Basic Techniques
This section is just a general overview of the basic techniques available in brawl, most of which were in melee, but there are a few new things at the end.
Air Dodge The psychics of the air dodge have changed. You likely already know this. Air dodging is no longer directional, and you also can't do it in place to sort of stall in the air. air dodge simply gives invulnerability frames temporarily, and does nothing else. You can attack after air dodges. You can jump after air dodges. You can air dodge multiple times in a row if you have time to do so. There is a short amount of time where you can't air dodge so that you can't just stay invincible in the air forever though.
C-Stick The c-stick does work differently in brawl then it did in melee. C-stick still does smash attacks if you aren't holding a direction, but if you are holding ANY DIRECTION and point your c-stick it will do a tilt in the direction that you tilt the c-stick. You can also charge smash attacks with the c-stick, which is a good change. C-stick still works for aerials, and you can actually catch items with the c-stick as well.
Crouch Canceling Crouch Canceling works just like it did in melee. We honestly don't know if its as effective, but it still does basically the same thing at least. It is also harder to CC (crouch cancel) into down smash because of the new c-stick functionality in regards to the tilts.
Dash Dancing Dash Dancing is in, and seems to be equally effective if not more effective in brawl. Sonics dash dance in particular is especially good because of its very high speed and the distance he can go while doing it.
Sidestepping Sidestepping is in, and appears to be basically the same as it was in Melee.
Double Jump Canceling This appears to be out, Yoshi can't double jump cancel any ways, but we have no way of being sure it is not in with some other characters.
Edge hogging Edge hogging works the same way it did in melee, characters gain invincibility frames on the edge, and during a rolling animation or getup attack other characters cannot grab the edge.
Fast Falling Fast falling is in. It works similarly to the melee fast fall, but seems to have an even greater effect on falling speed (compared to their jumping speeds at least)
Item grabbing/catching It seems like you have to be closer to items to pick them up while they are on the ground, but catching them in the air is much easier. Oftentimes we found ourselves accidentally catching items because of a new item catching feature. You can catch items while you are in the middle of aerials. So if you are peach and you throw a turnip at somebody and it hits their shield (or hits them I suppose) and you follow up with a forward air you will catch the turnip as you hit with the fair.
Jump Cancel Up smash/Grab Honestly I'm not sure if this is in, if it is its a lot more difficult, I just crouch really quickly before I up smash normally any ways, and that still works, but jump canceling seems to be harder if its in at all.
Edge hop Edge hopping is in the game, but it seems like it might be less useful for some characters because of the overall floatiness factor. Also you can't actually drop from the ledge by pressing down anymore, just a little quirk about it. I found myself messing up my ledge hops at first because of this adjustment.
Ledge tech Didn't see it, but using rational thought based on the seemingly improved DI and ability to still tech it seems like it would be in, although with the new sweet spot I can't imagine there would be much opportunity for this any ways.
Meteors Still in, saw a couple meteor cancels (or at least I think I did) but this is one of those things that could change really easily from the demo to the real game
Rolling Still in and very similar to the melee. Some characters (Metaknight and Pit for example) have really quick rolls that seem like they would be more useful than most rolls in
melee.
Shield Hit Stun At first it appeared there was more shield hit stun in the game, but then I noticed that every character seems to have a really good sheildgrab off almost any air -> ground attack combination. Visually it looks like more shield hit stun, but I don't think it really is anything that will affect the game at all.
Shield Grab If you read the shield hit stun description right above this one then you will already know about this. Shield grab is in and seems to be even more effective than it was in melee (at least in the point that getting the grab is going to be happening more often).
Shffls Still in, done SLIGHTLY differently - aerial after the fast fall remember.
DI/Smash DI DI is still in brawl, and seems to be a lot more effective. There is more hit stun with pretty much every move, so there are more frames to DI. Its really a hard thing to check, all of the competitive players who played brawl have a really natural instinct to DI to survive, its hard to think not to DI on purpose for comparison purposes. It did seem like we lived for longer percentages though, especially on most of the item attacks. Honestly it seemed like it was easier to do survival DI, but harder to DI out of combos. My theory on that is that because the game and most moves are new, we simply don't know where to DI yet to get out of combos.
Teching Teching is still in. You can tech off walls the ground and the ceiling. You can wall jump tech, tech in place, and roll tech. Teching acts more or less the same as it did in Melee.
Tumble Recovery This is still in, you can wiggle the control stick to get out of your tumbling animation faster.
Wall jumping Still in. I saw Mario and Samus both do it, and I can't remember if Diddy actually can or not, but I THINK he can. Don't take this one as fact though.
Footstool Jump Footstool jump looks really silly actually. You just jump on characters heads. I believe any character can do this, but we didn't see them all do it (I never did it with Bowser, but I never really tried to do it either) It does no damage and seems to have very slow knock back, but we didn't see anyone meteor cancel one, and we tried to cancel it every time it was done to us. It just sent us down really slowly and you couldn't jump right away.
Tether Recovery Tether recovery is different in brawl compared to how it was in melee. The hook shot/grapple/whatever goes right for the ledge where you sweet spot and automatically pulls you up right away. It is unknown at this point whether or not you can edge hog this or not (I would assume that you can). Another difference between this recovery type in brawl is that you can actually do it multiple times without touching the ground. You can drop off the edge and grapple immediately into a sweet spot, its a pretty cool little stall.
Gliding Gliding is really unorthodox, I think we just didn't try it enough because its so different. Its also awkward to activate a glide. You actually press DOWN to start gliding with pit/Metaknight. Seems like it would be a great way to recover, but it might be pretty easy to edge guard. But we really don't know, it wasn't researched very much.
Crawling Crawling also looks funny, it doesn't look very fast, and it also doesn't look like every character can do it. It sounded more useful in early impressions than it was when we actually tried to use it in matches.
Taunts Every character has three taunts now, and the additional taunts are really cool. Just a small feature, but I really like it myself.
Turn around neutral B the only reason I write about this is because sadly it has been removed. You can't turn around with your neutral b moves in the air.
The Halo The halo that drops you off after you die still exists, and works the same, you retain invincibility I think for the same amount of time in brawl that you did in melee after a death.
Swimming Every character in the game can Swim if you land in water. However, you can only swim for a short period of time. This is primarily seen on Delfino Plaza (at least for now). You can be spiked through the water, and you can do moves (like Bowsers down b for example) through the water and still die, so be careful!
Super/Heavy Armor When the heavy or strong characters in this game perform certain moves they receive a number of frames where they do not flinch. This acts differently from what some initially thought. If you are hit during your super/heavy armor, you not only do not take stun, but you also DO NOT RECIEVE ANY DAMAGE. It was difficult to test what moves have this effect in such a short period of time, but after viewing videos of it you can see that no percentage is received upon impact of the moves.
Grounded characters (results of pitfall item and DKs side b attack) If you hit somebody with these things the characters go into the ground. In melee you could just pound on them to do damage until they broke free. Well in brawl you basically get a free big hit, so don't bother with your little combo move (unless you have them at low percent) you want to release the charged up giant punch you had right now. It'll send them flying. Not particularly important, but its a change.
Advanced Tactics
Alright, so here is where we get into the advanced tactics. Some things we discovered at the venue or we just figured out how to actually get them to work. Other things we found but we've been having trouble duplicating. Any ways, read on to see what kind of advanced techniques we found for Brawl so far. (also, since its a demo, every single one of these could easily be removed/changed, so keep that in mind)
"Hugging" - Special edge hog "Hugging" seems like its going to be big in brawl. With the lack of a solid wave dash this seems like the best way to edge hog at this point. You simply walk/run/roll/whatever off the edge and press towards the stage after you fall, you grab the edge automatically facing either direction. Its fast and its useful. Pretty cool new technique
Moon walking Somebody told me this was in, and acted mostly the same way, I can't moonwalk in melee so I didn't check myself so who knows for sure.
Tripping Alright so to make your character trip and/or cancel out the trip you
well
to be honest we have no idea! We experimented and we couldn't really find a way to reliably make this happen. After day one we were sure that you could dash pivot by canceling the tripping animation, but we don't know for sure. This one eluded us for now, oh well. It'll probably be in the instruction manual or something.
Pivot Still in, and apparently you can do it while dashing somehow. It seems like it would be very effective with sonic. Inks was the first one that did that with Mario doing a reverse grab out of a dash, and I did it later by dashing across the screen into a reverse short hop back air. We aren't sure how its done, just that it can be done.
L Canceling Alright, the very last day we had the demo we finally figured this one out. You CAN l cancel, and l canceling removes all the lag from your aerials. Remember that l cancel stands for LAG cancel, NOT the button that you press. You l cancel in brawl by fast falling and then doing your aerials, it takes a bit of getting used to, but its obviously useful to have no lag after moves. You don't actually have to press a button, as long as you are fast falling before you do your aerial you should l cancel.
Wavelanding Yes, wave landing appears to be back (at least in the demo). Bob$ was the first person to be able to apply it consistently and helped us to actually figure out how to do it. It is NOT done with the air dodge in any way whatsoever. This could EASILY be removed before the actual release of the game, but its still in for now. To do this wave land you have to be in the air (obviously) and do a move that pulls your character in one direction. The best example was Marios back air, but it can also be done with his up air (and just to give more examples, Bowsers back air, several of peachs aerials, etc etc). If you do moves like these while you are close to the ground it pulls your character over very quickly and does basically the exact same thing a wave land does in melee. We know that it slides you along the ground, but as far as applications goes thats up to you guys to discover. If you l cancel the aerial by fast falling first then you do the move it doesn't even come out and you just go sliding over.
On a side note (something we didn't really have time to experiment with) it seems like peach would legitimately be able to wave dash back and forth because of this technique combined with the shortened height of float canceling, which means that peach (or somebody else with a double jump cancel, if other characters can do it) will be able to wave dash back and forth quickly
Land Canceling B moves by this I mean things like Falcos short hop blaster from melee or needle canceling or other things like that. In general it seems like this has been removed, at least in the things we tried. Diddy can't short hop peanut gun cancel spam, sorry guys.
Thunders Combo When somebody misses a tech, tapping them no longer causes them to stand up automatically.
Shield Drop - You CAN drop through platforms with your shield up just like in Smash 64. This is a very good thing.
Jab Canceling - Jab canceling is in and it works just the same as it did in melee. If you jab, then press down, then jab again you will repeatedly do just the first hit of your jab instead of doing the other hits after.