Brawl Vs. Melee (Vs. N64?)

[jelojuice]

I've been checking out the forums and I have noticed that we don't have a thread pertaining to the Melee and Brawl conundrum (or maybe I haven't been looking hard enough?). My question for you guys is which Super Smash Bros do you think is better? Do you enjoy Brawl because of the enhanced graphics and online gameplay? Or is the speed and action of Melee more appealing. Maybe your nostalgia for the original N64 trumps the newer versions.

Let me just say that I enjoy ALL of the Super Smash Bros games and I think they are one of the more creative and original franchises out there, but Brawl is not Melee 2.0, they are two completely different games with separate pros and cons.

MELEE
Pros:
Speedy
More combos
Grabs are (VERY) useful
Offensively/defensively balanced
More techniques (call them what you want) that encourage faster movement
Edge guarding actually works
Progressive learning curve to separate skilled from nonskilled players

Cons:
Less characters/stages/modes/unlockables/stuff than Brawl
Incredibly unbalanced characters
Clones
Progressive learning curve to separate skilled from nonskilled players
Bad Physics (falcon kick send you flying in the OPPOSITE direction)

BRAWL
Pros:
More characters/stages/modes/unlockables
Better tournament mode
Replays/Snapshots
Stage Builder
Online (Though it's not that great)
Less intense learning curve for casual players
Better Physics

Cons:
Slower
Very few combos or combo-ability
Many techniques taken out in transition from Melee
Less of a learning curve
Shield mechanics encourage defense over offense
Grabs are near-useless for most characters (Little damage, can't kill until high %)

N64
Pros:
First version/ Oldy but Goody

Cons:
Please don't make me write all of them...

I myself prefer Melee, I am relatively competitive and enjoy the combos and speed. Please comment, vote, explain.

 

[MarioBr1]

I like them all. Melee is the most competitive, but like FierceDeity said; Brawl is more fun. N64 was the first one, and I have memories of me playing it as a kid.

Also, the online on Brawl isn't bad. It only lags if you or your opponent have a crappy connection (Someone is streaming something like YouTube or Netflix) or your/ your opponent's internet is slow.

The only thing I don't like about it is no voice chat and the friend code.
It still puzzles me why Nintendo didn't just use the Wii Menu's friend code for every game instead of giving every game a different friend code. When I first got my Wii I thought that's what the Wii Menu's FC was for because I knew DS games had different FCs so I thought Nintendo solved that with the Wii Menu FC but I guess they didn't...

 

[tetrafan]

Their all good but Brawl is my favourite more characters,stages,trophies and more replay value. I hope we get a 4th.

 

[fredthehylian]

Melee vs. Brawl:
Melee has better graphics. (Brawl's graphics look way too dusty for my liking. They even made Toon Link somewhat dusty looking. TOON LINK.)
Brawl has more and better music (a couple of tracks I wish they hadn't touch though [like Snowman.])
Melee has better stages, but Brawl has more.
Melee has better characters, but Brawl has more. (Roy isn't really a clone of Marth, and I prefer him over Ike since Roy's a lot nimbler and isn't quite as cheap *coughaethercough*. Pichu is a lot more nimble but can be KO'd easier in contrast to Pikachu's somewhat sluggishness, but harder KO. I could go on.)
Melee has better options, Brawl has more. (Every character has their own target test in Melee, Brawl has only 5 target tests.)
Brawl has the Stage Builder (this is an unmitigated win for Brawl.)
Melee has local multiplayer (Brawl's online lags for the most part, and online gaming is socially crippling anyway.)
Melee has a much more replayable Adventure mode (be honest, how many of you guys actually played the Subspace Emissary more than 1 1/2 times?)
Melee has better items (I'll take the parasol over the Smash Ball any day. The Smash Ball merely caused fanboys to argue whether it would be legal or not.)
Melee has some actual difficulty, whereas Brawl is too easy. (To put this in perspective, jump with any character but Kirby or a Mario character in both games. There's a very noticable difference in gravitational pull [Melee has realistically heavy chracters, making some jumps in the Events and Adventure hard.])
Melee had a more diverse (and appealing) trophy collection. (Melee has trophies that are not only a lot prettier to look at, but also from a wider variety of games. Brawl just sticks with trophies from the character's games, rarely putting in something different.)
So let me count this up out of the eleven different categories I put:
Melee: 9 points out of 11
Brawl: 2 points out of 11
I like Melee better for the reasons above. I find myself having roughly 500 hours of gameplay on Melee that I spent, and only 90 on Brawl, and I think only about 20 of those hours were spent because I wanted to; the rest were just because people whined to play Brawl at a party or hang-out. Also, you may notice I put the formula of "Brawl has more X, but Melee's X is better," a whole lot. This was deliberate, as I was was trying to make the point of "Quality over quantity."

I don't regard any of the category-based scores I gave to each game as fact, rather as a reasonable opinion.

Also, the N64 was the base/demo/formula for the other two, so I don't regard it as worthy of competing in this little poll.

 

[PhantomTriforce]

I think Brawl was the better game. Melee was a great improvement over the original, but Brawl took it even further. It gave us more extensive this, like a better adventure mode, online play, stage builder, etc. It also had many more boards, and some of the best Melee ones, though I cannot understand why they didn't include all the Melee stages when they could have. Like you say, in Melee, there are some characters that instantly kick @$$, but it's more even in Brawl.

 

[Cel-Shaded Deku]

I'll play any three if you hand me the game and console. Melee improved SSB64 and Brawl improved Melee, but Brawl and SB64 are the best to me. Brawl has a ton of stuff to do. Right now of playing the original N64 version for nostalgia. Ahh... good times, gooood times.

 

[MarioBr1]

Melee vs. Brawl:
Melee has better graphics. (Brawl's graphics look way too dusty for my liking. They even made Toon Link somewhat dusty looking. TOON LINK.)

Try changing the deflickter (or whatever it's called) setting, I have it set to "Look sharper, but a little jagged".

I have my Wii on an HDTV with the official Nintendo component cables set to 480p and 16:9. Brawl looks better than melee to me. I also have Melee set to "Sharper but a little jagged" and the Wii component cables display Melee at 480p so it looks good too, but Brawl looks better.

 

[fredthehylian]

Try changing the deflickter (or whatever it's called) setting, I have it set to "Look sharper, but a little jagged".

I have my Wii on an HDTV with the official Nintendo component cables set to 480p and 16:9. Brawl looks better than melee to me. I also have Melee set to "Sharper but a little jagged" and the Wii component cables display Melee at 480p so it looks good too, but Brawl looks better.

I wasn't referring to anything of that variety. I meant that Melee's textures looked a lot more shiny, metallic, and bright, while Brawl is darker and dustier (with the exceptions of the Pokemon Trainer, Sonic, and Mr. Game & Watch.)
Compare and contrast.

It's really up to personal taste, but I prefer Melee vivid graphics to Brawl's COD-wannabe graphics.

 

[Caeda]

Brawl because it's the only one I've played (sadly).

 

[Ghosi]

I really can't choose. Each game has its own cons and pros, and they are all important. For example, there are some characters in Melee that aren't in Brawl, but Brawl has other good characters to replace them.

 

[jelojuice]

It's really up to personal taste, but I prefer Melee vivid graphics to Brawl's COD-wannabe graphics.

I agree with fredthehylian, I feel like Brawl was sort of ripping off this more neutral color scheme to appeal to a larger audience, this is the whole 'brawl is a party game' type of approach. The slower characters and lack of combos encourage casual gaming unlike melee's infinite amount of tricks and strategies to learn, this makes me think that Nintendo just wanted a broader audience, and more specifically more profit which sort of makes me sad :[. It's not that brawl is a bad game, but in my opinion it is too 'user friendly'.

 

[mooper11]

SSBB would not be where it is if it wasnt for Melee. Melee added more charachters and stages to the N64 version than Brawl did to Melee. Melee had better characters (Mewtwo and Roy as opposed to Lucario and Ike, not to mention that Brawl has Olimar). Melee had better weapons and the most important thing of all, SCORE! Where the crap did score go? Not to mention that we had to play Classic and Adventure to get characters and actually Battle them to get them as opposed to just getting them by playing the worst platformer in history, Subspace Emissary. Brawl was a huge letdown for me. At least Melee had an excuse for having bad online. I want Mewtwo not Lucario and Roy not Ike. I want Doctor Mario not Sonic. Melee is clearly the better version. Not to mention its awesome commercial as opposed to no commercial for Brawl.

 

[Aurelia]

Melee by far was more fun. Brawl was fun as well, but Melee was more challenging and graphics were better on my eyes. Brawl has the opposite effect.

 

[badmuffins]

It's very fun to play Melee because of how fast the gameplay is, but I perfer Brawl. Brawl has more stages, Characters, Collectibles. It also has online play.

As much as I like Melee, Brawl only wins by a bit, because of all the content in the game. I do perfer Melee's Fighting more, because of the speed.

 

[MarioBr1]

I wasn't referring to anything of that variety. I meant that Melee's textures looked a lot more shiny, metallic, and bright, while Brawl is darker and dustier (with the exceptions of the Pokemon Trainer, Sonic, and Mr. Game & Watch.)
Compare and contrast.

It's really up to personal taste, but I prefer Melee vivid graphics to Brawl's COD-wannabe graphics.

Of course they are "darker and dustier" they have more detail. CoD wannabe? I call it Nintendo polishing their games. Melee looks like clay in my eyes, and those aren't even screen shots.

Here is a better comparison:

Brawl has more detail and it looks more "metallic".