WOW! JUST WOW!
You can choose from one of many characters and compete against computers or friends. Complete various tasks to unlock new characters, stages and trophies. Trophies are just little things you collect and add to your gallery in the game. They give you basic background knowledge on stage, characters ect. and when you collect character's special trophies, they tell you some tactics to use while battling. The game also incorporates a tournament mode where you can enter how many players you have and it will randomly organise battles to determine the winner.
In addition, there are many special melee modes from stamina (Damage meter falls instead of rising, when it hits 0 you die) to camera mode where you take snapshots and save them to the memory card!
It falls just short of the 10 due to the unbalance of characters. Although each have their own personality, some are far weaker than others. However, you have to respect the large number of characters in the game and how difficult it is to make a balance when one character is slow but powerful and another is fast but weak. Now imagine doing that for all the characters in Melee!
So what are you waiting for? Jump right in and choose your favourite Nintendo character to start smashing today!