As someone who obsessively played Super Smash Bros on the 3DS, to the point where there would be many a school nights where you'd find my little red console hidden beneath my pillow paused in the middle of Smash Run, I was pretty excited to hear the news of a new Smash game. I was never the most avid of Nintendo fans in my early childhood, I was first introduced to them through some old Kirby games my grandparents had stored away. It was my interest in Kirby that lead me to eventually getting a DS and later 3DS, although I wasn't truly hooked as I much preferred games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, DOOM, etc, that was until I was introduced to Smash Bros. This introduction would later spiral into a love for Nintendo and it's franchises.
To put it simply the Super Smash Bros franchise holds a special place in my heart, which is why I am ultimately left disappointed by Ultimate.
First things first it is imperative to mention what is to many the main draw of Smash, the online mode. Smash Bros has carved itself out a large and dedicated community thanks mainly to its competitive nature, this competitive nature was fed and encouraged to grow by Smash's online mode. The prospect of playing with complete strangers that share the same interest has been an enticing one in the gaming world for a long time now, these online games allow for a sense of community to grow and prosper. For a decently long time now the Smash community has prospered under the online mode offered by Super Smash Bros, even despite Nintendo's less than stellar online servers. Upon the launch of Ultimate however things seemingly took a turn for the worst, people began to complain about certain characters being overpowered even in cases in which they weren't, different characters were determined to be annoying by the community, people used Nintendo's poor server quality to purposely lag the game, unsportsmanlike behavior began to crop up, rage quitting, etc. Of course you could attribute more people dog piling on certain characters as a result of the rise of social media but the point still stands that something about online mode was upsetting a large portion of the community. This something could be attributed to many things like game balance issues and/or perhaps the laggy servers, but I believe the main issue has to do with the GSP system. In the old Smash games they'd have two modes for online, one for competitive play and the other for casual play, this system worked well and separated the two different player bases. However, in Ultimate they decided to remove the casual mode and leave only a competitive one, this left the player base who preferred a more casual style to often times go up against those more serious about winning than them and left the player base who preferred a more competitive style to go up against rule sets that discourage skill based gameplay. GSP or Global Smash Points is the point system used in Super Smash Bros Ultimate to determine your skill level and who you are matched up against, it is this point system that I think leads to most toxic behavior observed in the player base. For those who don't want to play competitively but also get annoyed when losing GSP they may start to do things such as play in annoying unfun ways, purposely lag the game, and rage quit in order to retain their GSP.
My second gripe that I have with the game is the lack of interesting non online game modes. When looking at Ultimates list of game modes one might think that it has surpassed its predecessors but you'd be mistaken. Most of its game modes are just rehashes of old game modes from previous Smash titles, which is not the problem at hand as most of these modes are enjoyable but not entirely replayable. The problem comes with the new modes that are introduced, these game modes fail to capture my interest as they mostly just boil down to playing the base game with a slight twist. Throughout the many hours I spent playing Super Smash Bros on my 3DS absolutely none of it was ever online. My attention was always kept squarely on the many game modes it had to offer, the main one being Smash Run. To me Smash Run is the pinnacle of Super Smash Bros, no, all of gaming in fact. Every night I wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming about that polar bear from Ice Climbers beating the crap out of me. Smash Run was my first and only love, if I could I would allow Smash Run to put its baby in my man womb. Without Smash Run life has no meaning and all the gods are left dead. When you die rejoice for Smash Run shall bestow upon your feeble little life the ultimate pleasure.
To put it simply the Super Smash Bros franchise holds a special place in my heart, which is why I am ultimately left disappointed by Ultimate.
First things first it is imperative to mention what is to many the main draw of Smash, the online mode. Smash Bros has carved itself out a large and dedicated community thanks mainly to its competitive nature, this competitive nature was fed and encouraged to grow by Smash's online mode. The prospect of playing with complete strangers that share the same interest has been an enticing one in the gaming world for a long time now, these online games allow for a sense of community to grow and prosper. For a decently long time now the Smash community has prospered under the online mode offered by Super Smash Bros, even despite Nintendo's less than stellar online servers. Upon the launch of Ultimate however things seemingly took a turn for the worst, people began to complain about certain characters being overpowered even in cases in which they weren't, different characters were determined to be annoying by the community, people used Nintendo's poor server quality to purposely lag the game, unsportsmanlike behavior began to crop up, rage quitting, etc. Of course you could attribute more people dog piling on certain characters as a result of the rise of social media but the point still stands that something about online mode was upsetting a large portion of the community. This something could be attributed to many things like game balance issues and/or perhaps the laggy servers, but I believe the main issue has to do with the GSP system. In the old Smash games they'd have two modes for online, one for competitive play and the other for casual play, this system worked well and separated the two different player bases. However, in Ultimate they decided to remove the casual mode and leave only a competitive one, this left the player base who preferred a more casual style to often times go up against those more serious about winning than them and left the player base who preferred a more competitive style to go up against rule sets that discourage skill based gameplay. GSP or Global Smash Points is the point system used in Super Smash Bros Ultimate to determine your skill level and who you are matched up against, it is this point system that I think leads to most toxic behavior observed in the player base. For those who don't want to play competitively but also get annoyed when losing GSP they may start to do things such as play in annoying unfun ways, purposely lag the game, and rage quit in order to retain their GSP.
My second gripe that I have with the game is the lack of interesting non online game modes. When looking at Ultimates list of game modes one might think that it has surpassed its predecessors but you'd be mistaken. Most of its game modes are just rehashes of old game modes from previous Smash titles, which is not the problem at hand as most of these modes are enjoyable but not entirely replayable. The problem comes with the new modes that are introduced, these game modes fail to capture my interest as they mostly just boil down to playing the base game with a slight twist. Throughout the many hours I spent playing Super Smash Bros on my 3DS absolutely none of it was ever online. My attention was always kept squarely on the many game modes it had to offer, the main one being Smash Run. To me Smash Run is the pinnacle of Super Smash Bros, no, all of gaming in fact. Every night I wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming about that polar bear from Ice Climbers beating the crap out of me. Smash Run was my first and only love, if I could I would allow Smash Run to put its baby in my man womb. Without Smash Run life has no meaning and all the gods are left dead. When you die rejoice for Smash Run shall bestow upon your feeble little life the ultimate pleasure.