Such an entertaining game that will be played constantly until the next Super Smash Bros.
A lot of features are taken from Melee, but there is also a lot of additions. The main difference is the character roster. In Melee, there are about 25 playable characters, some of them having exactly the same moves as another character (e.g. Link and Young Link, Pikachu and Pichu and Mario, Dr. Mario and Luigi), making them pointless. In Brawl, there are 35 characters, and I found that I liked some of the newer characters a lot more than any of the characters in Melee - my favourites are now Pit, Meta Knight, Ike and Sonic, none of which are found in Melee.
There are three main modes - Classic, Adventure (The story has been named "The Subspace Emissary") and Brawl (basically multiplayer mode). The classic mode is as it was before: you fight through various brand new stages belonging to different characters. Like in Melee, you get to choose the difficulty and your stock amount and there are also mini-games between specific stages. If you finish classic mode meeting certain requirements, you will be able to fight a character to unlock him/her after you have defeated the boss. There were a couple of things that annoyed me about the classic mode - one of them is that they have kept the same boss called "Master Hand" from the last game, one of the least imaginative boss characters in any game that I have come across. The other, slightly more irritating thing is that they no longer award you with more points for e.g. item knockouts, half minute battles or unbeatability. Even worse, they do not even take away points for constantly using the same moves all the time - so you can beat up an enemy by tapping "B" all the time and get rewarded for the damage supplied and time you did it in. Overall, same old boring classic mode - predictable and tired.
The Subspace Emissary, however, makes up for the classic mode. As if this game hasn't already given you enough to do, the adventure mode is an all-new story that will take approximately 10 hours to complete, and could be a game in itself. The Subspace Emissary features all the characters in the roster as well as cut-scenes and boss battles all perfectly packaged. Basically, you play as every character in different levels on a map in groups of 2-5 at first. Each time you complete a level, a new one is unlocked. The battles within the levels are link in classic or Brawl mode, except you are not in a familiar setting and not necessarily among familiar rivals. All other parts of the level could be described as Megaman style gameplay - 2D action but with lots of different characters and therefore abilities. You will climb up ladders, pick up items and push buttons like in general platformer games but whilst doing all this, each special character that joins you becomes unlocked for all other modes. Although this mode boasts being able to play with over 30 characters unlike other platformers, there are some disadvantages in terms of limits e.g. you cannot ride vehicles or jump into suits, there are no character-specific problems - all characters in SSE have the ability to achieve the same thing. However, a lot of platformers suffer from either bad, pointless of lack of storylines. In Brawl, the storyline for the SSE is exciting, shocking, surprising and sometimes touching - this is what separates it from Melee and rival epic game modes.
Brawl mode is the similar to multiplayer mode in Melee, but the addition of characters and fresh stages makes it better than Melee's multiplayer. Again, up to four people can play at the same time including the CPU. There are a lot of words that could be used to describe this mode, but I have narrowed it down to just three: hectic party fun! I could play hours and hours of this as long as three other people are involved. If you don't have the will to complete The Subspace Emissary, it will take you about 500 multiplayer battles to unlock all the characters and, trust me, this shouldn't bother you at all.
Another addition is the online play available. I did not get to play this that much as I spent too much time on other modes, but when I did play I would say the quality of play including gameplay, graphics and sound is almost as good as in the offline modes, depending on how good yours and other players' connection to the Internet is.
The gameplay of Brawl is fantastic like with Melee. It's truly amazing how good of a game can be made with such simple controls for both types of controller - sure the gameplay doesn't have the depth of Tekken, Soul Calibur or Virtua Fighter, but it doesn't need to as the skills you need to do well in this game lie within other aspects such as decision and method. The way everyone and everything moves is just so right. The fact that you can jump and drop though platforms and fight your way back to the platforms with special moves is revolutionary amongst other things.
The graphics are beautiful for this type of game - no one could have done it like Nintendo. The characters are smooth, so perfectly textured as are the stages. There are basically no flaws in this department as even in the game it looks like it could have been done by top CGI artists.
Most of the music is good, but if you hear it too much it can get on your nerves but not as much as a rubbish unoriginal licenced soundtrack would on a lot of heartless EA games. The voice acting is not as good as it was on Melee - I know the voice acting is just sounding random noises and words such as "hoo-hoo!" but some of the characters voices have been changed from Melee and they don't sound right. This case applies mostly to characters that have been given American voice actors instead of Japanese and it doesn't sound good. The sound effects for the game are very good whether you are slashing with a light-sabre style sword or exploding after being KO'd.
Overall, this is one of the best games I have ever played, regardless of some of the minor flaws. To be honest, this is probably the nearest I have been so far to giving a 10/10 for a video game on this site even though I would like to think I enjoyed Tekken 5 and Soul Calibur 3 more. For some reason, the heart of Super Smash Bros. Brawl just wins you over.
Take a look at my GameSpot account for more reviews. Add me on the PS3, my ID is now JEZKUN. See y'at the fight =)