BulletPoints: Smash Bros 3DS Demo First Impressions

Second time writing this and I’m doing it quickly. If you find glaring errors or mistakes, just remember that I’m frustrated this didn’t save properly the first time and I wanted to get this out while the topic was still relevant. Here goes a first-impressions “review” of the Super Smash Bros 4 Demo for the 3DS. 

For those who don’t know the whole story, Smash Bros is getting released on the 3DS this October with the WiiU version releasing late November. This will be the first time Smash Bros has been released on separate consoles and this is also the first time a downloadable demo for the game has been widely available… or will be. The demo is only for Nintendo Club Platinum members and three of their “friends” / people willing to give sexual favors. No one was lining up to ride my hype train so I just gave them out to the first three assholes on my friend-list who I knew would be buying the game day one. All that said, let’s give a first impressions experience of the game starting with…

Characters!

The demo only features Mario, Link, Pikachu, Mega Man, and The Villager, so you don’t get the full experience. Basically it breaks down to middle-character, powerful character, speed character, and two newbies. The veterans basically play as they did in previous installments of the franchise because why fix what isn’t overly broken? That said, I could feel that Link and Mario certainly played more solidly than they had in previous iterations. Perhaps it was their movements having more fluidity or they were easier to combo with (more on that later). But I certainly felt more capable of playing a better Mario or Link than I did in previous games.

Pikachu was a different story and that’s mostly due to controls. Speedy characters like Pikachu (or my favorite, Sonic) often require a good handle and understanding of the controls of the game so you don’t fuck up and run off the stage like an idiot. And given that 3DS version controls spectacularly different from ANY of the previous iterations (mainly because the 3DS control stick just isn’t the same as normal analog sticks) it’s hard to get the needed finesse down just right (at first). I still have struggles getting Pikachu to work as intended, but outside of that, he seems to function alright.

Let’s get to the newbies that everyone is most interesting in discussing. First, Mega Man. He feels very sold and straight-forward. All of his attacks are basically references to Robot Masters he takes powers from over the course of his 9 different main games (or at least most of them). While I can say I’m not a fan of certain attacks (like that slow and useless Leaf Shield) I certainly enjoy his Dash attack, Slide attack, and his various aerials. All of which can lend themselves well to devising good combos and making him a potentially fun character overall. Given his awkward pace of movement, I imagine he’ll play in the middle tiers of competitive play, but this is mostly just speculation until I can get a test of the full game in just 17 days.

Then there’s Villager. Villager, to me, is what Jigglypuff is to a lot of players. Someone with a very unique skillset that can be exceedingly great… but it requires lots of practice and timing to get it to work properly. Without that precise timing and in depth knowledge of how the moves work, Villager will generally be played to a mediocre or terrible level. This means getting the timing down right for the Pocket Attack as well as figuring out when to use the invincibility frames it provides, figuring out the best way to take advantage of his down-b tree attack, and so on. At this time, I’m not a fan of Villager and probably won’t use him much, but maybe someone will find a way to make the various quirks of this character work and then I can look into it more later.

As for stages… you get Battlefield in the demo… that’s it. It’s no different than previous installments. Unless you click the final-destination mode button and then you have… pretty much Final Destination but with a Battlefield skin. Yeah, I can download several different player-made maps for Smash Bros Brawl Minus that do the very same thing… for both of those.

Let’s talk mechanics because a few of those have changed, though, to me not in a noticeable enough way to make that big a deal about aside from one. Tripping is the first, and most noticeable issue that was gutted from the previous installment. For those who don’t remember, Brawl introduced a tripping mechanic in which players would randomly trip with no real cause. Many speculated it could be for pivoting too much, moving too fast, moving too slow, or not hitting the control stick properly, but, in the end, it was just random bullshit and that was frustrating when you just wanted to play a “normal” fighting game. Aside from certain attacks and items, this mechanic was removed entirely and gives us one less thing to bitch about.

Next comes the pivot-hitting (I don’t remember the actual technical name for it). Basically it allows you to run and then do an immediate 180 turn and hit someone instantly. The main thing I’ve heard this brought up for is running through targets and then turning to hit them from behind (or at the very least, the opposite side from where you were initially). But I see little utility in that in the simplicity of a 1 v 1 match. With multiple targets, sure, but even then it seems very situational. I look at it as more of a way to deal with pursuers, at least at the moment. But perhaps I’m missing the point of this mechanic change.

Lastly there’s a change to the ledge-grabbing mechanic, a change that I wouldn’t have noticed if it was not previously mentioned and I forcibly created a scenario in which it occurred in my practice matches. Again, 1 v 1, I don’t see this being that big an impact overall. That is, until I saw another change that isn’t mechanical, but more about how certain elements of the game work. Namely, the change to knockback distance and ease of recovery, which ties into the ledge-grabbing as a whole.

You see, again, for those who don’t know, when you play the game, you’re knocked from the stage and have to jump back up to the stage to continue fighting or lose a life. “Recovery” is a term used for the process of getting back to the stage and how well a particular is at recovering. “Knockback” is generally used to describe the distance a character travels when hit by an attack and… well… knocked back off the stage. In SSB4, the knockback for most attacks (thus far) seems to have been reduced. This also makes recovering slightly easier because there’s less distance to travel back. On top of that, with ledge-grabbing favoring any new player that tries to grab a ledge, it makes getting back to the stage easier. I imagine this was implemented to help newer players enter the competitive scene. Trying to play games on a serious level isn’t fun if you always lose and can’t possibly win. So this gives those just entering competitive play a chance to recover and maybe turn things around a bit easier…

… BUT ALSO…

I feel another advantage of the reduced knockback (and this is only speculation) would be to make initiating combo attacks easier. Combos are something that really haven’t existed in full-form since the original SSB on the N64, back when HitStun for attacks was at its highest and it was a more offensive game. Sure, combos were around in SSBM, but that was all pretty much thrown out the window in favor of wavedashing (yes, Melee ruined everything). And while I can’t say for certain that combo attacks are back in Smash, this seems to be an indication that the devs are taking things in that direction once again. If so, that could make SSB4 a more interesting game than the past two installments (Melee and Brawl) had any right to be.

Flaws with the demo? Aside from the fact it was just a demo, none that were overly glaring. The biggest issue I had with the demo was that I couldn’t change my control set up to something a bit more comfortable for the 3DS since the triggers for dodging and grabbing are rather important, but I don’t like trying to hit the triggers because then I don’t feel the system is as well supported in my hands.

On top of that, I would have preferred to turn items off or at least down. The screen is rather small and gets cluttered really fast. I can’t even begin to imagine what four characters would be like at the moment having only done 1v1 matches so far. I’m not an anti-item person, but fact is you automatically grab them if you dash-attack through some or air-attack near ones on platforms. And I don’t always want to pick them up. Not to mention that CPUs tend to go for items right away, which means you’re spending more time racing to the item than actually fighting. Low items and certain ones just off would be a nice way to modify it. Not to mention battles can only be Free-For-All, and not set up for teams… or lives… or coins. There are actually a surprising amount of limitations given how few characters, stages, and modes we have to actually try out.

Anyway, the game is fun and takes a bit of getting used to on the 3DS. If you do get the demo (being released for everyone on this upcoming Friday (9/19)) and you’re worried about the 30-plays limit, there’s a trick you can do to avoid that being an issue. When you’re done playing or about to run out of battery, close the 3DS to put it in sleep mode, charge it, and then resume playing when it’s charged. You don’t lose a demo-play until you actually turn off the game or system. This means you can’t play anything else during that time, but it also means you basically have an unlimited demo anyway. Just thought I’d throw it out there. See ya next time!