The future of eSports?
Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U will always be remembered as the game that brought eight-player simultaneous combat to the series. Playing a fully populated match in the new Smash is like watching the same movie on five different screens at the same time, with each screen starting at a different scene in the film. Your brain can process everything properly for a second or two before its forcibly derailed or distracted, only to have it refocus again, then derail again, and so forth, all while fighting for your life in the process. This is what it must be like to have a swarm of bees live in your skull in the place where your brain should be.
What if this newly minted chaos was combined with the old-fashioned, no items, Fox only, Final Destination, serious-business style of Smash Bros. play? Sadly, we may never know, as Smash Bros. for the Wii U doesn’t let you play with seven opponents on Final Destination. You can see the moment where the guy trying to choose that stage is denied his ambitions, and his heart sinks.
He chose Big Battlefield instead, and it’s just as well. It’s about the backdrop anyway. It’s about the futile struggle to keep an eight-player orgy of cartoon violence as “fair and balanced” of a fight as possible.
All those Arwings flying in at the beginning is glorious.
