I didn't have a game finished for this past week, so I thought now might as well be a good time to post my thoughts on Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, especially since the first DLC, in the form of Mewtwo, is coming out in just a week and a half.
I posted my thoughts on the 3DS version right when the Wii U version came out, and I pretty much still feel the same about all my comments in that post re: the character roster. The roster is so huge that I definitely wasn't bored pouring more time into the Wii U version, although it did feel a bit like a drawback to be starting from scratch in terms of completing challenges and collecting trophies and all that. The Wii U specific Events mode was fun to work through, and a step up from Brawl in that each event comes with a challenge, although I preferred the 3DS's simpler take on Classic mode.
A fair amount of the more unique selling points of the Wii U version, namely, the 8-player battles, "Special Orders" mode, level editor, and Amiibo support (which came to 3DS when the New 3DS was released about a month and a half ago) were peripheral and didn't make much of an impact on me at all. The party mode, "Smash Tour", was actually pretty fun, though, and is one that I'm happy to come back to again; I definitely preferred it to the 3DS's Smash Run mode. I like the fast pace of Smash Tour, and although it ends up feeling pretty random it's all in good fun, and I like that you're forced to use a lot of different characters.
Another plus is that the Wii U version includes many more stages and musical tracks than the 3DS version. I forgot to mention this before, but I liked how for competitive matches instead of the barest stage ("Final Destination"), each stage has an "Omega" version that replicates Final Destination but with its own character. The online service works fine, and I only experienced lag with people who had lower bandwidth and were also running something bandwidth-intensive, like Skype.
Re: DLC, the original roster felt complete to me and had some fantastic surprises, so I'm not particularly dying to see any new characters. Mewtwo is nice to have, but I was fine with it being replaced by Lucario. It'll be interesting to see how many more characters they add. Even though I'm by no means a competitive player, it does seem annoying that they keep tweaking the characters and the overall balance, but hopefully they'll leave them be before too much longer.
I suppose I should also mention Amiibo. I found them to be pretty useless in this game, but I definitely have found myself buying more than I'd originally planned. It's great to see such high-quality figures of characters that have never been immortalized in this way before, and although I'm not obsessed enough to be affected too much with their scarcity, I do sympathize with all the fans who haven't been able to get the ones they want. I'm hoping that the big N won't actually make any of them limited and will make supply meet demand eventually, and that they'll just keep reissuing older Amiibo as games that support them come out. It's nice to have them provide minor extras in games over a long period of time instead of taking the Skylanders route, so hopefully we'll be seeing a lot more uses for them in the future.
All in all the Wii U version was a nice step up from the 3DS version, and as usual off-TV play has been a big boon. It's not clear to me how much I'll go back to playing the 3DS version (although I'll still have to pick it up to play it with my nephew), mostly because I'm paranoid about wrecking the control stick on my 3DS XL. But it's nice to have the option. On Wii U, I continued to focus my time on the newer characters, and specifically tried to gain more competence with Rosalina, Wii Fit Trainer, and Palutena. And although I've made progress, I'm definitely far from wholly mastering their movesets. I'm sure the Wii U version (as well as its predecessors) will continue to keep me plenty occupied when I have a Smash Bros. jones until the next version comes out, and that's not even taking into account all the potential for DLC characters. The poll Nintendo opened to let players vote for a character to be added should yield some fascinating results, and will keep the Smash Bros. hype train rolling through the fall and beyond.
Smashing double helping of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U links:
- Miiverse community
- Tier lists are always entertaining. The Smash wikis haven't posted one yet, but here's one based on player votes.
I posted these already on my post about the 3DS version, but here they are again because they're that useful:
- Official site, which includes all the character reveal videos
- Entry at ssbwiki.com
- Entry at supersmashbros.wikia.com