First impressions: Super Smash Bros. Brawl

impressions of our first friend-code-enabled Wi-Fi match. The result: Relatively lag-free.

Yeah, we’ve given you the the full Brawl experience. Click the continue link to find out our thoughts on the Subspace Emissary mode, Online play, the various control options, and more.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!
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• Online play: Connecting to the Wi-Fi network and finding random opponents is a pretty streamlined experience, even though it took us quite a while to find anyone available to play with (understandable, seeing as we’re not sure if we can connect with Japanese players, and almost no one outside Japan has the game). Lag was a major issue in our first online test, and Brawl has an interesting way of handling it. Rather than putting one laggy player at a disadvantage, the game seems to slow down the proceedings for everyone until it gets control data from all the players. It’s great in theory, but it made the game nigh unplayable in our tests — we could literally count the frames per minute at one point. This could have just been a bad connection on one end (hard to tell without the ability to talk to your randomly-assigned opponents), but we recommend playing with nearby friends if you can.
  
• Event Match mode shows a lot of inventiveness so far. The more interesting goals so far include: trapping two opponents in Yoshi eggs simultaneously; climbing a waterfall with Zelda; and navigating Bowser through an auto-scrolling version of Super Mario Bros. Level 1-1 as three sadistic Marios try to stop him. The Home Run Contest is much improved by a forcefield that keeps the bag on the platform (but be careful … it will break if you give it too much punishment). Check out all of our extensive coverage of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, including galleries, news, impressions, a metareview, and more.