Super Smash Bros Ultimate Preview

On Friday last week, Nintendo of Canada invited myself and other local media to an after hours preview of Super Smash Bros Ultimate at FanExpo 2018. For three hours, media were able to play against each other in 4 player games, lasting 2 minutes and 30 seconds each. With so many stations, I was able to log almost three straight hours of Super Smash Bros, and my early impressions are really great!

The build we got to play was the same one shown off at E3 2018, so for those asking: No, King K was not playable during my sessions with the game! Still, a good roster of characters was available, and over 3 hours I played almost every single one of them, including (but not limited to) Snake, Ness, Ganondorf, Bowser, Mario and Kirby! A number of stages were also available to players, and although none of them stuck out to me as fantastic, each and every stage was playable and enjoyable.

The same cannot be said about the myriad of characters available. Understandably, not every character is going to appeal to every player, but to get the best opportunity to try each and every character, I chose the ‘random’ option before each game, which gave me the opportunity to play almost every character available. Here is how they broke down for me, personally.

The Ones I Hated!

Snake – I know that Metal Gear Solid is near and dear to the hearts of many, and to have Snake return to Super Smash Bros is likely to get many players super excited. Unfortunately, I didn’t like playing as this character on the multitude of occasions I was him; my biggest issue stemmed from his heat seeking missiles. Rarely accurate, and it left Snake in a vulnerable crouched position for the duration of the shot.

Kirby – I absolutely adore Kirby, and when I thought about sucking up enemies to take on their forms, I was excited. Unfortunetly, as a fairly weak character, I was rarely able to get close enough to someone to suck them up, before getting absolutely clobbered. I might suck playing this character, but it wasn’t enjoyable at all!

The Ones I Loved!

Ness – There is nothing more satisfying than whacking people with baseball bats, and while at times I felt Ness was a bit overpowered – only when I wasn’t playing as him, obviously – he really is a fun character to experience the game with. Anytime Ness came up on the screen after a random press, I was fairly excited!

Bowser and Donkey Kong – I’m not usually a fan of heavy characters as their movement across the stage can be fairly slow and cumbersome, but I was having a lot of successes with both Bowser and Donkey Kong at the event. Both characters were incredibly affective at dealing huge amounts of damage when in melee sequences, and their jump attacks were fantastically useful.

A number of characters that I would normally play as were not available, but just based on this E3 build, there won’t  be a single consumer who cannot find a character they really like to play as. And that is what is so great about Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Even thought I hated playing as Snake and Kirby – as they did not fit my fighting style – there will be a ton of people who love those characters. Nintendo has done an excellent job creating the “Ultimate” version of Super Smash Bros, and we cannot wait for the game to land this December!