Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Genre: Fighting Game / Platformer / Party Game

Players: 1-8 Competitive / Team Competitive (Local / Online), Online Content Sharing

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Review:

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is very much the ultimate culmination of Nintendo’s incredibly fun fighting game/platformer/party game hybrid. It collects together damn near everything that’s ever been in the series, and then adds to it, making this game absolutely overstuffed with content on top its superb gameplay.

For those unfamiliar with the series, it’s a fighting game that plays like no other fighting game. Players fight on a 2D plane, but instead of simply trying to damage the opponent until their health runs out, you’re weakening them so you can toss them far enough offstage that they can’t make it back before falling to their doom. Add in to this all sorts of wacky abilities, items, and odd stages and this game can become a chaotic explosion of all sorts of stuff happening at once.

This time around, the game brings back every character that’s ever been in the series, as well as a slew of new ones, most of the stages that have ever appeared in the series, as well as a few new ones, most of the music that has appeared in the series, as well as a few… you know what? Just suffice it to say that while the collection of content here isn’t quite comprehensive, the game definitely earns the “ultimate” title.

In addition, we have a new campaign mode that’s… well, it’s okay, but it’s nowhere near as delightful as Brawl’s campaign mode, Subspace Emissary… but the campaign mode is not really why you play this game, anyway.

For that, we have a newly-redone online multiplayer, that was problematic at launch but has gotten better over time. There’s a new stage builder mode where players can create and share stages with others online (added a few months after launch). And there’s plenty of settings in the options menu so you can custom-create your preferred match settings even more so than in previous games.

The new characters this time around are solid too. Just for a few examples, there’s Inkling, already considered a new top-tier character, Isabelle, whose fishing rod marks her as distinctly different from Animal Crossing’s Villager, fan-requested characters like King K. Rool and Ridley… and then there’s “echo fighters” like Chrom, Daisy, and Dark Samus that play similar to older characters, but with a new look… and even more new characters being added as DLC content. With something like 80 characters to choose from, there’s bound to be someone here you’ll enjoy playing as.

I haven’t even touched on the Spirits mode, the Nintendo app, the video editor, the new Omega and Battlefield stages, the Stage Morph… if I talked about everything there was in this game, this review would never end.

So suffice it to say, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the ultimate Smash Bros. experience (my apologies to Melee fans). It’s just about everything fans could have hoped for in a Smash game, and an absolute must-have for Switch owners.

tl;dr – Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the latest in the series of Fighting Game/Platformer/Party Game titles, and it is in my mind the greatest, with absolutely tons of content, characters, stages, settings, and more, all built on a foundation of absolutely fun gameplay. A must-own game for the Switch.

Grade: A++

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