Worst Casual Smash?

Hello all!

As I'm sure many of you know, Jose started this little blogging challenge and it peaked my interest. While I'm usually not one for competition, I figured having prompts and deadlines might help me back into consistently blogging. So why not participate and see how it goes?

#WBAT

~Why Smash 64 Is The Worst Game~

on a casual level

Let me clear some stuff up before you start stretching your fingers for that three paragraph comment your about to type telling me how wrong I am.

The Smash series is incredibly friendly and accessible to new and casual players. It is possibly the easiest fighting game series to pick up and enjoy without having to learn all the ins and outs of the game's mechanics.

Besides Divekick that is. You can't get much simpler than Divekick.

Every Smash game is good as a casual experience, no matter how much competitive potential it has. At its core, Smash is a party game that was designed to be played between buddies on a couch.

Yes, Smash 64 is a party game and a good party game at that. So you might be wondering why I'm pinning it as the worst game casually and not jumping to Melee or Pm which are far more competitive and complex games.

(I'm counting PM, it's my blog dammit)

I'll tell you why:

(and this is important to my entire argument so I'm going to center it and bold the text for impact)

A games ability to be played competitively is not necessarily correlated with its ability to be played casually.

Just because a game is “hardcore” and competitive doesn't mean it can't be effectively played for “shits and giggles.”

Additionally, just because a mechanic hurts competitive play, that doesn't mean that mechanic is healthy for casual play.

For example: tripping in Brawl heavily discourages competitive play, but it's not a fun factor in casual matches either. Nobody likes to trip, no matter the importance of a match. It's simply a bad mechanic.

All of this is extremely important to the points I'm presenting, so please try to read on with this mentality, thank you!

What makes me say that the original, and least refined Smash Bros is the least causal? Well, let me rephrase the “Which Smash is the worst game on a casual level” question because I think it's a bit negative and misleading… kinda like a good click-bait title...

so allow me to rephrase this slightly:

Which game has the least potential to be enjoyed at a casual level?

This is how I viewed the question, and as a result, it slightly changes the values we attribute to a good game. Whether you enjoy a game from a casual standpoint or not is really completely opinionated and there aren't any objective reasons a game is good or bad if you're just looking for a bit of fun.

I say Smash 64 has the least potential at a casual level because it has the least content and the least refinement of any game in the series by a margin. Furthermore, I think some aspects of it do genuinely hurt casual play.

Let's look at the core game-play for a minute:

Smash 64 is floaty and unprecise in its movement. Its hitboxes tend to be weird and generous, and inputs can often feel erratic, inaccurate, or downright glitchy.

Now you may be thinking “well all those things just sound like they hurt competitive play.” ! While this may be true to some degree, it does not mean these design factors don't also hurt a casual experience.

Whenever I go into Smash 64, I enjoy the style of erratic gameplay it offers. However, I'm constantly frustrated with the game's inconsistency, unclear hit-boxes over polygonal models, and clunky movement that makes it feel like the characters are fighting on the moon.

It is only a matter of time before I grow tired of the game regardless of if I'm winning or losing consistently. By comparison, I happily played Brawl for nearly two years before I even learned the difference between special attacks and standard attacks, and I never got frustrated at my incompetence or felt like the game was screwing me over

You see, as sluggish as it is, Brawl’s movement is consistent, understandable, and very easy to pick up on, making it intuitive to any player very quickly. It makes sense and it clicks with the player quickly.

Smash 64 lacks this, and while it is totally possible to learn 64’s movement and general gameplay, to the point where it doesn't feel inconsistent or unnatural, it takes far more practice to nail down. This makes casual play far less enjoyable to people who don't want to invest time into learning 64.

Something more specific I want to address is hit-stun. The hit-stun in 64 is kinda nuts, an element more in line with combo heavy, traditional fighting games. While you could argue it makes combos easier for inexperienced players, I feel like it takes away more than it grants from a casual standpoint.

I want to be able to play the game and feel my character moving and my inputs going through as much as possible. The appeal of the Smash series for me has always been the amount of control I have over my character and the amount of freedom I'm given in my movement options. The rigid movement and heavy hit-stun in 64 takes away from that feeling of control.

This is actually my biggest issue with most fighting games and why I love the Smash series so much. While games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter encourage piling on the combos and hit-stun, preventing your opponent from escaping sequences, Smash encourages outsmarting and outmaneuvering your opponent to keep combos going. Hit-stun in 64 makes you feel helpless, and it is frustrating when you're character refuses to move as you spam the controller in a panic after getting knocked off the stage.

It's even worse when you are playing with four people in a free for all or one person who seriously knows what they're doing. One solid hit can lead to death because of the amount hit-stun a single move has. While it is a casual experience, it is not fun to get throw around the stage till your KO’d, making for poor matches where the objective becomes camp and survive instead of actively fighting opponents.

Looking at this from another angle, a highlight of Super Smash Bros has always been its roster of iconic characters.

I don't have an issue with the first game’s cast of twelve, it's a solid mix of good characters to rep Nintendo. However, every game in the series adds more great characters, and the likelihood of a first-time player going into a Smash game and finding out their favorite Nintendo character is playable statistically goes up with each game.

Additionally, more characters make for more variety in play-styles, increasing the number of characters you might have fun with, and increasing the amount of wacky and badass scenarios that could occur. While the characters in 64 are different, they definitely don't feel as varied in of gameplay when compared to the cast in Melee and onward.

Okay, to this point what I've said may be true but maybe it doesn't apply to you. Maybe you like the gameplay of 64 and it clicked with you. Maybe you like the hit stun as it allows you to pull off longer and more experimental combos. Maybe you have all the diversity you want on the roster.

Okay, good for you.

While you can't deny the differences in 64’s gameplay you can still prefer them, that's totally fine. I would hazard to guess it's an unpopular opinion, but it is still a perfectly legit personal preference.

So let's change gears here and look at the concrete numbers.

Smash 64 has the least stages in the series with only 9 in the game. Additionally, many are featured in later games. The stages are generally less creative, and interesting than others stages in later entries. Are 64’s stages bad? No, there actual fine, I rather like most of them. It's just that the selection is just lacking when compared to the rest of the franchise.

64 has only 16 items (not including crates and container items). Melee nearly doubles that number and Brawl and 4 far sur Melee’s item count. And if you don't want to play with a specific item you can just turn it off! Unless you're playing 64bin which case you need to unlock that option by playing 100 matches.

64 has less additional modes than any of the other games, only featuring 1-player game (basically classic mode but the same fights every time), training mode, target test, and it's best game mode: board the platforms.

Everyone board the platforms?

#bringbackboardtheplatforms

Melee for comparison has classic mode, adventure mode, all-star mode, event match, training, break the targets, home run contest, and multi-man melee. The next games built on this, Brawl introducing a stage maker and a campaign mode and Smash 4 allowing for character customization among other additions.

While we're looking at game modes let's talk about versus mode. In 64, you can play with up to 4 people, control items, make teams, set handicaps, choose match types (stock/time), set stage selection to random, and adjust the damage ratio.

Melee has all these things plus tournament melee, and special melee which includes giant melee, tiny melee, invisible melee, fixed camera, classic mode, lightning melee, single button, slow-mo melee, and sudden dead. Brawl and 4 only added to these options, 4 even introducing an 8 player mode.

I think the ability to customize your game the way you want to play it is super healthy for a casual experience. And 64 doesn't stack up to the customizability (not sure if that's a word) of the rest of the series.

I already talked about the roster but just to drive home a point: 64 has 12 characters, and that number has dramatically increased with every game, so much so that smash 4 has a whopping 58 playable characters.

Now you may be saying:

“LED, this is all because 64 was the first game in the series and didn't have the ability to include all this content.”

Well, you're absolutely right, but it doesn't matter.

The point is that it's being compared toe to toe with the other games in the series. There are no points for influencing the future here so the fact that it's the original puts it at a serious disadvantage.

Every game in the series adds more content, more polish, and often more enjoyment for the casual player.

Smash has hurt its competitive playability before when it went from Melee to Brawl.

However, Smash has never had a serious misstep regarding its playability from a casual standpoint.

Sure some great modes were lost between games like target test, the subspace emissary and (dare I say it) board the platforms...

But for the most part, the games have only improved and increased their content, leaving 64 as the most lacking game from for casual play.

~LED~