Watch Waypoint's Austin Walker, Natalie Watson, and Ricardo Contreras play Smash Ultimate above!
Oh mannnn reading this article just made me so much more hype for Smash Ultimate. I too have spent a large part of my life with the Smash Bros series.
For me, the first two games served as a nice way to bond with my brother, and served as a fun party game with friends when I was really young. As I got older and with the later games, I started to treat it a bit more competitively, but could still just have fun with it if the context called for it.
Back when I was in college, my friends and I would spend many a late night playing “just one more game”, and it’s now a running joke in some of my friend circles that any argument we have or impasse we face, we can just “settle it in Smash”.
Even now, as a working adult, it still has managed to find a way into my life. I live in the US and earlier this year, my job required me to travel to Canada each week. I was initially pretty shy and able to connect with a few coworkers a bit, but somehow, one day the topic of Smash Bros was randomly brought up. Instantly, it felt like I was back in college with good friends, and my coworkers and I instinctively started trash talking each other for a good while. It all culminated in us settling the score at a game bar after work, in one of the most fun times of my adult life. (Oh and I won by the way 
)
Now I’m a few hours away from picking up my copy of Smash Ultimate, and supposedly my Gamestop is supposed to be having a tournament leading up to the midnight launch???
Gotta say – really loved this first article from @Cado. More 
bylines! (… if you have time, boss.)
I’ve been very hit-or-miss on Smash. I played a lot of Melee casually because it released when I was a preteen and played an okay amount of Brawl and 3DS because they hit a certain itch and I had a few friends who wanted to play each.
Looking at Ultimate & thinking about the paid-for online that the Switch now has, I am super-split on it. Even if I had a broader pool of folks to play with or I put together a play group on the forums, will a constant burn in my back pocket do anything but sour me on the game?
With that said, watching the stream today & reading this review makes me glad that the single-player is, if nothing else, worthy of consideration. Maybe this would be worth some time for me…
This was a great article. Smash was a big part of a lot of peoples childhood so it was nice to see that aspect focused on. I’m looking forward to playing some with my brother when we are home for Christmas. The World of Light stuff is looking very cool as well, I was already on board because I loved seeing all these characters that would normally never make into Smash getting shout outs but it sounds like there is some real depth to it as well.
Also it’s super cool to see Cado writing stuff and it’s wild that his first byline is a review for a huge game like Smash.
I’m giving this a bump to remind folks to go back to it & to bring up something for folks who loved the World of Light that Cado shouts out here.
The Classic mode has rarely been touted in this game, but it is great. In a similar way to how the theming of the Spirits gives an indication as to the conditions of their game, the Classic mode, through a series of 6-7 fights and a title, shows off the character in some capacity. Rarely about emphasising gameplay, they often, instead, choose to focus on bringing out a character’s personality, origin game, or some quirk of their personality.
I recently played through Toon Link’s mode, for instance, which sees you constantly playing alongside 2-3 other Toon Links in big brawls – referencing some of Toon Link’s less prominent games, Triforce Heroes and Four Swords Adventures. They even let you bring this into the final battle. Meanwhile, Megaman’s Classic mode cheekily compares fighters to Megaman Robot Masters (mostly from 2) – and caps it off with a fight against Dr. Mario, who spawns in a Mewtwo when he dies – a reference to Dr. Wily and his alien from the end of Mega Man 2.
+1 this!
I mentioned a couple of my favorite classic mode themes so far over in the other Smash Ultimate thread 
There are some very creative set ups they got going on!
I haven’t loved World of Light. While I adore the collection aspect, it feels like I’m supposed to use specific spirits that I haven’t unlocked on certain stages, leading to too many fights where I just go to a different path instead of trying yet another combination of spirits.
Classic mode is fun, the right amount of challenge, and bite-sized. I was shocked my very first classic mode playthrough when using Link had me fighting Ganon instead of Master Hand. Surprises like that kept me going, and I didn’t have to deal with Spirits!
