As it stands, Super Smash Bros. is currently Nintendo's biggest franchise. Super Mario 3D World failed to innovate on any part of the Mario formula, Mario Kart 8 only brought a temporary reprieve to poor Wii U sales and all of Nintendo's other franchises are currently dormant. In terms of first-party, Nintendo-developed games, Super Smash Bros. is, in all honesty, the only title that currently carries any real weight with players.
Nintendo is trying something new with the latest game in the franchise: instead of the game appearing solely on home consoles, Super Smash Bros. 4 is also appearing on the 3DS handheld. Nintendo is betting a lot on the handheld version, but can the 3DS keep up with a game like Super Smash Bros.?
Players already familiar with the previous Super Smash Bros. games will immediately be at home with the new one. Everything about the controls has been pulled straight from the older games. Players use two main attack buttons, a shield, grappling, and jumping to openly move around a stage and attack opponents. Fighting still feels great: attacks carry a lot of weight and characters move smoothly, it's just a shame that the actual button mapping is so terrible. Players hoping to use the face buttons for something other than jumping will be fine, but the lack of directional-pad movement is a pain. Instead, players are forced to use the control stick, which can feel unresponsive and sluggish. Super Smash Bros. Brawl featured fully-customizable button layouts, and it's a shame that the feature wasn't included with the 3DS version. It can end up causing some cheap losses (and in some cases, broken control sticks), and will likely affect the 3DS version's longevity, especially when it comes to high-level play.
