Thoughts On: Smash Bros v1.1.0

By Brandon Sultana July 31, 2015

 

 

The latest version of Smash Bros dropped last night with absolutely no warning from Nintendo of America. This update brought some premium content through N64 stages and Mii Costumes, and free content that has been highly anticipated, being YouTube functionality, and Tournament Mode. Tournament Mode in particular was very exciting, as it was announced way before the game was even released in November. Unfortunately, these free additions weren’t all that we hoped they would be.

 

 

YouTube

The YouTube feature was something I was actually very excited for. With Smash constantly getting patched, and old replays becoming unplayable, this feature was very promising, as it allowed me to save my replays permanently, and play them on various devices. I’m not sure if I would have gotten as much mileage out of it as other people, as I don’t really know what I would have done with the footage, other than occasionally show them to friends, but it would have been a great feature regardless. While many complain that the quality isn’t good enough, I think the used 720p 30fps is sufficient. Realistically people who really need higher quality for things like YouTube already have the needed capture equipment. What is a major issue is the length of the videos. Limiting the length of videos to just 3 minutes is simply unforgivable. I understand the need for video limits, but this time-frame is simply way too short. How often do you play a match, serious or casual, that lasts under 3-minutes? In a world where competitive matches use a timer of 6 minutes,  3 minutes is paltry by comparison. Add to that the general lack of other options, and you have a mode that is really not worth using.

 

Tournament Mode

While YouTube was something that I was excited for in terms of possibilities, tournament mode was what I was most excited for. I thought it was a crime for the game to launch without this feature, but was glad it was coming eventually. I loved playing Tournaments in both Melee and Brawl with my friends and some random CPUs, and with my huge collection of Smash Amiibo, I thought the possibilities would only get greater. Additionally, the online aspect was a great idea, taking the great mode from Mario Kart, and adding the classic bracket style for online play. Unfortunately, this mode did more than fall short of expectation. The biggest sin here by far is the fact that tournaments are online only. No local tournaments is just such an incredibly stupid decision. I guess their reasoning is that nw with 8-player smash, taking turns is no longer necessary, but I was so excited to use the mode regardless. Not only that, but online isn’t the greatest either. Unlike in Mario Kart, which allowed an unlimited number of players, Smash Bros sets a cap of 100 players, which really hurts people like YouTubers, who have been waiting a long time to finally play with fans. There are quite a number of other options, but unfortunately, all matches are 4 player free-for-alls, immediately killing the competitive aspect. Then come the regular, bracket-style tourneys. These can’t be made by regular people, but are instead generated by Nintendo, with various different rules. These tournaments have a vast range of player count and ruleset. Unfortunately, pretty much all tourneys featuring competitive rulesets are filled up immediately, meaning if you want to play in one, you’ll need to wait in a lobby for 30+ minutes. There is a lot of variety here overall, but some key mistakes were made which makes the mode not as good as it could have been, which is especially upsetting because of how long it’s taken for the mode to finally arrive

 

Overall

I’m not going to talk about stuff like Character balance here, because while I do keep up with competitive Smash, I’m nowhere near knowledgeable enough to go through that. I won’t go into the premium stuff either, because if you don’t like it, you don’t need to buy it, and I don’t find any of it exactly underwhelming. The two features I talked about today came for free, and while it is hard to criticize content that you don’t have to pay for, I can’t help but feel that both of them are very flawed and underdeveloped. Sakurai is someone who prides himself on the whole “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right” mentality, but that’s not the case here. Perhaps patches will come to fix some of this, it wouldn’t be that hard to fix these issues. Increase the YouTube time limit, give us tourneys offline, let us create our own bracket-tourney, and do-away with the person limit. There is such potential here, but key mistakes bog down these highly anticipated features. The update isn't bad persay, it just feels a bit...undercooked