Lego Brawls looks like it belongs among the resurgence of side-scrolling, cartoonish fighting games that have recently cropped up to join the ranks of Nintendo's beloved Super Smash Bros. series. But expecting it to be much of a fighting game, with all the complexity that entails, would be a mistake. Lego Brawls is more accurately described as the items side of a Smash Bros. fight--a whole lot of unpredictable, intense chaos, with a fairly low skill ceiling and a high degree of approachability.

We played a few rounds of Lego Brawls at Summer Game Fest, including both its single-player and couch co-op matches. In single-player, you go into eight-player matches, which can also be played online, where two teams fight their way through different Lego-themed locations, bashing each other and trying to capture specific spots on the map in order to earn points. It's similar to Smash Bros. and other fighting games in its presentation and map design, but that's about all.

In terms of the actual experience, Lego Brawls is more about embracing chaos. Each player gets a melee object they can bash opponents with, a dash for getting away from incoming beat-downs, and a double-jump for getting around. You have a health meter that determines how much of a wallop you can take, but melee fights generally are pretty simplistic--your real goal is to find items. As in a Smash Bros. game, certain items randomly spawn around the map, giving you weapon power-ups of three different classes, each better than the last.