. The first two entries were developed by Hal. Brawl's team was made of developers from a variety of different devs. Monolith was involved, as was Game Arts, and a bunch of other people from various walks of life. Nothing else you've said can be even vaguely verified. Sakurai has emphasized on several occasions that he had final say on basically everything, and he is known to be a control freak as a developer. |
So... yeah. You're certainly entitled to your opinion on whether the mechanics are better or worse, but you've provided little at all to back up those opinions. Certainly not enough to call the game an abomination (for a reference point btw, the massacre at Wounded Knee was an abomination. Smash lacking SSE falls well short of that).
? 3 clones well that is far less than melee, and the game was release 3 years after the it was announced
