The Gamecube controller certainly feels better to play on than the 3DS, and I think the control scheme is really the main thing holding SSB4 back. I'll be purchasing the Wii U version as well because I think it'll feel a lot more like the old days.

I'm not sure just what Melee did that caused people to think it's the only competitive entry in the franchise, but SSB4 feels pretty good to play, without the random quirks that made Brawl fall out of the competitive scene. With the addition of omega-mode stages and an online ranked play system, I think Sakurai's pushing to regain that competitive aspect of SSB in a bit of a different way.

I've been having way too much fun with Smash Run, a game mode inspired by Kirby: Air Ride's City Trial (seriously, what a great game), and I'm really disappointed to see you can't play it online. They also took out some other cool features, replacing the Classic and All-Star modes with heavily shortened versions.

They also chose not to bring back my favorite character, Lucas, who was easily one of the most difficult and rewarding characters to play. I know you can get an alternate moveset for Ness that simulates it, but Lucas was quite a unique character for a clone, and here they introduced Lucina and Dark Pit, who are about as clone as it gets. Besides, you can't use alt movesets online or in competitive play, though Sakurai's been trying to push the potential for a lot of strategic choices using the fighter customization system. Plenty of other games give their players freedom to build however they choose, and still maintain a heavy competitive environment.

I see they rebalanced a lot of fighters for this game. Metaknight and Pit have among the biggest nerfs, and Lucario sees an incredible amount of power at high damage. They also seem to have implemented features to counter cheap strategies, like fatigue (spamming moves reduces their power), edge-stealing (to counter edge-hogging, because did it really take any skill), and simultaneous KO (to counter grab suicides, which previously killed the opponent before they killed you).

Overall, I see a good competitive life for this game, but I haven't played too much online due to my poor wireless connection at home, so I can't say for sure if anything big has developed. I think it took a step in the right direction, since Brawl introduced some elements that reduced competitive play, but honestly I don't see much of a scene for the 3DS due to the small screen and awkward control system. The Wii U version with the Gamecube controller would probably see a lot more success.

We should have a 64Digits gaming night for this game. It's really quite fun to play with friends.

I regret never getting ahold of Brawl when I was healthy - now I get motion sick from the camera (I never understood why SSB gave people migraines before this). I always wanted to play Toon Link, or Sonic.

SSBM will always have the nostalgic advantage of "being at the right place at the right time". I put in plenty of hours into SSBM and I'm proud of my trophy collection. Achievements felt more rewarding in games back then - partially because SSBM was so popular, but also because achievements weren't so omnipresent yet.

And I can relate to Kilin, they took out my favorite character Mewtwo after SSBM. Yeah, he was pretty floaty and unbalanced compared to most of the cast, but that's why he was fun lol.

I kinda like the new shortened Classic. You can play at above-your-league difficulty without losing much progress if you do screw up. I'm a bit disappointed in how easy the 35 challenges are, though, I hope you get a new set of 35 after you clear them all with some REAL challenge (e.g. "Clear Classic on intensity 9.0 without losing a life").

Also the Duck Hunt dog is an actual character. It's… crazy awesome. Seems to appear as a challenger if you beat Classic on 5.5 or above without losing a life (that's what I did first, but he totally kicked my butt. Gonna try again).

Also I'm having trouble getting online play to work, I get error messages every time I try connecting to strangers, and my "friends" are busy playing local matches.

I was also worried about this, but fortunately you unlock at least two more panels after the first. I haven't unlocked enough on the third panel to really discern how challenging it is, but it has a lot of "do X with all fighters", so at the very least, it's time-consuming.

They included some weird characters this round. I was put off at first by Wii Fit Trainer, then Palutena, then suddenly they announce Pac-Man, Duck Hunt, and Dark Pit.

I'm hoping that being on 3DS and Wii U, two platforms capable of patching, will enable them to patch in more characters and features as time goes on. That'd be pretty sweet, but given the opportunity with Pokemon X/Y, they chose not to do anything but bugfixing.

You do? :D Jay, better get smashing ^___^

Speaking of patching, I hope that X/Y and OR/AS will be able to trade directly with each other, and that there's gonna be a patch for X/Yletting you use the new Megas in it. (That's pretty much a requirement to allow them to directly communicate) It's probably not gonna happen, though. :(

Which means you need to BP grind and get all the items needed in the online metagame AGAIN. :/

project m's matchups are pretty good in terms of how many characters you see get first place in tourneys. it's not an officially released version of smash, but it's pretty well backed up and CAN be updated. give it a try, it feels a lot like melee but it has the Brawl roster PLUS Mewtwo and Roy from melee.

tripping is Sakurai's (the creator of smash) way of telling the competitive community: fuck you guys

oh don't worry, i think players will adjust to the controller. and of course even if they don't they can just migrate to the Wii U where the gamecube controller WILL be supported

I read in an article that predicted the future of Smash 4's competitive scene that took the general stance "Smash 4, to be frank, took two steps forward in terms of having depth, with things like adding hitstun and pivot grabing/smashing, as well as faster aerials, but then added vector influencing (a stronger version of DI in the older games), and bigger blast zones, not to mention very safe rolls and spot dodges, to take 2 steps back. With two steps forward then two steps back, you're essentially looking at a game that ended up right back where Brawl was." I agreed. The more I play smash 4 the more i see WHY players will want to make this competitive (just like brawl), but see why i wouldn't personally play it. it's not fun. it's campy, it's very safe for the opponent to just dodge your moves, characters live FOREVER with vector influencing (and even without it… the bigger blast zones feel like a nerf to fast characters like Shiek), and it takes a long time to take a stock away from a player. there are matches where i find myself smashing someone off stage, them surviving, them smashing them AGAIN, them surviving… it takes away from the satisfaction to smash someone offstage (or gimp them) if they're just going to come back 7 or 8 times before they actually die. the games feel dragged out.

i love Project M and Melee because it's a very fast game to play, and it feels more like what a 1-on-1 game should feel like: in your face. smash 4's engine excells in party mode where you have free-for-alls and you want to live for a long time before you get knocked off.. but in Melee/PM, the physics engine excells at having a tighter battle controlling space, the stage, gimping, projectiles, shielding, killing, and there's a huge level of depth in the strategy because of the amount of options you have to approach your opponent to do whatever you want: combo them, throw them off the stage, play a mindgame with them and force them to mess up, chaingrab the fastfallers like fox or falco, throwing yourself OFFstage to chase an opponent and MAKING SURE they don't come back… all these aspects make the game satisfying to try to hunt your opponent down, whereas Brawl/Smash4 are still very campy and not very rewarding because the engine itself limits your approaching options with safe shields, rolls, and spotdodges. Not to mention going off the ledge isn't as rewarding when the weakened aerials don't kill opponents anymore unless you want to kill yourself in the process.

that's my opinion, i am a big fan of the depth in Melee and PM, and in all honesty, yes, the depth was an accident. sakurai and the development team didn't expect this much depth in Melee, or for the community to take Melee to where it is today. but i don't mind the smash community taking Melee as our own because most of the guys i meet are cool as hell and very welcoming.

plus, how can u hate on matches like this?:

haven't played it yet. most of my fun comes from fighting 1-on-1 with someone else, not from 1-player games. i played classic mode once and maybe long ago i used to find it fun, but i quit halfway after my second run. homefully smash run is a little fun.

i didn't like lucas too much in brawl.. there wasn't enough of a reward getting attacks landing from him. the attacks are pretty weak and his solid killing move up-smash takes decades to start. i haven't seen enough matches to know if he's TT or not, but as far as i know, he was a pretty mid-level character. don't get me wrong, i love earthbound (hence also ness), but they weren't designed with a strong moveset. the mother kid's recoveries were horrible.

we'll have to see how the tournament results come back. right now, little mac, dog hunt dog, shiek, and mario seem pretty solid to me. edge-hotting did take skill because you couldn't camp there forever… eventually someone will just spike you to your death or back-air you. however, the reward (taking another player's stock) for hogging the edge was big enough to make this edge-stealing thing a significant change. this means you HAVE to kill your opponent with a smash or send them far enough for them to not come back with their recovery, heavily nerfing characters that depended on gimping their opponents to kill (Jiggz comes to mind).

not to mention one of my favorite characters is now absolute trash: falco. talk about the slowest, least satisfying character to play.

most likely, you'll see both smash and Melee or maybe PM run alongside and see one of them stay alive and the other one start to die out. realisticly, it will be Melee because of how long it's been alive (13 years!) but time will tell. i hope PM shines even with all the crap the Melee purists give it, because it has the biggest chance of being the most balanced yet fun and competitive entry of smash if the characters get balanced properly (right now there's a few broken characters). i personally will not play smash 4 in a competitive mindset, it's just not fun enough for me to dive into it. if smash 4 stays alive while Melee and PM die off, i'll give up smash and move onto something else. or you know, play PM/Melee with my buddies lol

if i got sick for playing smash (which i kind of do, my eyes and head hurt after a few hours) i'd be super depressed, it's one of my favorite competitive games. i'm sorry hel, i wish i could cure this insane anti-smash condition your body has.

also, Mewtwo was absolute trash in Melee sadly, but that's exactly why i play him, it makes other newbies i play against see where they stand if I beat them and it makes them want to train harder so they don't get 4-stocked by such a low tier X)

mewtwo in PM is broken as hell. dat tail

I know! I love it dude. the 7 characters that were in my first ever NES cartridge, Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt (Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Bowser, Dog, Ducks) are now all in smash. I couldn't ask for a better roster… even if mewtwo got cut out (and man i wish that useless gredninja got replaced by mewtwo), i'm pretty happy with this new roster. it feels pretty unique from the rest of the series.