Note From Management: Quarantine And Smash Brothers

No, I'm not dead - although I've felt a bit like warmed over. I've caught the mother of all head colds, the kind that makes you cry uncle with a fever before even bothering with those normal pesky symptoms. Most of the fever seems to have subsided now, but the symptoms are still have their late night party. This has been going on since Wednesday, mind you, and feels every bit like those unwelcome guests that trash your place at this point.

The only plus is that I finally got a few free hours with Super Smash Brothers: Brawl. The thing about this game is that it really isn't one you can just jump into ... it just looks like it. Until you get the hang of how points work, what tricks you need to pull to knock people out (and hence ... score points) and at least a smattering of the controls - the game can be fairly annoying.

Once you get the hang of some of that, though, it's good brainless fun. And the wealth of options, from the stage builder to spectating (and betting) online fights to the adventure mode is pretty keen. Subspace Emissary, the title of said adventure mode, has gotten a few bangs. And it's certainly not perfect, but it's fun in that old school 2D way when you haven't run into a sequence you wish someone had playtested a bit further. Like yesterday I got stuck in a shaft because I gotten Link activated and getting his jumps to work properly for the situation was simply impossible. Any other character in the queue would have worked - but I wasn't even in a place to off the old elf so that I could swap.

There's the additional burden of Ninteno's bizarre friends list concept. That being that everyone will need to swap Brawl codes as well as Wii codes in some instances. I'm not sure why simply being on the Wii list isn't enough, but there it is.

All in all a definite thumbs up though, especially when you can't remove yourself from the couch anyway...