Genre: Party
Developer: Sora
Publisher: Nintendo

From the "Marvel vs Capcom" titles to fan-made "Streets of Rage" mashups, trying to jam characters, backgrounds, and motifs from differ games and even different series of games into a cohesive whole is a difficult task. Given the premise, Ultimate's artists do a good job of normalizing the themes, with consistently sharp, pre-rendered character portraits, and a single if somewhat generic polygonal in-match aesthetic. Where there is a lack of detail, it is made up for with a perfect framerate.

Like all modern Nintendo games, orchestra music is the direction opted for here. It's crystal clear, there are over 100 tracks on offer, and the campy, female vocalized theme song is perfect. This smorgasbord buffet of tunes has something for everyone, since it was lifted from a billion different sources, ranging from "Sonic Adventure" to "Metal Gear Solid" to "Super Mario Bros. 2". Because of this and by definition though, the offerings do lack cohesion, making the proceedings a bit disjointed at times.

"Smash", as its fans call it, nominally plays similar to a "Shinobi" or "Castlevania"-style action platformer-- but instead is a competitive multi-player game! Peculiarly, despite being entire two-dimensional, the series is played with an analog stick, making precision unnecessarily difficult at first, although it becomes an acquired taste over time. Special moves are activated with a single button combined with a direction: no fireball motions here, which makes the game pick-up play easy for newcomers. There are dozens of stages, many of which confusingly transform in mid-play!

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is essentially the Wii U edition of the game, but with two major changes: first, it has more of everything-- more fighters, more stages, and more collectibles. Second, it impeccably "nails" its game modes: primarily, it has a full-fledged single-player campaign, which involves collecting equipable "spirits" which impact the player character's stats and abilities, to go along with the typical "classic" and "Smash" modes. What's more, the vast bulk of the seventy-odd characters are locked from the start, and the every-ten-minutes-or-so cadence of a character challenge, combined with the "spirit" collection, makes this one addicting experience indeed.