IGN Brawl Impressions- Hating on Subspace Emissary

[nic7]

Well, I was listening to the recent IGN Wii-K in Review, and was very disappointed to find out that well.. they severely dislike the Subspace Emissary. And they just go off on it..

My spoiler free summary below:

Cons:

"Flat out boring"
"Suspace crap-issary"
"Feels Uninspired"
"Story doesn't make any sense at all"
"Most of your enemies are generic"
"No sense of review or involvement.. feels detached"
"Very linear" (They thought as a con)
"Something feels missing"
"This is a chore"
"Doesn't play like a platformer"
"Very floaty"
"Feels uninspired"
"Not pulled off well.. not focused"
"Could be clever.. it's not"
"It's a pity"
"Pacing's weird.. kind of a side scroller"
"Smash has never been about single player"
"Exectations were too high"
"Feels thrown together"
"No strategy"
"Button mash"


Pros:

"Running through levels is a bit nostalgic"
"Recognizable characters"
"Very funny cut scenes"
"Co-op is good"
"The look and feel of classic stages make you feel as if you're in the classic game"
"Donkey Kong level.. that was fun"
"Bosses look cool"
"Pokemon are cool"
"Well animated"

This info all comes from 9-16 minutes into the podcast. There is a lot of spoilers in the podcast though.. so you've been warned.

Anyway, they do go on to basically say the multiplayer is amazing.. as always.. And almost everything else is great..

So.. what you guys think?

I, for one, was really excited for SSE and I'll definitely still give it a chance, but it is a huge disappintment to read this. I hope some other impressions will spin it into a better light..

I'm only about 1/4 of the way in to the podcast so if I find any other info, I'll make sure to post it..

[Ads]

[laderer5]

"Every Game Has Its Critics"

[nic7]

I would definitely call these guys credible. It is IGN you know. And Brawl is the biggest game for the Wii. I don't think they would over exaggerate their opinions in anyway.. I mean, it doesn't mean the game is bad. The multiplayer still sounds amazing.. just they don't like the Subspace..

[LevesqueIsKing]

First of all, thank you very much. Its hard to find a decent review these days that doesn't include spoilers.

I think we all went a bit overboard with the Subspace. The cutscenes looked great, and I think thats how we all judged it. If you really think about it, its nothing more than a lengthened adventure mode, and we all know how repetetive that was.

I think the main basis for their criticism is probably the fact that the subspace takes no skill. Even on extreme, its not like you're going to be dashdancing and edge hogging against goomba's. I, for one, will be playing through most of the subspace with one of my friends and, luckily, he is not a hardcore gamer. He's going to absolutely adore the subspace, and I hope some of that can shed off on me while we're playing.

Thanks again, though. I really appreciate it.

[FastJunkie]

I thought sse looked amazing but as with everything else, we'll just have to wait and see

[Druidan]

Everyone has certain aspects of games that will drive down their opinions of a game more than other aspects. They raise legitimate points. I personally do feel that the general enemies (primids and such) in the emissary are a bit generic. I would have preffered to see each level populated with enemies from their own series being controlled by the apparent coalition of badguys (spice pirates in the metroid level, octorocks, zombies, what-have-you in the link level, etc.) and save those new badguys for the subspace zones specifically, or maybe subspace versions of classic opponents. Also, the boss battles do seem a little too one dimensional. I like boss battles in which you have to do a specific thing, or series of things to beat them. Otherwise, you are pretty much hitting the A button to whittle down the boss' life-points. The example of a good boss-fight for the game they gave was the idea that when you're fighting Fox vs. Requaza(sp?) that you have to bounce back the monster's blasts with your reflector like he did in the cutscene. but you don't have to do that at all, you can just punch him to death. They also didn't think the story worked together well despite some funny cutscenes.

Now I agree with them on everything but the story, which appears fantastic despite it's supposed simplicity. I think the worlds of the various franchises work VERY well together. But then I'm the kind of fan who absolutely adores smash-ups.

Despite the fact that I agree with them on their points, their points mean a lot more to them than they do for me. Sure, it's be nice to see classic level enemies and more creative boss-fights, but I'll be honest, my payoff is the cutscenes and the story and the blending of worlds and to see that in action so overwhelms the other "issues" that I really don't care. I appreciate their opinions, I agree with them to a degree, but in the end the SE is still going to be my favorite memory of this game, almost certainly (I'm not kidding when I say I'm big into cutscenes). Also the very last thing that Bozon said at the end of the podcast, about some characters perhaps being in the game but only unlocked after a Wiiconnect24 update gave me incredible hope for Geno who is rumored to be in the game but locked away for copyright reasons.

[Wiitime]

only thing i dont like is hearing negative things about it. but as for the subspace emissary, i dont really care. i will be playing online and multiplayer so much... yeah ill play subspace too, but mostly multiplayer and online...also making stages and doing all other stuff on the game.. this game will rock. cant wait to have it!!!

[CantGetAWii]

Well I am still looking forward to SSE.
Thanks for the info though, gonna download the podcast now

[JLU51396]

First of all, thank you very much. Its hard to find a decent review these days that doesn't include spoilers.

I think we all went a bit overboard with the Subspace. The cutscenes looked great, and I think thats how we all judged it. If you really think about it, its nothing more than a lengthened adventure mode, and we all know how repetetive that was.

I think the main basis for their criticism is probably the fact that the subspace takes no skill. Even on extreme, its not like you're going to be dashdancing and edge hogging against goomba's. I, for one, will be playing through most of the subspace with one of my friends and, luckily, he is not a hardcore gamer. He's going to absolutely adore the subspace, and I hope some of that can shed off on me while we're playing.

Thanks again, though. I really appreciate it.

I agree with your first two sentence's and your last two, everything in between is a different in my mind.


"If you really think about it, its nothing more than a lengthened adventure mode, and we all know how repetetive that was".

Actually if you look at youtube videos it's much different. It seems like an old Mario game, many different acts in one world, so there for one level (or world) will look the same, In melee as soon as you played it an beaten within 10 minutes and played it a second time you'll see that there's 25 short and repetitive levels, and the each level is something from a characters game, in subspace it is suppost to be much longer and have hardly much to do with any characters games because SB has no main characters, and it won't be as repetitive because you can choose so many paths for each character and with so much other cool stuff along with it.

I see subspace like Super Mario 2, and or 3 in a sence. Except with alot of playable characters, many paths to follow to change how the game plays out, a good amount of unlockable things throught the subspace, long surging story, ect.

So at least thats my opinion.



"I think the main basis for their criticism is probably the fact that the subspace takes no skill. Even on extreme, its not like you're going to be dashdancing and edge hogging against goomba's".

Again, if you see on youtube, they show a video of Meta-Knight fighting some robot things at the beginning level (I'm not sure what difficulty it was on) and The robots alone got his percentage up to 120%, plus there was a boss right after that, And the guy was doing good until that part. So I think that the harder difficulties such as hard and intense are like medium to the harcore gamers, so I would say theres some skill requirment, and so far the only goomba's I've seen in the game were on D.K.s level, the rest are the weird looking creatures you see Fox fighting in a picture and then the rest are robots, and some with weapons.


And IGN always exagorates their ratings for their games, I will admit that the Subspace probably is over hyped, but not enough to even say it's anything negative IMO.

[LevesqueIsKing]

I know nothing more about the Subspace than what was posted on the Dojo and what was speculated prior to the game's release, so I'm not about to say you're wrong.

The reason I particularly did not like Adventure Mode in Melee is because it seemed like a different game. Smash Bros. has never been about stamina, that is probably the second biggest cause for its popularity, behind the roster. There are hundreds of stamina games out there, but how many games are there in which you attempt to hit your opponent off of a platform, with each hit increasing your chances of success. There is one, to my knowledge.
Having said this, Adventure mode took a HUGE step back. For that brief mode, Melee turned into an average fighter.