#4: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Although I haven't been doing blog posts for long, this has still been a long time coming.

---------- Super Smash Bros. Brawl ----------

Stickers are the literal worst. They may look interesting, as do the trophies, but the rarity for sticker drops in this game is just messed up. I was originally going to do this post on Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers, but that'll have to wait, because today is finally the day. After countless grinding in CD/Sticker Factories and doing Intense matches in Subspace with Sticker Drop stickers placed to the max on several characters, I finally managed to do it. The cause of this madness? Falco (Star Fox Adventures). Just that one sticker, but I finally have it, thereby breaking the final challenge box I needed and getting the final trophy that lay inside. AAAAHHHH!

Brawl is a good fighter, even with tripping incorporated. It anger me to no end when it happens, and definitely would have been way better if not included, but I still enjoy the game, and its great to bust out at parties or to just smash a couple rounds with your friends in between homework sessions. I've had this game since about a year after it came out, and have slowly been working on it since. It's key to mention that having played it since then, which is about 7 years now, I'm still only a moderate player (If I could just get the dodge rolls down I might last longer). Yet, I still play it, and unless I'm Olimar, I usually die either second-to-last or last. For some reason he is my main, but I don't argue against it. If you can work it, WORK IT!

In completing this game, all challenges must be completed, through which you can get pieces to the Stage Builder, Trophies for your Trophy collection, Stickers for your Sticker Collection, CDs that can be played on stages, and stages themselves. The challenges span a wide array of tasks, such as collecting Final Smash trophies for all characters, clearing certain levels of Target Smash with certain amounts of characters, and clearing the various modes of the game on varying difficulties, including Intense, the hardest of them. I'm proud to say I finally beat Boss Battles on Intense using Princess Peach. Her side B is fantastic for bosses, as long as you can learn and dodge their attacks, and her levitation and Up B are great for dodging the majority of Tabuu's attacks (but if you don't get good at using dodge roll, you're done for). Characters, in addition, can be gained from secret areas in SubSpace after its completion, playing a certain amount of matches in Brawl mode, or doing various other tasks, such as beating Classic with a certain character. If you like playing this game with your friends, though, you'll unlock a lot of the characters in no time, and you'll surely rack up coins for the Coin Launcher to boot.

The Coin Launcher is a variation of the lottery machine seen in Melee, but in Melee, where there was no skill outside of putting coins into the machine and pulling the lever, in the Coin Launcher in Brawl, you do just that: launch them. By hitting a trophy a certain amount of times, you can unlock, blowing up enemy ships can give you stickers, and keep the rockets from hitting you, or they'll take a decent chunk of your coins with them. It goes without saying that most, including me, like the Melee machine more, because by pumping coins into the machine, the chance of getting something new goes up, whereas you can have literally 9999 coins at the launcher, as I did, and spend hours shooting, without getting a SINGLE NEW STICKER WHY!?!?!

The game is fun, and my friends and I will spend hours playing this game if we have the time, taking turns deciding which stage to go to and changing what sets of items show up during the matches. There are quite a lot of people that like the game Final Destination with no items, in order to fully use nothing but skill I suppose. This is a valid way to play the game, and I've don it a few times as well, but I love the chaos the game provides. The stage hazards, the items, the unfamiliarity that arises when the doors begin to open on the WarioWare stage, I love it all. The only major offense I can think of outside of the sticker debacle I've complained about already, is the tripping. It's even one thing if you trip in a Brawl, it still sucks but whatever, but it keeps many from wanting to even play the game, and it led to me dying during Boss Battles 2 or 3 times on Intense, which is infuriating when you're almost near the end. Now that I'm done, however, I'll restrict my gameplay to Brawl's only, and I can't wait for the feeling I'll get when I see a sticker falling off the stage, and I DON'T have the urge to take a dive for it.

Also, I hate New Pork City. Stages that large shouldn't exist.