Brawl Web site reveals completely new material

As some of you may have noticed, the official Smash Bros. Brawl website finally unveiled completely new material last week.

First off was the new character, Ike, from Fire Emblem. Ike comes without any warning whatsoever – although I’m hoping to see a lot more interesting and varied characters, I’m happy enough that they announced Ike suddenly – it implies there could be more announcements of this sort.

As a character, Ike sounds most like Roy. Some complain that Roy and Marth were too similar in Melee – Ike will only add to these complaints if both of the others return – but I disagree, as Roy and Marth play quite differently, despite how much their moves look alike. I think they can vary Ike’s move style considerably – wielding a two-handed sword, he might actually have more reach than either.

The second major announcement last week was the single-player mode “The Subspace Emissary”. Not only will it have a plot (oh no!), but it sounds like it will be considerably longer and deeper than the Adventure mode from Melee. From the screenshots, we can also guess at the content of the stages – adventure-styled, with enemies and terrain from the various games Smash draws upon for its characters. I play Melee exclusively for the multi-player, but if there’s a better single-player mode in Brawl, I certainly can’t complain.

I was a bit skeptical about the website unveiling something different each weekday, but it seems to have achieved both of Nintendo’s goals – keep most of the material hush-hush, but keep generating hype. Judging from Melee, most of the hype may be warranted, but we shall see in about four months.