It's a rare event in today's gaming industry, but it's very rarely these days that someone releases a truly exceptional game. When they do, you will eventually find, as I am now, that it's the most difficult opening paragraph for a review you'll ever have to write.

There's no other way of putting it: Super Smash Bros. Brawl has been the most anticipated game in Nintendo's history. A post-conference video shown at E3 2006, followed by only a few videos for the rest of the year, and then a steady flow of news over eleven months on the Smash Bros. Dojo, which supplied news from May 2007 until April 2008 and gave us everything we needed to know about the game. With this in mind, if Brawl turns out not to be the best multiplayer game ever, will that make it a disappointment? Will it just feel like Melee made a little bit better? Or could it be, quite possibly, everything the core gamers want out of Super Smash Bros.?

Starting off with the basics, the mode selection screens in Brawl show just how much thought has been put into each and every mode. They're certainly not as dull as they were in Melee: everything is pretty clear. There are six main modes in Brawl: the two main modes are Solo and Group, with the other three from Melee being Data, Options and Vault (home of collectibles) and the last one being the much-wanted Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Delve through the many submenus the game has and you'll quickly realise that there are dozens of modes and other sections in the game. Its longevity just shot through the roof.

The character roster in the game is certainly impressive, with many adored characters coming into the fray for the first time. There are fifteen new characters in total (sixteen if you count Zero Suit Samus), bringing the overall number to 35, with five of the dispensable Melee characters being dropped from the roster (even if a couple of fighters the fans wish were just as dispensable are retained). Even then, it's not likely you'll miss the dropped characters, as they've all been replaced with some excellent new fighters.

The game really gets going when you first discover the many modes of the game, starting with the Solo mode, which includes the Classic mode, the highly-anticipated Subspace Emissary, Event matches and the popular Stadium modes.