Super Smash Bros. Brawl -- 26 August 2012, Friends Matches #02

Thinking back on it, I had originally considered SoulCalibur IV to be the one game with the most accumulated footage to soldier on through, particularly as I'd played it so comparatively long ago... but then I think I'd forgotten to account for the upwards creep of any number of Brawl sessions since then jacking the total up more than a fair bit. Oh well, we'll see what happens, particularly as I manage to wear down the backlog and see exactly how it turns out. It's all my fault in the first place for having let it pile up, after all. I'm also quite certain that once I free up some space and if it seems that what lingers longest grows too homogeneous, I can always scare up some new material to space it out. ...of course, all this forward-thinking and schemery is all moot if I don't actually manage to make the time required to actually get uploading with any manner of frequency. But, for that matter, I'm well aware that the bulk of people who actually read this description (who are you and why would you do such a terrible thing to yourself?!) will be reading it well after the fact and therefore might very well find the laborious ruminations rather amusing. --- Match #1 -- Flat Zone 2 Sonic (Joou) vs. Jigglypuff (EEL) vs. Zelda (Ratan) vs. Fox (KOK) It never ceases to amaze me how fine the line is between being knocked somewhere just offscreen and going all the way over the edge, as even particularly forgettable-seeming attacks will be sending players flying to their doom. The best among these, of course, are the carefully-calibrated attacks made by the various Game & Watch people. I will say that I'm in a constant state of half-terror whenever I use Sonic here...as I've even managed to careen offscreen on a slow-moving Wario Bike or even slipped over the edge on Luigi's slippery soles. I will say that the notion of standing one's ground and making someone regret having picked up a hammer doesn't work out so well when one's own body is the only means of attack at the ready... oh, and it helps if you've actually not taken a rather lengthy hiatus from playing the game, too. --- Match #2 -- Mario Circuit Pokémon Trainer (Joou) vs. Pikachu (EEL) vs. Samus (KOK) vs. Zelda (Ratan) You may notice that the order has changed up ever so slightly, as the room collapsed at some point and we all rejoined in a slightly different order. I'm still at rather much a loss as to what I should do with two thirds of Pokémon Trainer's playtime, seeing as how I still can't say as I have any real direction when I'm in control of Squirtle and Ivysaur. The former ends up with me just kinda running around and trying to steal away as many hits as I can and the latter sees me just attempting to blow up anything that I feel has gotten close enough to try. Neither of these tends to pan out spectacularly well, as one might imagine. Don't you just hate it when at some critical moment, you find yourself facing the opposite direction you'd been intending to? What results will often look very silly, depending on the gravity of the situation. That said, I'm rather glad it did happen that way, since it gives us an encounter (however brief) with Zero Suit Samus. --- Match #3 -- Bridge of Eldin Olimar (Joou) vs. Pikachu (EEL) vs. Captain Falcon (KOK) vs. Zelda (Ratan) I wonder if perhaps Ratan needs to be mercifully reminded that you can choose Sheik from the character select screen instead of changing at the beginning of a round. I mean, it's not like I could've explained then and in the thick of things, but it's not exactly obvious information, but it would definitely been of some use, seeing as how it's clear he was choosing Zelda and changing characters rather deliberately. Now, if only Sheik (and Zero Suit Samus, for that matter) would come up in random rotation properly enough. I think the one thing that I like best about the entirely too stable stages such as these is that it makes it much more interesting when things go unstable. Soccer ball hooliganism and seeing how people choose to cross an all-to--easy gap that turns out to be not so dismissable after all and all the weird subversions of our expectations are what manage to spice up the perhaps bland and otherwise predictable. --- Match #4 -- Smashville Fox (Joou) vs. Yoshi (EEL) vs. Jigglypuff (KOK) vs. Wolf (Ratan) And again, another visit to a somewhat less... "dynamic" stage, and one several times more claustrophobic at that. The mandatory closeness of the opposition makes this one all the more wont to generate memorable moments in its nature than the likes of Final Destination, even if it lacks some of the more interesting features that exist on the Bridge of Eldin. When you're somewhere "boring," you're all the more lulled into a false sense of security and THAT is where true mayhem lurks. That's why I don't mind Final Destination all that much either.