The Worst of EVERY Smash Ultimate Animation

we've just taken a look at all the best animations in smash and as per tradition there must also be the worst now the animation in these games overall but ultimate in particular is very very good generally speaking i can't emphasize that enough but you know someone's gotta be at the bottom brace yourselves let's do this once again no real list of criteria needed for this video i'll do my best to justify my choices but it really does come down to personal preference at the end of the day or i suppose lack of personal preference in this case you'll notice a few format changes in comparison to the best of precursor but the general premise will be the same we'll be choosing an animation for every basic attack in the game throwing in some bonuses at the end and finally declaring the overall worst animated character in ultimate with that out of the way let's move on to jab zerosu samus's jab has always felt very awkward to me but i didn't fully understand why until i slowed it down her first two jabs are pretty classic one two but then the third hit uses the same arm that's already extended and she hasn't followed through nearly enough to create a strong ready stance out of it it gets worse though check out this first hit this is intended to be a horizontal knife hand strike aka karate chop because the attack is active on frame one though there's no time to convey the arc it's supposed to be traveling in it looks more like a sloppy hook or ridgehand strike since we really only perceive the arm's return path also look at the way she generates momentum on this third hit her right leg steps forward and her hips which are where an attack's power is generated from twist counterclockwise as a result and yet her elbow strike is chambered to come from a clockwise direction it's an uncomfortable setup that the animators tried to get around by having her step forward as quickly as possible and halfway shift into a forward and downward motion but there aren't a lot of frames to work with and it never quite comes together in slow motion you get a semblance of the intended motion but at full speed it's too much of a body shift in too few frames and samus winds up looking like a ragdoll being twisted around this could have been somewhat solved by having her step forward on the second hit instead since then her hips and arm would have been moving in the same direction at the time of the step and would then also be primed to twist back the other way with her elbow i'm not a big fan of krom's jab either which was designed around roy's reverse grip and looks very cramped when it's taken away but not as cramped as samus people also like to throw shade at shulk for keeping his sword on his back during the first two hits but in his defense at least those two hits are pretty well animated forward tilt goes to jigglypuff this was definitely one of the better animated categories overall and i don't think that jigglypuffs is even that bad it feels clumsy and underwhelming but that's somewhat consistent with her strong preference for aerial combat the wind-up of the move is still somewhat unconvincing though and the pirouette premise is undercut because she's not actually spinning on her grounded foot this attack would look a lot more natural if there was a visible pivot point i find corin's forward tilt excessively stiff but a bit of stiffness does tie into their character and the poi's left arm gives it at least a bit of style even if i wish it had been paired with a more fluid sword arc along the line of bileth for down tilt i'm going with mr game and watch now some people might be expecting him to appear constantly throughout this video but i actually don't hold his intentionally choppy animation against him at all it's a pretty cool stylistic choice down tilt in particular though forces him into an uncomfortable angle that i don't think flows well from his idle state doesn't feel that much like a down tilt animation and not no wow it's so creative and outside the box sort of way and i also think that this is one of the uglier sprites he transforms into wolf gets my choice for worst up tilt considering how great a lot of his other animations are this one is an odd miss in my book i don't think the concept fits him that well and the way it's been implemented with wolf kicking so close to his head so quickly sucks all the energy out of the move and comes across as a kind of half-hearted clunky poke it looks a bit better in slow motion but the pose is still strange for a feral villainous bounty hunter from the future i do like this arrogant flourish at the end though pac-man was very close here but at the very least his strike pose doesn't look weird just uninspired captain falcon's shoulder bash is a perfectly reasonable concept that both suits his speedy brawler design and is tried and true on several other characters what kills it for me isn't the main pose although i do think it's a bit weaker than his contemporaries it's the way that his momentum completely vanishes as soon as the attack comes out if falcon either ran slower or the move traveled further i think it would work just fine as is though compare this attack to terry or ganondorf and the difference in punchiness is pretty noticeable we've got a 341 here because olimar takes my choice for a least favorite of every smash attack i don't think any of these look very good a consequence of not being able to generate any impact himself and relying on tiny bodies with very quick limited animations to do it for him that would probably already be enough but his forward smash in particular also directly harms his character design by overlapping so heavily with other moves in his moveset i've already talked about this pretty extensively so you can take a look at this video if you'd like more detail but yeah moves that i'm not a fan of an isolation that get even worse in context i did my due diligence for these i did look at every smash animation in the game to make these choices but they didn't end up being too difficult sonic's ball form is pretty oversaturated in his animations but i think by far the worst implementation is his neutral error i don't understand what the movement behind this attack is trying to convey if you showed it to me out of context and told me it was done by an amateur animator who accidentally put the anchor point a little off-center i'd believe you there are exaggerated physics which the smash series is absolutely loaded with and then there are physics that just look wrong which there are very few examples of this being the most prominent one to me the attack is surprisingly strong in game and i have to say surprisingly strong because its animation makes it look extremely weak its momentum is being pulled all over the place i'm not a big fan of little max wimpy punch either even if being wimpy is the point i still don't like the pose and other intentionally bad moves pull this off better but you can at least make an argument for it in context a satisfying forwarder is one of the single biggest traits that makes a character feel good to me and ridley unfortunately just does not have this this fearsome monster is loaded with attacks that feel devastating to get hit by and yet for forwarder he's been given an extremely cramped and restricted tail flurry notice that he's always keeping part of his tail coiled up whether that's during or after the strike this is a consequence of just how long his tail is and while they do their best to at least hide the coil behind his frame during the attacking portion and hey cheating in 3d to get a better 2d silhouette is a valid technique it has consequences either way if we take the silhouette at face value ridley's tail almost seems to shrink during the move notice that the recovery period's visible portion barely takes up less horizontal space and would clearly be longer if it were stretched out animators regularly do the opposite of this increasing the size of body parts for a few frames in order to sell an attack's punchiness if making an attack bigger increases its perceived power then shrinking it does the opposite it looks less powerful than it should meanwhile if we're ignoring the silhouette and exploring it in 3d space then it looks like ridley's holding back if he was putting everything he had into the attack then the momentum of his tail tip should be pulling the rest of it forward now holding back is how actual melee fighting is generally handled in order to maintain control and adaptability but there's a reason a historical sword blow would look like this and most video games portray it more like this it reads better and feels more impactful of course ridley couldn't fully extend his tail either unless the developers wanted to give him an extremely long ranged forward air which might be considered unbalanced as a result it looks less powerful than it should none of this is even going into the lower impact flurry moves tend to deliver compared to single hits and ridley is generally designed to feel like a very impactful character ridley's forward tilt is a much more effective way of restricting his tail length in a way that feels justified but rather than rehashing the idea i'd rather have him use his claws his teeth his wings his plasma breath i think any of these would be a more natural choice than what the developers went with and mewtwo keeps the tail train rolling for back air i think the idea of using his tail here makes perfect sense but the problem is that this animation feels very stiff and half-hearted which feels even worse in context considering this is supposed to be a kill move is the idea of an incredibly powerful psychic character lazily swatting at you inherently awful no not at all i actually think you could build a moveset around that concept with the right character i also think this isn't the right character and that the rest of his tail attacks are designed to feel much snappier and more impactful a pair is another category with great animations overall and wii fit trainers was the only one to make the short list i don't think it's bad but the yoga pose gimmick does start to fall apart a little bit here requiring them to bend their body in a way that feels pretty unnatural with no ground under their feet we fit trainers animations in general are also some of the plainest on the roster not employing much in terms of motion smears body breaking or various other techniques that can be used to give an attack more impact it's a distinctive decision that was probably made to maintain the purity of the different yoga and fitness poses but i can't say i like it and up air is one of the moves that i feel is most harmed by that call the end result is another kill move that's just too limp for the roll a vertical take on the mewtwo problem i'm a defender of ridley's down air meaning i think it's the second or third worst one in the game instead of the literal worst i've heard many times but i won't defend the animation behind it i don't think ridley's poses all that strong and his transition into the sudden slam feels jerky if he used his wings to visibly push himself downwards instead this issue would be lightened considerably also while this wasn't a direct factor in the creation of this list the fact that there was an incredibly obvious alternative ready to go of course referring to his iconic tail pogo just kind of rubs salt in the wound another package deal here this time giving throws as a whole to mr game and watch's juggling act individually this animation on any particular throw would be fine turning the player icon into the ball is a neat touch but the animation arcs and the launch paths don't line up very well it's used on every single one of his throws though i don't think this was nearly a strong enough idea to get away with repeating it so much and it feels like a bit of a cop-out there's a decent amount of bland throw animations in smash a lot of yoshi's come to mind and marth's back throw has been one that i've always found particularly underwhelming but mr game and watch is the most consistently disappointing neutral special goes to jigglypuff's rollout special moves are usually given a lot of care and attention to detail whereas rollout has barely been touched since it made its first appearance on the gamecube and its age is definitely starting to show by now it's an extremely generic move that makes no serious attempts to pay homage to the pokemon games leaning on stock smash particle effects and overall just has no spark behind it her face is dead the entire time and she doesn't even have an interesting collision animation speaking of generic side special is taken by me swordfighter's gail stab to be clear the me's are loaded with generic moves across their kits it's an intentional aspect of their designs and i usually don't hold that against them in the same way as i don't penalize characters for echoing their source games less detailed animation styles that said my god this move is boring seriously look at it there's just nothing going on here for down special i need to go with hero again because it's an animation decision that has a direct negative impact on gameplay specifically being the only move in the game that requires you to be able to read the language the game is being played in these should absolutely have icons beside the text as i've likewise discussed in the video i recommended earlier the actual combat portions of the move though are animated perfectly fine and if you consider this to be a ui issue rather than an animation issue i'd go with sonic it's not badly animated per se but it certainly doesn't get any bonus points for technical execution and it's severe overlap with another special move not to mention far too much of the rest of his kit doesn't do it any favors for up special i've gone with the pit's power of flight specifically because a there again aren't any major stinkers in this category and b these fall into the same issue as ridley's down air with their momentum shift feeling more unnatural than it needs to because they don't flap their wings to propel themselves forward this kind of matches how the technique appears in the kid icarus world but in that game you do still see flapping wings and it's still an animation issue regardless of canon albeit a fairly minor one which winds down all the game's basic attacks and lets us move on to some bonus picks as well as the overall worst animated character in smash ultimate there aren't nearly as many bonus picks here as in the best animations video because i mean it's really hard to have strong opinions on some of these but there's still room to work with starting with zaire i've chosen young link who weirdly leans away from the tether rather than into it making the attack feel weaker and more awkward than the other candidates grab goes to ganondorf which is just absurdly pitiful considering his long limbs and clear willingness to reach out his arm it's not like he's fighting tennis elbow final smash goes to biles progenitor god ruptured heaven a move that sounds impressive but is just a basic series of slashes accompanied by a barely animated 2d image of a single character from their source game there are other final smashes out there that are less memorable and more generic sure but none that come across as just so cheap made all the worse by bilas status as a dlc character who have generally been given fantastic final smashes with a lot of heart behind them all of which is missing here we fit trainer is not getting off the hook that easily though as she does take the worst walks and runs her normal walk and run feel extremely stiff and uncomfortable the perfect fitness pose gimmick again just doesn't mesh well with smash's mechanics here and her slow walks transition has one of the more jarring hiccups on the roster captain falcon's running animation is notoriously horrible anytime he tries to turn around but at least when he settles into a steady run he does look better than we fit trainer worst crawl goes to rosalina and it's not terrible i do kind of understand the logic behind it but the first time i saw this back in smash 4 i legitimately thought someone had glitched the game the worst defensive options air dodges rolls texts etc go to steve like i said i have no fundamental problem with his minimalist animations but to these ones make it hard to tell exactly what action he's taking and how far he is through it and animation that detrimentally affects gameplay continues to be a major faux pas for taunts i'm into camps snake's box is an excellent taunt except it's also all he gets when it was really only needed for one of them an obvious cut corner that no other character has to deal with including the ones that also have gameplay altering taunts for a more conventional choice i could also go with chrom if smashed taunts were sandwiches kroms would be a pinch of unsalted butter on top of white bread worst victory animations go to mr game and watch who shamelessly recycles his in-game sprites without doing anything particularly interesting with them and on the topic of victory it's time to announce the worst animated character in the entire game [Music] right so olimar is a bit of a tough choice for me to make not in terms of deserving the title i consider him to be the worst by a significant margin because while literally every character in the game is animated with that expected nintendo polish olimar is the only character whose animations consistently make the experience of fighting him worse the choice is difficult because again i've talked about all this before in a previous video meaning i need to repeat myself here more than i would typically try to in this case though he's such an obvious candidate for me that choosing anyone else would feel disingenuous olimar has moves with animations and power levels that are largely unconnected he has moves with near identical animations and wildly different functions his active pikmin is hard to distinguish in motion and would benefit enormously from a more prominent icon and or the same ui treatment so many other characters got in ultimate and even pushing all of that aside and that's a pretty hefty push the animations he has left are just fine his limbs are too stubby and his personality too timid to really have that much to work with and the same applies doubly to his pikmin tiny models with minimal rigging that are being asked to take on a significant amount of the heavy lifting in his moveset the super smash brothers series is loaded with great animation work and i really don't want to disparage the animators who worked on olimar i'm sure they did their best with what they were given but yeah olimar gets my choice for the worst animated character in ultimate and if we're being honest it wasn't all that close sonic would probably get the runner up thanks to the over-reliance on his ball form as well as a lot of other generic moves but it's a distant second place thanks for watching everyone and hey if you liked it why not leave a like if you enjoyed this video and haven't seen the best dub version yet i'd highly recommend it since it generally has more categories with well-defined choices the peaks of ultimate's animation are generally a lot higher than the pitfalls are low let me know your choices for some of these categories but before that be sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell for more videos like this follow me on twitter at mr mockrock to see what i'm up to and check me out on patreon twitch or youtube membership for early videos discord exclusive content and more later people animation is hard with even the most experienced of professional animators regularly spending hours molding their creations into something coherent we've briefly touched on some anime one archetype that truly lives or dies on this principle far more than any other the frail vulnerable yet cataclysmically powerful glass cannon

Channel: MockRock

Views: 322,184

Keywords: Smash Ultimate, Review, alpharad, Nintendo, little z, super smash bros ultimate, smash bros ultimate, arlo, esam, hungrybox, ssbu, alpharad deluxe, Nintendo Switch, IGN, Gameplay, Pokemon, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Memes, kirby, minecraft steve, minecraft steve smash, introspecktive, Aaronitmar, elite smash, let's play, mockrock, smash bros switch, smash bros steve, smash bros, smash bros ultimate trailer, super smash bros ultimate dlc, dlc, asumsaus, sephiroth smash, sephiroth smash bros

Id: fOE-kyaMSjE

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 17 2020