17 March 2008

Wanna play some smash?

So my brother got me Super Smash Brothers Brawl last week. I've been playing it for a week and even had a few guys over to my place to really break in the game.

I really like the series. Super Smash Brothers has always been a solid game that understands that games should be fun. One of the things that I tend to get annoyed about many of the games out there is this idea that more violence, and darker themes would mean the game would sell better. Games that look like it was created through market research to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Last Saturday, I discovered (or maybe rediscovered) another reason this game is great. I had a few guys come over to play the game. All four of them were seasoned veterans of the last game and were fairly good players. (One of them seemed to continue to dominate using Yoshi.) We had been playing for several hours and had gotten used to the new controls. Then another friend of mine came over later in the afternoon. She had never really played the game, but was a big enough nerd to appreciate the appeal of Nintendo characters fighting each other. After only a few rounds of playing she picked up the subtleties of the game right away. Within 30 minutes of playing the idea of taking it easy on the new player was completely ignored.

For the most part the game is very well designed. Even if you're losing, it's still a fun game to play and the penalties for losing are so meager they don't really mean anything. Also the controls are really easy to pick up. No half-circles, no crazy button combos, everything is pretty straight forward. Really good players can dominate a game on occasion, but with the way the game is made, the range of how good one can be at the game is very short.

It's the type of game that follows the ideology of the Wii. Wii games don't have to be the most advanced game out there to be a very fun game that can be accessible to a wide range of people and not just to the gaming elite. It also gets me thinking about the idea of categorization of games, as in games for girls, infants, kids, and adults. In many ways these distinctions get into the realm of silly and insulting. Is SSBB a kid's game? is it girl friendly? These ideas create assumptions about the abilities of women and children that can hardly be generalized in any reliable way. I was concerned at the newcomer's ability to enjoy the game not because she was a girl, but because she was playing against people who had played the game quite a bit before. (being outmatched no matter who you are is never fun) But it was through the design of the game that was able to encourage even newcomers to the series to find enjoyment.