Still to this day, one of the best multiplayer games around.
Nintendo i beleive where probably what got the 'party' games involving the companys mascots popular.
The original super smash brothers fro the N64 at least defined this trend with setting many different unrelated Nintendo characters all at each others throats and smashing each other high into the sky.
Super smash brothers Melee improves on literally everything from the original and in turn has became an absolute classic that until Brawl was released, was one of the most played and definatly most addicting game you could find.
Melee may sort of be based on a 'party' game what with the wacky items and the rather large Nintendo roster, but what it leans more towards is a frantic beat em up.
Melee has matchs of usually up to four fighters all duking it out for supremacy in an amazing variety of enviroments.
How the battles play out are pretty simple, but the simplicity only hides a surprisingly deep fighting system. Your character has a variety of normal attacks usually ranging from your exadgerated punchs and kicks and their own unique smash attacks which basically revolve around what character you play as. Such as Link may use many items he gained from Ocarina of Time while say Kirby of course has many of her...him?? Well whatever it is...it brings with it many of its signature moves from the Kirby Franchise.
The variety of characters is superb and can will definatly have you falling love with some and absolutly despising others. They all have their own weakness' and strengths, such as predictably you may have a very speedy character such as Captian Falcon, who while very fast and rather offensive is also very light and can be knocked off pretty easily.
The way to KO players in this game is not by knocking down their HP to a massive ZERO (least not for the majority of game types) but to simply keep on pounding the other players which in turn increases their 'percentage' which usually followed with a charge attack should send the enemy off the map and them losing a life.
Its was a pretty unique system at the time and still works to add a very enticing beat em up experience.
The tools of the trade in Melee aren't restricted to your characters moveset. Theres also a plethora of offensive and defensive items that will regurly respawn (or not if you alter a few options) around the battleground. The battlegrounds themselves, all taken from many different nintendo enviroments, will have some surprises for you to uncover and possibly avoid for risk of death. Playing on a map for the first time is always a treat just to find out whats in store as you commence battle. From battlegrounds moving to maybe a few starships arriving to blast everything that gets in their way, each map is unique and while some will obviously get on some peoples nerves they all at least offer a different type of match per level.
As if the very nice variety of characters and enviroments wasn't enough, the options to which you alter the match are very impressive. You have the simple options to changing how often you want items to spawn to other stuff such as setting a handicap or friendly fire. Melee also has some unique types to take part in such as GIANT melee which no surprise has all the characters as giants :P. Theres again alot to choose from ranging to stealth melee to sudden death melee to even slow mo melee.
As a multiplayer game this is all very succesful indeed offering literally hours upon hours of multiplayer mayhem. As a single player game though luckily it still delivers, just not as strongly.
There are too different single player game types, classic and Adventure. Classic is pretty simple and much like your typical arcade beat em up. You choose a character, difficulty, amount of lives and then fight your way through battle after battle. Though their not all just the same one on one brawl. There will be some team matchs, matchs that put against around 30 enemys and some bonus matchs such as trying to break all the targets flying around the arena.
Each match besides the bonus matchs and the final boss are all random too, so with each character (or the same character) you should expect to have a different array of foes.
The adventure mode is longer and has does add abit more replay value to the single player portion but frankly isn't as fun as classic IMO.
Adventure again will have you going against different fighters with different rules set, but also throughout you will engage in some side scrolling through very familiar enviroments and some platforming challenges too.
There will of course be a final boss (and even a secret final boss) and some sub boss' too. While it does add more variety than the classic, for me the scrolling+platforming parts can get rather teduis and will have patiently waiting to get into the next fight.
Whats more in terms of playing on yah bill, you also have 'event matchs' Theres around 20 or so at first but as you go through them many more will become available. The event matchs are each specific matchs giving you varieing goals for victory. Some are pretty simple such as maybe surviving against an enemy or with you and some freindly AI's teaming up against a strong enemy. To beating coins out of characters to collect or trying to fight off three very aggresive fighters all the while trying to keep your precious egg safe.
Theres also a few other tid bits such as multi man melee which has you against many many enemys that all have a very high percentage rate. Theres also a rather peculiar home-run contest which has you trying to smack a bag of flower as far as you can :? pretty random if you ask me lol.
Theres of course a tournament section which is basically the same as every other beat em up tournament map.
Besides the addicting gameplay theres still quite alot to keep you coming back.
Unlockable characters and stages are aplenty each with pretty specific goals for unlocking. And theres also a hell of alot of trophys to collect. You'll be getting quite a few through simply playing the single player portions of the game but there are still many much harder trophys which will take some time to unlock.
Graphically even to this day they are pretty impressive. Everything is full of colour and very vibrant. The character models all animate beautifully and the stages are all incredible to behold and some laughably bad just to pay homage to some classic nintendo games...such as playing in an etcha-sketch for example :P.
The sound too is pretty good too with all the characters have appriotate voices, theres no dialoque besides the typical grunts n such but still they fit well and surprisingly don't get reptitive, least not for me. Many nintendo themes are littered throughout too in accompanying their appriotate stages.
Overall this truelly is one of the greatest gamecube games, one of the greatest last gen games and easily one of the greatest multiplayer games around.
An absolute must for practically everyone from nintendo junkies to beat em up fans to even typical casual gamers just after a fun scrap or to maybe just to fling that damn pikachu around like a rag doll. The only main fault is the camera, which can get pretty far off and when things get really hectic can make you feel a little lost and cause you to activitly search for your character on screen.
But other than that the game is virtually flawless with hours of fun to be add with yah mates or your own. Etheir way this game has lasted me from its launch day and still offers some solid fun.
