Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Almost, but not quite"

Super Dodge Ball has been around for quite some time, appearing first in the arcades in the 1980s and then later on the NES. It also saw an installment among the Game Boy Advance's launch line up with Super Dodge Ball Advance. Forgoing the previous installments' graphics and gameplay style, Super Dodge Ball Brawlers returns to its roots, with a few added mechanics.

Games like Super Dodge Ball Brawlers don't need a story. You're simply taking one of many international dodge ball teams and leading them to victory in a tournament. Merely throwing a ball around back and forth would be boring, but in the Super Dodge Ball universe, it's more exciting thanks to over the top special shots that give the gameplay a good deal of strategy.

In a regulation Super Dodge Ball game, the court has two teams on opposite sides of each other. Each team is made up of seven players. Four of them are placed inside the court's boundaries, while the other three are situated outside the opponent's sidelines. You can pass the ball to your sideline players in an attempt to catch the other team off guard.

When on offense, you can do normal throws, or you can unleash well-timed supershots by running and jumping. Each character has two different supershots, one for running on the ground and another for doing a running jump. Supershots involve changing the way the ball behaves, bending and twisting the shape of the ball and even transforming it into other objects. The goal of the game is to hit the four main players on the opposing team enough times that they lose all their health and pass away.

When on defense, you try to catch the ball, but it can prove to be rather tricky. You have to learn to recognize which kind of shot is being thrown at you so you have a better chance of catching it. Knowing which opponent does what shot also helps. Some are nigh impossible to catch and it's just better off to move out of their way. Other shots are very dangerous, as they move all across the court missing you but hitting other teammates.

Brawlers brings several new things to the Super Dodge Ball franchise. Players can actually punch and kick their opponents if they're too close to the center line. It's a great way to gain possession of the ball at the start of the match, or interrupt a player's attempted throw. Items, such as grenades, boxes and banana peels, fall from the sky and can be thrown as weapons, and there are also food items that can be consumed to regain health.

Another new feature is the Nekketsu Burst. As you're throwing and catching, a meter will fill up. Once full, there will be an S icon that will flash on your screen. Touching it activates Nekketsu Burst, and it can give you several different advantages depending on which one you select before entering a match. You can perform a deadly throw that will almost instantly kill an opponent, nullify damage down to a single hit point, improve your speed and jumping ability, or make catching much easier. Nekketsu Burst is perfect for getting out of a pinch, so don't use it unless you absolutely have to.

Brawlers also has a leveling system that improves characteristics such as ball power, speed, stamina and of course the all important catching. The one major flaw in the game, however, is that once you decide to use another team, all previous leveling will be lost. It's discouraging for someone who wants to get the best out of every team. It sort of makes up for this fact by letting you create your own team in a very robust creation mode. The weird thing about this mode, though, is that assigning supershots to a player is dependent on the birthday you give them. Lastly, you can also buy and equip bonus giving equipment with the money you earn in the game. They take damage over time, even by characters you aren't using, so they'll need to be replaced when broken.

The game's much better looking than Super Dodge Ball Advance. The sprites and environments more detailed and simply have a more charming design to them. The special effects are pretty decent for a game of this quality. Seeing the ball change into various shapes and sizes is fun, not to mention seeing people hit so hard, they travel around the world and roll as they hit the ground. The animations could have used a little more fluidity, though. Also, the backgrounds get recycled as several different teams share the same court. It would have been nice to see a brand new stage for every individual team.

Audibly, the game is somewhat decent. There are different sound effects being generated based on what kind of shot someone's being hit with, but they could sound a little more painful. When bodies land on the ground, they don't make the kind of thud you'd expect, and even when they're rolling around, it's not that loud. It just seems like a quieter game than its NES predecessor. Speaking of the NES, a lot of the music in Brawlers has been remixed from that initial installment, giving Super Dodge Ball fans a good bit of nostalgia.

If you were disappointed with Super Dodgeball Advance, you'll be happy to know that Brawlers is a better game. It much more closely resembles the NES version in both looks and feel, and if you find the fighting and object throwing unwelcome, you can simply turn it off. As previously mentioned, it's a real shame that you can only level one team. It cuts into the game's value severely. Still, it's a solid dodgeball game that any fan of the series should definitely add to their DS library.