noun
1. A confused hand to hand fight or struggle amongst several people.
2. Confusion; turmoil; jumble.
EX. So, over the last week or so, I've been playing a lot of Super Smash Bros. Melee (Nintendo Gamecube) and I've been thinking a lot about the series up until now, as well as the barely touched sub-genre of platformer fighting games, and about the possible improvements to both.
First, let's talk about the strengths of this series:
1. The platforming element makes the gameplay unique and allows for a lot more variety in levels and story modes. Also, because of this freedom of movement, there is more to do with designing characters to give them a more unique feel and balance.
2. The games rely less on button combos and more on using the environment to your advantage-- it makes the game more open to new players with a literal pick-up and play learning curve that just about anyone can enjoy from casual to hardcore.
3. The use of items and environmental hazards allows for a lot of variety and strategy; there is a lot of surprises and risk/reward elements when items are turned on.
And here are the things that need some work:
1. Camera issues; certain levels in the history of the title have had atrocious camera work due to the layout of the level; large levels mean that when two characters run to opposite sides of the screen, the whole screen zooms out to make everything small and difficult to make out. I dunno how to fix this problem, besides better level design.
2. Clutter is a big problem; with four characters duking it out on screen, objects falling from the sky and appearing out of no where, the environment shifting , camera moving and so on can make the games frustrating at times. Personally, I found the clutter in Brawl to be especially frustrating.
3. Random item drop, random damage, and random tripping are several of the things that make competitive play tricky; arguably, there are unknown variables that are beyond one's control in real life sports-- but the beauty of video games and simulators is they allow for precise conditions that allow truly fair competition...in theory.
I'd like to see a new Smash Bros. game come out on the Wii U, possibly with a Brawl port to the 3DS (not sure if it'll work well on portable), and we're getting a Smash Bros. clone on the PS3 this year with All Stars Battle Royale. My question is what do you guys think about the Smash Bros series, the sub-genre of platformer fighters, and this new Sony game.
P.S. My favorite Smash Bros. character is Pikachu.
