all games are not created equal

The only way I've ever played either of these games is with friends.  I've never played through whatever single player mode they may have. 

That being said, the original SSB was a ton of fun to play and the controls and gameplay just felt right.  So when I first tried playing Melee, I was horribly disappointed by how I felt like I had to button mash in order to do anything.  I only played it for about 30 minutes before I stopped playing.  There was just something about the controls that I really didn't like, just felt like I wasn't in complete control of what my character was doing on screen.

Alright, I'm an avid player of both brawl and melee, I absolutely love the entire smash brothers trilogy, however I've got to say melee is better than brawl. Brawl has a lot of cool new features, items, and levels, but it doesn't outweigh the things that were taken away. Brawl is missing several key elements that made Melee so enjoyable. The thing that has bothered me most is the absence of bonuses at the end of a round, rendering bonus matches impossible. Another thing that I liked better about melee was the coin/trophy system. The coin cap in brawl has been raised from 999 in melee to 9999, which is an utterly ridiculous amount. The game you have to play to earn trophies also bothers me, I much preferred the lotto, it was much more suspenseful. Brawl's largest flaw however, is that the items in the games are much too overpowered. Either you have to play with all the items off, or a very select few to make games fair battles, as opposed to who can get to the items first. Also, my former favorite character (ganadorf), was nerfed so that he is ridiculously slow now, it is impossible to get an attack of with him. The target smash system also is fairly annoying, The fact that every character has the same set of targets, as opposed to a custom level that tests the players ability to use the character annoys me. I will give brawl the credit it deserves for the subspace emissary though, it is a great adventure mode, especially to hang out with a friend and play, the sticker system also adds a whole new element to that game that is extremely fun. As a whole though, melee is a better game than brawl.