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43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
It Could've Been So Much Better, March 9, 2008
It's never been crucial or even necessary to buy a guide for a Super Smash Brothers game. Prima's Super Smash Brothers Brawl Guide falls into that category. However, if you ever find yourself picking up this guide, it's important to know that it isn't a bad guide, but it is certainly not a good guide either. For all the good information contained within the pages, the presentation and layout of all this information is quite sloppy, and some of the information isn't there.
The guide begins, like many, with a plethora of game basics. In Smash Brothers Brawl, the game basics is a fairly long section. Beginning by showing you all the controls for the game's many control functions. In this section is where you'll also find much of the games databases. Here they list items, stickers assist trophies and what they do. There's a breakdown of everything here. After all this we get to some general and advanced strategies. By now, all Smash Brothers fans know most of these strategies. Even the advanced strategies will be well known to Smash Bros. fans. If you're new to the series, this may be of some use. If not, however, you're not really getting anything here that you wouldn't know by playing Melee Already.
When we get into the real meat of the guide, however, it begins to get a little better. There are target practice strategies, which are also fairly basic. There are also screenshot maps which are actually fairly useless. There is even a moment dedicated to the Home Run Contest section. After this it goes into all the event strategies and while they can be helpful, it's again something that once again isn't really needed.
Afterwards we get into the stage strategies. These are not really stage strategies. These are stage overviews. This also would've been a great moment for the guide to reveal just how to unlock certain levels, but it doesn't do so here.
There's also a section dedicated to the Classic Mode. There's not really much to say concerning classic mode in a Super Smash Brothers game. Again, it's something that you can't really give much strategy for. So it's no surprise this only spans two pages and tells you the basics of it.
That's not to say there is no real meat and potatoes to the guide. The Adventure Mode: The Subspace Emissary section is a complete walkthrough of the entire adventure mode. Unfortunately this is also one of the weakest sections of the guide. In recent times, many of Prima's guides have been incredibly disorganized and this is no exception. There's a lot of exposition, usually explaining what's going on in one of the scenes in the game. There's always a section that begins by telling you the playable characters, Bosses you'll face and what you get for clearing the stage. Afterwards what you get isn't very worthwhile.
The walkthrough for the adventure mode is rather shoddy. There are no maps for the levels and much of the walkthrough is devoid of any screenshots whatsoever. There are even some screenshots that are in the wrong area. The walkthrough will be telling you to do one thing, but you'll find the screenshot usually in the wrong column or further down instead of right beside the picture like the walkthrough shows it should be. There are plenty of trophies and hidden doors located throughout the Adventure Mode, and sometimes it takes a few more screenshots or even a map or two to help locate them. You'll be able to get through Adventure Mode with this walkthrough, but don't count on finding everything with it.
Without a table of contents, it would be nearly impossible to find where you were in this walkthrough because the title sections for each level don't stand out, and sometimes you get a title but the actual information for the stage doesn't begin until the next page. There's no clear format to the walkthrough. When looking at it, it looks as though much of the information is all over the place, and that really works against the walkthrough for the Adventure Mode. Because of the lack of screenshots and maps you'll likely spend more time reading the Adventure Mode than actually playing through it. The strategies themselves, such as fighting certain bosses aren't very detailed either.
At the very least, though, the Character Guide section more than makes up for everything else. This is a very detailed section of the guide. They rank each characters stats on a scale of 1-10 and also rank them overall on the same scale. Each character has a short Bio, a run down of their special moves and their Final Smash. It also tells you some general strategies and advanced strategies to using them. They even mention a bit about the character's KO potential as well as giving you strategies for fighting them one on one or in a free for all. They even tell you how to fight against the character. There's a lot of detail put into getting you to know each characters strength and weakness. With how detailed and organized the Character section of this guide is, it's a wonder why the rest of the strategy guide wasn't nearly as organized. Unfortunately, it's hard to recommend this guide for the characters section alone. The only thing wrong with the Character's Section is that it doesn't tell you here how to unlock them.
However, the guide does explain how to unlock characters, stages, trophies, assist trophies, music and all the other unlockables on two pages of charts. While you can unlock all the characters, the guide doesn't tell you all the ways to unlock characters. You can unlock some characters by participating in a certain amount of matches, but the guide doesn't always note this for those characters. However, they are quick to tell you that you can unlock all of them through the game's Adventure Mode.
Despite not being a bad guide, it's not really a strong effort from Prima Games. With a lack of screenshots and a sloppy effort for the walkthrough of the Adventure Mode (including missing a couple of trophy locations), this is not exactly the ideal guide for Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It isn't horrible, but it definitely lacks a lot of depth. That isn't to say the information here isn't useful. It's only to say that there doesn't appear to be that much effort put into the guide. A little more organization and a bit more detail could've helped this be the perfect guide for Super Smash Brothers Brawl. If you really need a guide, then by all means, pick this up. But it's hard to recommend a guide that's incredibly disorganized, missing some information and that has an overall sloppy invitation. While the character section is good and organized, it's not worth buying the guide just for that.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not a very good guide, but the only one out there on release day, March 10, 2008
I was very disappointed with this guide. It covered only the very basic information and did not go very far into strategies. It gives you a very brief walk thru of the the basic game elements, then spends many pages covering and describing all the stickers. It doesn't cover all the characters, only the main ones.
They could have done a much better job with this book. I bought it for 50% off, so its not a total rip-off. But, I would not buy this book if it were full price. Its not worth it. There are better guides online than this one.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
All Out Brawl, March 13, 2008
So far this year, the most anticipated game for the Nintendo Wii is Super Smash Brothers Brawl. The game really delivers nicely from top to bottom. But, since Nintendo decided to stop making strategy guides after nearly 20 years in the video game industry, they've put that decision to let Prima Games release guides through Nintendo's license. They did suffer to mixed reactions after Super Mario Galaxy was released last year, and the strategy guide could've shown more. Now, Super Smash Brothers Brawl is put to the test. While the game is great for the Nintendo Wii, the guide does lack a bit in the display of levels for the single player adventure mode. The guide displays nicely for most of the characters in each of the levels, and how to unlock hidden surprises like Sonic The Hedgehog, and Snake from Metal Gear Solid. Unfortunately, there aren't any other strategy guides available for Super Smash Brothers Brawl, so this is the only one that will do. Hopefully, you'll brawl your mind away.
Cover: B
Tips: C
Maps and Displays: C+
Overall: C 1/2+
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