Dom Robinson reviews

Price: £39.99 Players: 1-4 Ok, so you've got your Gamecube, now do you want to play an intellectual plot-driven RPG about inhabitants of a mystical forest, or do you simply want to round up all of Nintendo's most famous characters and bash the hell out of each other? If it's the latter, then Super Smash Bros Melee has the answer. Following a gorgeous cartoony FMV sequence showing you who's in town to be bashed about (eg. Mario, Pikachu, Yoshi, Donkey Kong and many others including a few hidden characters waiting to be unlocked), the options present you with a one-player option, multiplayer, the trophy cabinet, a further set of options to alter the screen, sound and language, plus further data accumulated during the game. In-game proper, the options are all variants along similar lines. On your own, you can play a regular match in 'classic' or 'adventure' mode, the latter differing by starting you at the Mushroom Kingdom, thus mixing in parts of a regular match in with a 'Super Mario'-style platformer. There are nine event matches - one has you fighting Bowser in a clash at the Mushroom Kingdom, another one litters the arena with bombs and you can battle with Pikachu. Also you can attempt various tests in the Stadium section such as to pick off all the targets on a level, or knockout 100 characters in the 100-Man Melee.

For the multiplayer action there's a standard melee for up to four players, a tournament mode which can house as many as 64 individual combatants, a Special Melee section with various bizarre options such as a 'Camera Mode' which lets you take snapshots with the Smash Cam for later viewing from your memory card, 'Giant Melee', in which all the players are... yes, you guessed it - giant, as well as 'Super Sudden Death' in which all players start with 300% damage. Custom rules can also be created to set time limits on matches, handicap those combatants who are doing well, alter the damage ratio so you could get KO'd quicker the more damage you sustain and various ways to select the next stage on which to take your grudges out on each other.

The graphics are brilliantly colourful and move as fast as required, but I do feel that a game with such a simple premise as this isn't testing the Gamecube to its limits and that we've still got plenty more to look forward to, such as with the forthcoming release of Mario Sunshine. The sound is reasonable, with expected thuds and thwacks as you kick your opponents into next week, but there's not a great deal of difference from one match to the next and your neighbours won't be banging on the walls. As I looked at the menu options for a while whilst writing this review, it struck me that the music is very reminiscent of one of the original Soul Blade levels. I wonder if this is intentional?

When it comes to the gameplay, the rules are simple - hit your enemies, pick them up and hit them before throwing them about, or just rush at them and thump them instead. Often, though, things rush by so fast you don't know exactly what you've done to win the level, apart from the fact that you all seem to have to sustain around 150% damage before death comes calling. After working your way through the levels in a regular match, each character must destroy a giant hand. Yes, someone had been on the happy pills the day this was created. Note that you can even shoot at the end-credits list once you've completed a level.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002.