This is an article about competitive play and growth in the game Super Smash Brothers Brawl.
So our good friend MetalMusicMan at least thought my first big post about smash was pretty decent so I am here once again to weigh in on a game that brought a few people to this website in the first place. Last night I went to Metal's to participate in a special kind of practice session where Metal lovingly screams
"FEEL ME!" over and over again while he kicks my ass good and hard, telling me when I get too predictable and giving me tips about the characters we are each playing.
I normally main ROB, but I have been playing Pokemon Trainer a lot lately (I picked random at a smashfest to decide which character to play with for a bit), and it was probably the absolute best thing that could have happened to me. I am sure all of you who know anything about this game are now thinking "Well I just lost respect for anything this d-bag has to say", but please bear with me.
I think the reason this character is helping me get better is because I simultaneously got used to a character while getting to practice 3 incredibly different styles of play with out having to look to different characters to achieve it. Now I understand that those ideas appear at odds at first but somehow the pokemon trainer makes it easy. I will go through each pokemon and what I felt like each of them helped learn in just a few hours.
Brawl: How to pick up a lot of basics QUICK
Ok so to start things of you have Squirtle. He is small, fast, and moves around in the air like a little bird. He taught me all about getting crazy in the air. I had to mix it up short hopped forward airs, full hopped double Forward airs (or forward air -> DI through back air), and all kinds of things of that nature. PUMMELING, oh god I never pummel, but now i am doing it more to rack that damage for the down throw later. I was also trying to be more aggressive off the stage (without the crutch of ROBs recovery). I wasn't perfect at it, but I was getting a lot better by the end of the evening. Squirtle makes you practice that air camping that is so important for so many characters, if for nothing else than making sure you have the mix ups for your aerial approaches.
Brawl: How to pick up a lot of basics QUICK
Ivysaur is considered by most as the worst of the three, but I like him. You can ask Metal I was better with Ivysaur than with Squirtle most of the time, so just a reminder here in the middle that personal comfort can trump "better" character. Anyway back to the topic at hand, Ivysaur has to space... a lot. I spent most of my time last night trying to keep my back airs spaced far enough away to keep from getting punished. I also had to be very careful with my recovery, which is one of the things that makes Ivysaur so "bad". Her recovery is so hard to use properly and you have to be careful to not get spiked (which I am very bad at when I am tired). Also I think that for some reason I was much better at punishing with Ivysaur, maybe it was a subconscious effort to make up for how "bad" Ivysaur is. I'm not really sure, but whatever the reason it was a step forward. So the big things you get from Ivysaur is reverse aerial rushing and more tactical recovery.
Brawl: How to pick up a lot of basics QUICK
That leaves us with Charizard, the big guy has a lot of high damaging moves and on top of that has one of the best grab ranges in the game. With Charizard there is a lot of reverse aerial rushing his back air, and the occasional feint into a side B for
MASSIVE DAMAGE (not a joke it can do around 40% in one shot if all of it hits). Charizard plays like a combo of offense and defense doing some approaching but mostly getting a lot of shield grabs and then trying to capitalize on the position they are in afterward. Also getting good at using his up b to protect your recovery with the superarmor frames is really useful.
So to sum things up from Squirtle you get aggressive aerials and off stage maneuvers, Ivysaur nets defensively spacing and careful recovery, and Charizard helps you balance the two worlds of offense and defense with a mix of short hopped aerials and side b's and the use of shield grabbing. I hope this helped anyone thinking about going deeper into the game or people who are already playing and maybe were having some trouble with a few of these things.
