Customer Reviews

Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Prima Official Game Guide (Prima Official Game Guides)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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+

I think that this guide is pretty informative when it comes to newcomers, but all you hardcore players, this ain't the guide for you. It includes general strategies for the characters (two pages for each) and brief strategies on the stages. If you have played super smash for more than two years (I've played for about a year) you probably already know most of the information in this guide and you would be better off going to some website with more advanced strategies. Overall I think it is a good buy for the casual player.

This guide could at the very least be useful for those who have never played a Super Smash Bros. game, but sadly a lot of the information provided, such as character strategies, is very basic and common sense logic (this guy has a shield, you can use that to block projectiles..).

The most useful aspect of the book for me was the list of unlockables and how to achieve them, but we have the internet for that I suppose.

This guide book, really doesn't supply the day-to-day stratergies that hard-core gamers want, in fact I just find this guide useless, I just bought it for the Secrets and The Target Test statergies, everything was BS to me. Especially the Character Rankings, SERIOUSLY, it gives JigglyPuff a better rating than Pikachu (Yes I love Pikachu), the guy that wrote this book stuck to his Stratergies, and other stuff. Also the guy who wrote this book is a critic, the rankings he gave for the character are terrible, and he gave Marth a 9, all the other characters he gave 8 or lower. Alot of the Stratergies don't even deplete my Grandmother's playing styles, and alot of it is just bad detailed info, I only found atleast 3-5 things helpful and that's it. It says "Detailed Information On How To Get 100% On Subspace Emminasary", yeah right. Where are the freaking maps? I would also like to have a damage list on the average base of damage is. I really hate the rankings. IMO this book will only supply you with recycled and old Stratergies, i'd suggest go to Youtube.com and look up videos for Stratergies. Other than that this book is useless. 2/5

My grandson, for his 9th birthday, received a wide selection of gifts including new Wii games. But once he opened the Super Smash Bros. Brawl book he was totally involved. It was by far his #1 gift.

I bought this guide at my local gamestop for 19.95. Right when I got it, I tore open the packaging and read it from cover to back. I was happy and unhappy.

I liked the fact that it gave you a heads-up on the items and assist trophies. It gave you some strategies and home-run and target strategies, also. This is almost the first half of the book! What they really didn't need, however, was a complete section for every sticker possible. That ticked me off.

Now we get to the stage and character strategies. I really wanted a stage map of all the levels saying "hazard here" or "loose block here" or something. All we got were a few small photos and a layout of the level. It was kind of helpful but pretty much all it took into account for was the hazards an tiers.

Charcter strategies, however, were spot on. I loved that section. It gave you a bio, their moveset, some strategies with them, their weight class and KO potential, and even what to expect when fighting against them. It rated the character on offense, defense, final smash, speed, throwing ability, and projectile. It also gave you an overall rating for them.

In conclusion, I would buy this strategy guide for Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I wouldn't, however, expect much from it or pay 20 bucks for this.

Nothing long winded, Prima guides are great and so is this one. If you want to get the most out of your gameplay you can't go wrong with Prima. By the way, Super Smash Bros Brawl is so freakin' fun.

This is for the ULTIMATE Smash Bros. fan!!! EVERYTHING you need to know is RIGHT HERE!