Playing A Game Super Smash Bros. for Wii U WiiU

I'm disappointed in Smash for Wii U, but not for good reasons. It isn't my kind of game -- but I don't think it was ever supposed to be.

While the Smash Bros. franchise started as a "fighting" game, at some point (the Melee point), someone decided to take it seriously. And I thought that was weird, but, whatever. What I wanted out of Smash Bros. was some multiplayer hijinks, and solo activities.

The core experience of fighting other folks is better than it's ever been, and the insane number of characters to choose from means that multiplayer will never, ever get stale. That's definitely the good news.

Melee delivered a challenging and replayable story-adventure mode, and Brawl upped that ante with its wild and irreverent Subspace Emissary mode. This installment's equivalent is ... conspicuously absent. The closest it really has is the return of All-Star Mode, a brief series of limited-stock fights against progressively-harder teams.

Remember the target-smashing minigame from the past three games? It's replaced here with some Angry Birds knock-off. That's weird, right? Luckily, the home run contest is still here, although that can only hold up for so long. The creatively-fun "Events" scenarios are definitely my favorite offering, but unlocking new events can be a real chore.

Then there's the bizarre boardgame-like Smash Tour, which is like the worst version of Mario Party ever; and even this game's "classic" mode revolves around a weird metagame of moving statues around with other randomly-arranged statues.

While Melee really embellished the bare concept of "Nintendo fanservice fighter," and Brawl added a crazy amount of content to it, Smash 4's extra offerings just feel misguided and unnecessary. The modes that I wanted are gone, and a lot of their replacements are ... inscrutable.

And so what I'm left with in Smash 4 is a good party game. That's not "bad," in fact I'm still pretty happy with it. But I had built up this hope in my head, for some kind of Superspace Emissary story mode, wackily crossing Nintendo franchises together into a grand adventure. (And I was also hoping for more unlockable trophies, and less unlockable customization items that I really don't care about at all.)

I'll continue trying to chip away at its extra content from time to time, I suppose.

Better than: Super Smash Bros. Brawl, as a party game.
Not as good as: Super Smash Bros. Brawl, as a single-player game.
And, I have to add: that the menus are just awful. The conceptual organization of features is complete nonsense, and everything of genuine interest is like three, four, even five submenus deep. Utter madness.

Progress: Unlocked all the characters.

Rating: Good