Launch Review: Super Smash Bros Wii U belongs on the big screen

There's a niggling feeling when you first start up Super Smash Bros. for Wii U that Nintendo perhaps showed its hand a little too early. After all, by releasing the 3DS version nearly two months before its console brother, Nintendo had essentially ensured that those who purchased both would have few secrets to discover once the Wii U game rolled around.

Thanks to series overlord Masahiro Sakurai's insistence that both versions share the same roster, loading up Smash Wii U for the first time doesn't quite spark that same excitement as when you first booted up Melee or Brawl. Instead the feeling is similar to watching The Sixth Sense after a mate's already spoiled Bruce Willis's pre-credits revelation.

Thankfully, once you get in to the game proper the early disappointment subsides. Running at a silky smooth 60 frames per second with all manner of control options available - GamePad, Classic Controller, Wii U Pro Controller, Remote and Nunchuk, even a GameCube controller with the new adapter - we can safely say this is the definitive version of Smash Bros.

Its gorgeous HD visuals and the depth of its roster alone would have made it worth recommending, but once you start playing the whole thing just feels so satisfying, fitting neatly in between Brawl's overly floaty, imbalanced gameplay and Melee's rigid but unwelcoming system.

This is a game that will have pros spending years learning the minutiae of each character while at the same time ensuring those just looking for a laugh aren't scared off.

For 3DS players, the initial surprise is just how beautiful the Wii U version is compared to its little brother. It's often said that Mario Kart 8 is one of the most visually stunning games on any platform, regardless of power, and Smash Bros on Wii U deserves a similar accolade.

The character models are highly detailed and their facial expressions are top-notch. Each fighter's individual personality really shines through as you fight, and the ability to pause the game and zoom right into the action - a Smash Bros staple since the N64 original - only serves to accentuate this further.

As fantastic a technical achievement as the 3DS version was, with its 60fps frame rate pushing the handheld to its limits, you really haven't seen Smash Bros at its best until you've seen it running at a flawless 1080p.

The game's backgrounds - most of which are console-exclusive - range from beautiful and compact retro nods (the Donkey Kong 75m and Pilotwings stages) to enormous, vast landscapes (Palutena's Temple from Kid Icarus Uprising and the massive Kirby stage).

The larger environments are well suited to one of the Wii U version's unique modes, 8-Player Smash, which as the name suggests lets a ridiculous number of players (in any combination of human and CPU) take part in a massive battle. Given that the maximum until this point has been four players, this ups the chaos ante significantly, though 8-Player Smash is restricted to the larger stages so there's usually enough space to move around without too much frustration.

Another main feature only to be found on the Wii U version for now (the 3DS game is due to get it in an update next year) is the much-hyped support for Amiibo figures. We tested the game with the first wave of Amiibo and it's an interesting gimmick, if by no means a game-seller.

"You really haven't seen Smash Bros at its best until you've seen it running at a flawless 1080p"

By pressing your Amiibo of choice on the GamePad's NFC reader during the character select screen (it loads impressively quickly) you can have your real-world trophy take part in a battle as a CPU-controlled character. Any number of fighters in a battle can be Amiibo characters, even all eight in an 8-Player Smash, as long as you have eight different figures.

Your Amiibo begins as a Lv1 character and can't fight for toffee, but as it continues to gain experience its skills will improve until it reaches a maximum of Lv50. The levelling process is fairly quick and we'd estimate it'll take around 4 or 5 hours of fighting to hit the max level - something extreme completists hoping to collect and level up every Amiibo will likely welcome.

It's a fun idea for a while, but ultimately the concept of raising your own AI bot to fight alongside or against you is one with niche appeal, especially considering it's strictly limited to the Smash and 8-Player Smash modes. We expect they'll rake in cash for their Japanese parent, but for now they're the Paris Hilton of NFC toys - popular more because of who they are than what they do.

Gallery: Wave 1 of amiibo figures

Within the main Smash option are a variety of other modes, some making their way over from the 3DS version and others unique to console. Classic mode is one of the carry-overs, albeit with a few small differences. For starters, rather than the 'follow the path' structure the handheld version offers, this time your character's icon is placed on a giant circular platform and possible enemies appear on it. You can then choose which to fight next.

Other than this small cosmetic difference it's more or less the same sort of thing - take part in a number of fights, then fight a team of Miis, then take on Master Hand (and Crazy Hand if you've ramped up the difficulty a little).

Other than the addition of 8-player fights to the mode, it still feels very similar to the Classic mode in the 3DS game, and if you've been blitzing that for the past two months in order to unlock all the fighter trophies, you may feel less inclined to do it all over again.

Things are kept fresh, then, with a few other modes that weren't present on the handheld version. Event matches, for example, return from Melee and Brawl, offering a series of quirky battles with various different parameters return from previous console games.

These are given extra longevity with the addition of secondary objectives that, if performed, reward you with bonus items. For example, the first Event tasks you with controlling Mario and defeating his two biggest foes, Donkey Kong and Bowser. Doing this will unlock the next three Events, but you'll also gain a unique reward if you can do it without taking any damage.

Zoom

Then there's Master Orders - in which you're given three fights with varying levels of difficulty to choose from and unlock a customisation item if you succeed - and Crazy Orders, which has you trying to win consecutive (and increasingly harder) fights to make lots of extra cash.

There's lots for solo players to do, then, but there's no mistaking the fact that this is still very much a game designed to be played with friends. Modes that were solo-only affairs on the 3DS version, such as Classic, can now be played co-op should you wish, and there's also a co-op version of Events mode containing entirely unique missions.

Wii U's biggest surprise, however, is an exclusive mode that has provided us with the most entertainment, despite barely being given coverage by Nintendo: the Smash Tour mode.

On paper it may not sound like much - four players each choose a Mii and wander around a Mario Party-style board game, collecting items while taking part in various battles - and the first few times you play it it'll feel like a confusing mess, with so many things going on at once. Take your time to learn what's going on though, and it eventually all clicks.

The aim in this mode is collect as many fighters as possible - everyone starts with two randomly chosen characters and can gain and lose them as the game progresses - in order to take part in a large battle at the end when all the turns are over.

This final battle is essentially a Stock fight, with the fighters you've collected in the board game section acting as your 'lives'. This means that if, by the end, you've got three fighters and another player has five, you may have a rough time of it.

Initially bewildering, after playing through the mode a few times Smash Tour reveals itself to be brilliantly ridiculous, throwing in so many curveballs and unexpected twists that playing with four players locally almost always results in hysterics. And, if you're the lonesome type, you can still play Smash Tour against CPU players, as is the case with Smash and 8-Player Smash modes.

Video: A guide to Smash Tour mode (60fps recommended)

Overall the game modes offered on Wii U are a big success, gluing together a package that is one of its creator's most generous and satisfyingly in-depth. And yet, as outstanding as Smash Wii U has turned out, we can't help but wonder if it could have been even better had it not been designed with 3DS connectivity in mind.

How much bigger could that roster have potentially become given the Wii U disc's extra storage space, for example? Sakurai has already revealed, for example, that the complex Ice Climber characters were cut because 3DS hardware couldn't handle them.

Hopefully the news that MewTwo is coming as free DLC is a sign of potential paid add-on content to come: given that everyone and their Nintendog seems to have bought the recent Mario Kart 8 DLC pack, Nintendo would be mad not to add more characters and stages to the Wii U version.

For now, though, we'll need to settle for what is 'merely' the best Smash Bros game to date: the ultimate love letter to all things Nintendo and one that, despite potentially being held back by its handheld sibling, still provides the sort of local multiplayer that will have friends talking about memories and moments years later.

The 3DS version was all well and good, but the Wii U game is undoubtedly the main event, and now Smash Bros is back where it belongs: on your TV.

Note: This launch review and score are based on the offline version of the game: online features are to be added with a day one patch. We will add a second article covering the online multiplayer when it is accessible.