Previews

E3 2014: Hands-on Super Smash Bros. for 3DS

The screen's the thing

E3 2014: Hands-on Super Smash Bros. for 3DS

You might have heard about this small title called Super Smash Bros. due out for the 3DS later this year.

It's been in the works for some time now, and it even made waves at last year's E3 when it announced the additions of Mega Man and the Wii Fit Trainer to its roster.

Since then, it's added newcomers like Little Mac, Greninja, Rosalina, Miis, Paluntena, and Pac-Man - but we were still curious as to how it'd play on the 3DS.

Thankfully, E3 gave us the opportunity to get our mitts all over the 3DS version (and the Wii U one as well, when our bosses weren't looking!) and the results were - well, a bit of a mixed bag really.

Let's start with the positives - Smash Run.

This is an intriguing, 3DS-exclusive mode that allows you to delve a 5-minute long dungeon full of enemies from previous Nintendo games likes Mario and Zelda titles, along with those from relative newcomer Kid Icarus: Uprising.

You start off a Smash Run with poor stats and must defeat enemies to collect power-ups for your attack, defense, speed, and other attributes.

It's a real joy to go through this process - not for the dungeon crawling, although Smash Bros. dungeon crawling to the Spanish guitar of "Dark Pitt's Theme" is pretty awesome.

No, the real draw here is that you gain a quantifiable sense of progress as your stats increase.

After the five minutes are up, you're shunted off into a challenge mode which can take the form of a contest (who can throw an object the farthest) or - our favourite - a modified free-for-all brawl.

What makes the brawl fun and challenging is that each character brings their modified stats into the fight with them.

So if a player using Zelda found a mountain of upgrades to her attack, she might well put DK's hits to shame as she lays waste to the competition.

As if you needed more incentive to give Smash Run mode a go, you can also earn equipment here - which, as we learned at the closed-door developer discussion, allows you to increase your speed, strength, or attack.

This mode was a lot of fun, and is great for on-the-go play thanks to its fixed play session length.

See what I did there?

The downside to Super Smash Bros. on the 3DS is that, well, it's really kinda hard to see what's going on during massive brawls.

We all sort of knew this might be a problem, even on the 3DS XL and with optional character outlines enabled, but seeing it in person was another matter entirely.

It's easy enough to keep track of your character, but it's difficult to tell where exactly items dropped and what move an opponent on the far side of the board just used.

This might be something that you'll adjust to with time, but we found it to be a bit tough to keep up with the action - especially when compared to the Wii U offering.

We suspect that the 3DS-owning faithful will have no trouble acclimating to the smaller scale of Super Smash Bros. on the XL, but we're a bit skeptical of how it'll work on a 3DS' or 2DS's more economical screen.

Thankfully, the controls themselves work a treat and we found the touch-screen targeting to be immeasurably helpful when trying to rack up cheap points by picking off the weaker players in our four-person demo group.

After trying out the multiplayer mode a few times, we walked away smiling and sure that a bit of squinting now and again is a fair price to pay for the experience of sticking Super Smash Bros. in your pocket.

Matthew Diener
Matthew Diener
Representing the former colonies, Matt keeps the Pocket Gamer news feed updated when sleepy Europeans are sleeping. As a frustrated journalist, diehard gamer and recovering MMO addict, this is pretty much his dream job.