Brawl is bad, but it doesn't have to turn into Melee or even 64 to be good.
Not because it's not Melee, but because it actually prevents momentum of any kind. For example, very few saw the trailer for Mega Man and said "Oh dude, I hope I can stand across the map and throw buster shots all day". No, they want to play Mega Man and possibly bust a few heads too. Maybe some did though. Maybe a few people like the run and gun aspect of Brawl. Defensive play isn't bad, but if to the exclusion of offense entirely? Very much so.
Point: Preventing a certain style of play is bad in any fighting game. Different characters suiting many different styles is the entire point, else we'd all be playing fighters with 1 character.
It shouldn't be a matter of offense vs. defense or casuals vs. hardcore. The great thing about Melee and 64 were that all levels of play could enjoy them. The barrier of entry was so low, but the curve was gradual and went on forever. If you just wanted to play casually, nothing stopped you. If you wanted to advance, nothing stopped you either. The depth was there, and those games possess metagames still growing to this day. That's what you need in a Smash game. An all-inclusive smash-up with enough nostalgia to hit us like a tazer to the spine. Say what you want, Brawl wasn't exactly "inclusive" to all parties involved, even compared to Melee and 64 (which stumbled a little in the same areas).
It's worthy of note that Brawl was quite rushed, so maybe many problems simply weren't worked out due to the time constraints. Or maybe Sakurai is a mustache twirler with a hate-on for competitive Smash. Only time tells, I guess.
So, other things:
-Anyone notice we haven't seen a match with items on? The one that Sakurai himself played even had them off, and was played on Battlefield. Real men use items? Strange for someone deemed so "anti-competitive".
-CPUs in those videos are wiggling out of tumble. In Brawl, they air dodged pretty much without fail, no? I think I caught a Brawl-style air dodge in one of the videos as well, but not out of tumble. It also seems as if they're intentionally AVOIDING showing air dodges, seeing as I saw a grand total of one or two so far. Seems odd. Perhaps you just can't AD directly out of tumble like in Melee? That seemed to work well for Brawl+ for a few seconds. Given, Brawl+ had ridiculous amounts of hitstun; way more than Melee.
-Melee didn't have a whole lot more hit-stun than Brawl. The problem for combos at least were mostly related to being able to dodge out of tumble, fall-speed, ground speed, laggy aerials and lack of momentum transfer from ground-to-air. Also, piss-easy SDI. We don't need wicked hit-stun for combos, we just need a player put into tumble to be put solidly in the defensive position with guaranteed or nearly guaranteed follow-ups. This is still possible without cloning Melee, though I'm gun-shy with them screwing around with the Smash formula after Brawl.
-Anyone see a character jump from an edge quickly? I've seen a few edge grabs, but there's always a significant pause before they move again. Return of Brawl's sticky-edges? I hope not.
-Spot dodges seem to last for years again. Don't entirely have a problem with them being better than Melee, but Brawl's were a little extreme.
-Shield-stun. Haven't seen much on it, but this is arguably more important than the hit-stun for offensive momentum.
