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So how does this affect the game? Well let's say you've been knocked off the side of the stage and are attempting to come back. Your opponent, being the jerk that he or she is, decides to chase you and see if they can land an aerial attack to finish you off.

In Melee, if you tried to air dodge this attack, you would be screwed because it would take away your third jump leaving you helpless as you fall to your death. In Brawl though, you can air dodge your opponents attack, hit him with a quick aerial attack of your own, and if your character has a good enough comeback move, still make it back to the stage. It's a much-improved system that is more than worth the price of sacrificing wavedashing.

Of course, the big feature that Smash Brothers fans have been salivating over is ability to play over Nintendo Wifi. Unfortunately, like most other games that utilize Nintendo Wifi, the implementation of online play in Brawl is very half-hearted. You've basically got two options. Play with friends, or play with random players in a very basic two-minute brawl.

When you play with random players, your names aren't shown, your records aren't kept, you have no control over the rules of the match, there's no skill matching, and worst of all, it has disconnected me eight of the ten times that I tried. This might be fixed down the line, but honestly, with how limited random battles are, you might as well just be playing against the AI.

Friend battles still have the problem of not keeping stats, but at least you're able to specify the type of match that you want to play. And while there's still no voice chat for whatever reason, you are able to assign little messages to accompany your taunts for a little friendly, although limited and repetitive trash talk. In addition to all of that, you can compete with your friends in the Home Run Contest and Multi Man Brawls online as well.

The big problem with playing Brawl online is of course the issue of lag. In my experience, the only time I had a nearly lag free experience was while playing with people in the same state as me. When attempting to play with people on the opposite side of the US, all of us were met with about a half second worth of lag time; more than enough to totally destroy our sense of timing. Hey, it's better than nothing.