Super Smash Bros. Brawl

I should clarify that when I said "exactly as fun," I meant to redact that for The Subspace Emissary. If you've been looking forward to Brawl's adventure mode as something epic enough to stand on its own, you're going to be disappointed (at least, I was).

The latter part of it is actually pretty cool, but the majority of the mode - spent tooling around the map and "meeting" the retardedly large cast of characters - is fairly boring, and way too long. It's extremely similar to the Adventure mode from Melee, which was novel then, but is pretty dull by real game standards. But after you gather everyone, there's a huge final "stage" with a Metroid-style room map that is surprisingly fun. It reminded me a lot of a Kirby game (like Amazing Mirror).

So I'm a little peeved that one of the game's primary bullet points was a drag. It doesn't have to be; if you play it in moderation, it's not "bad," per se. And that's easy to do with the slew of other game modes that you can switch between. But Subspace Emissary is the feature way to unlock characters, which is far and away the most important thing to do in the game, so the mode can easily come across as chore-like.

I should add that there are parts of the game that have exceeded my expectations. Notably, the presentation - the graphics are very attention-grabbing and impressive, and the soundtrack is really, really cool. I'll talk more about the other game modes (coin shooter!) some other time.

Progress: All characters unlocked