{"id":22468,"date":"2019-01-17T20:47:02","date_gmt":"2019-01-17T10:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=22468"},"modified":"2019-01-17T20:47:02","modified_gmt":"2019-01-17T10:47:02","slug":"super-smash-bros-ultimate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=22468","title":{"rendered":"Super Smash Bros. Ultimate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"smashbrosultimatethumb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Developer:<\/strong>\u00a0 Bandai Namco Studios and Sora Ltd.
\nPublisher:<\/strong>\u00a0 Nintendo
\nPlatform:<\/strong>\u00a0 Nintendo Switch<\/p>\nA<\/span>t any given time, I think I only understand 50% of what\u2019s going in Super Smash Bros.<\/p>\n

Despite having put countless hours into playing every Nintendo system since the Super Nintendo, the long-running Smash Bros.<\/em> series had passed me by until now.\u00a0 I steered clear because I never really knew what to make of these games.<\/p>\n

I had played the occasional Smash<\/em> game but I was always very confused by what was going on.\u00a0 It was one of the very few fighting games that played nothing like Street Fighter <\/em>so I didn\u2019t feel like I had a frame of reference for the chaos on-screen.\u00a0 It was its own thing.\u00a0 You\u2019re bouncing around a platform with a bunch of Nintendo characters and there is no health bar and instead of reducing your opponent\u2019s health to zero, the objective is to bump them off the edge of the screen which can sometimes happen in a matter of seconds.\u00a0 There isn\u2019t really anything else like it.<\/p>\n

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate<\/em> seemed like a good a game as any to jump in as a newbie.\u00a0 It\u2019s called Ultimate<\/em> because it has every playable character from the previous versions included, which amounts to a formidable roster of over seventy playable characters.\u00a0 What started as a franchise that was a homage to Nintendo characters has also expanded into something much broader.\u00a0 The roster for Ultimate<\/em> includes many popular non-Nintendo video game characters including Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega), Pac Man (Namco), Ryu & Ken (Capcom) and Solid Snake (Konami).\u00a0 In that sense, its clear to see part of the reason for Smash\u2019s enourmous success – it\u2019s become a one-stop destination to pit dozens of classic video game characters against one another.<\/p>\n

If I\u2019m honest, a lot of the playable characters in Smash still remains rather baffling to me.\u00a0 In such an enourmous roster, series creator Masahiro Sakurai manages to neglect including some pretty significant Nintendo mainstays such as Toad and Waluigi.\u00a0 Instead there are three variations of Link (Link, Young Link, Toon Link), three variations of Samus (Samus, Dark Samus, Zero Suit Samus) and a lot of obscure Fire Emblem<\/em> characters I\u2019ve never heard of.\u00a0 The first additional DLC character announced is Piranha Plant who\u2026doesn\u2019t have legs or any obvious form of mobility.\u00a0 I can only assume this strange ecosystem of characters makes sense to series diehards.<\/p>\n

When you boot up Smash Bros Ultimate<\/em> for the first time, you\u2019re greeted with a main menu screen where its not obvious which option begins the story mode.\u00a0 There\u2019s also a tutorial mode buried in there somewhere (I think?) and something called Classic mode which I don\u2019t understand.\u00a0 Of the 70+ playable characters, only a small handful are available at the start and the rest must be unlocked by playing the game.\u00a0 Characters can be unlocked in the World of Light mode, the Classic mode and occasionally at random when a Challenger Alert pops up.\u00a0 The random Challenger fights make it seem like you have one shot to defeat your opponent and add them to your roster but in fact you can have endless attempts to beat them if you find the right sub menu in the Options tab.\u00a0 The game never told me about this, I just heard about it on a podcast one time.<\/p>\n

\"smashscreen\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Needless to say, the onboarding process for new players in Smash Bros<\/em> totally stinks and is easily the most daunting and frustrating part of the game.\u00a0 The menus and options are clearly catered towards people who have put hundreds of hours into the previous versions.<\/p>\n

World of the Light is Smash<\/em>\u2019s story mode where a villainous Big Bad named Galleem takes over the galaxy and wipes out our cast of heroes and villains, leaving only Kirby to save the day.\u00a0 As you progress through the story, Kirby fights and rescues the other playable characters who then become permanent additions to the roster.<\/p>\n

World of Light is really great and what finally got me hooked on Smash<\/em>.\u00a0 Usually the \u2018story mode\u2019 in fighting games have you taking on the entire roster, one at a time, finishing with a cheap and difficult boss at the end and is sandwiched by a couple of cutscenes of questionable quality.\u00a0 Smash Bros<\/em>\u2019 World of Light mode more closely resembles the structure of an RPG.\u00a0 You navigate an overworld which gradually opens up new areas as you battle enemies and collect spirits.\u00a0 There are literally hundreds of spirits to acquire and these provide a huge variety of buffs to your character \u2013 improved defence, immunity to poision, magnetism towards items etc.\u00a0 Since you can only carry a limited number of spirits into a fight, you\u2019ll constantly be swapping them in and out to suit the upcoming battle.<\/p>\n

I love what Nintendo did with the enemies you encounter in World of Light.\u00a0 You come across all kinds of famous characters from video game history and then the game modifies a Smash<\/em> character to represent them.\u00a0 One area has you fighting the cast of Street Fighter II <\/em>characters so to represent Blanka for instance, you\u2019ll come up against a green skinned Bowser who favours electrical attacks.\u00a0 By giving the characters all sorts of different costumes, movesets and items, they\u2019ve created a genuinely entertaining story mode that takes the player through some of the most beloved video game environments of the last thirty years.\u00a0 Smash<\/em> feels genuinely stuffed with content and is absolutely crammed full of interesting artwork and callbacks to all kinds of past games, both classic and obscure.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one qualm I have with this otherwise generous and comprehensive story mode is that there is a total absence of any flavor text to contextualize the 500+ Spirits you collect in the game.\u00a0 At worst, I would have liked each Spirit to identify which game they were from and maybe the year that the game came out.\u00a0 Better still, it would\u2019ve been great to have a line or two explaining the history of the character and maybe a bit of trivia about them.\u00a0 Instead players just amass a humungous library of cool looking Spirits with no detail about them whatsoever.<\/p>\n

That quibble aside, I still found myself totally absorbed by the World of Light mode and easily sunk over twenty hours into it.\u00a0 It\u2019s the most interesting story mode I\u2019ve ever played in a fighting game, bar none.<\/p>\n

A word on the actual fighting game mechanics themselves.\u00a0 Combat is quick and easy to learn.\u00a0 The beauty of the game is its accessibility.\u00a0 There\u2019s only one button for attacking and another for special moves.\u00a0 In other words, even a four year old can pick up and play Smash Bros<\/em> and have a good time.\u00a0 Which is exactly what happened over the Christmas holidays in our household.\u00a0 I had a couple of fun Smash Bros<\/em> sessions playing with my brother who seldom plays games, and his two kids aged seven and four.\u00a0 I understand that the skill ceiling for this game is very high and there is a very active competitive scene around Smash<\/em> but that doesn\u2019t come at the expense of it being a highly accessible game for a casual pick-up-and-play audience, in much the same way Mario Kart<\/em> is for racing games.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad I finally had a chance to play a Smash Bros<\/em> game.\u00a0 Ultimate<\/em> is packed with a wealth of content and is a fine piece of fan service to decades of gaming history.\u00a0 At times there is so much to see and do that the game threatens to overwhelm you.\u00a0 But patience, persistence and the occasional look up on Google should ensure even newcomers eventually uncover the treasure trove that this game has to offer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fifth instalment in the popular Super Smash Bros. series has arrived on the Nintendo Switch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":22471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[441,2618,2819],"class_list":["post-22468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-nintendo","tag-nintendo-switch","tag-super-smash-bros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22468"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22474,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22468\/revisions\/22474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}