Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)

So there is a new render of Waluigi (he looks great BTW) that came out yesterday.

Normally a render is associated with a project like Mario Golf or Mario Party or whatever. Now maybe Waluigi is wearing his regular duds in Mario Golf and this render is for that but I doubt it since Wario is dressed like a preppy cowboy.

And it also could be for an unannounced Mario game- I'm sure there are more than one in the works. But could it be for Smash?! It definitely isn't a likely Sakurai pick, but the DLC characters aren't Sakurai picks, they are big boy Nintendo's picks. And big boy Nintendo does occassionally do the meme-y thing and bow to the dumb tweets. I've long predicted the Final Smash character will come with an update to add in more assist trophies and Pokemon... Could they trade out Waluigi's assist trophy for someone new and make Waluigi a character?

I have logged about 50 hours into smash ultimate and i have to say.... its a major disappointment for me. Its rather unfortunate because in terms of presentation and quality this game knocks it out of the park. Sound theatres and ability to customize playlists for maps, incredible character selection that is still growing every couple months, and a massive story mode that despite its flaws definitly has alot of collectibles and ways to sink your time into the game if your interested.

but damn.... the gameplay sucks. A fighting game at its core will always be about... fighting :V and it just seriously sucks that the fighting in this game feels so neutered and soulless. So many characters share the same moves and animation it really makes me wonder why even make new characters to begin with. Yes i understand that having completely different movesets comes with taking more time and money but alot of these moves are just reused from older games like brawl and smash 4. This is incredibly weird when compared to a game like tekken 7 that has almost 100-200 moves per character with almost a similar character count in their game while ultimate only has about 30-50 moves.

Theres also the issue with balance. So many sword characters that have good range, speed, damage, and kill potential rule the game while brawlers and close up characters don't have a chance to compete with most characters since they don't have broken disjoints and extremely slow and laggy moves (roy, chrome, palutena, joker, shulk, lucina, peach, daisy, zero suit samus, link, young link, cloud, the list goes on and on really....) but then online... jesus online flips this on its head because at minimum online smash ultimate has 12 FRAMES OF INPUT LAG. Thats just insane and it means the big bois gets to come out and play. smash was always about movement and out manuvering your opponent to bait and punish but with so much lag online it means you have to "read the read" and essentially double outplay your opponent in order to properly punish. nothing is really "reactable" when it comes to punishing as everything always feels like you can either roll, dodge, or air dodge your way out of 95% of situations. This means the heavy characters with laggy moves now dominate the online experience. Up smashing ganons, Forward smashing donkey kongs, dash attacking lil macs all are king of the online experience since you have to actively prepare your punish for these laggy moves 12 frames earlier than visually expected.

Its quite apparant that what nintendo wanted was a fighting game that literal 10 year olds could manage to play at a similar level of proficiency as vets with enough luck. overall i would give this game 3-4 stars out of 10.

Honestly just go play super smash bros. melee. The netplay for melee on pc has virtually zero lag input and has incredible netcode that allows for people to play each other cross country even and its FREE vs the switch, smash ultimate which rarely if ever goes on sale, and the fact that you need an online subscription for this subpar online mode. Yes a single individual has managed to make a better online gaming experience vs a billion dollar company such as nintendo.!

also please stop making characters "smash characters" and actually make new games for them.... a banjo, fzero, star fox, earthbound, metroid game are far overdue.