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TalkBack / Re: The Downfall of Ubisoft on Wii U

« on: December 01, 2014, 03:22:04 PM »

I loathe the "blame the consumer" attitude that 3rd party companies have with Nintendo consoles. Ubisoft basically offered consumers the same experience on the Wii U that they offered on the other consoles. If you liked Assassin's Creed, you probably owned a PS3/360 already. Why buy it on the Wii U, or buy a Wii U at all for that experience? ZombiU was an unpolished experience with some unique ideas that were not executed the best. This lead to mediocre reviews, and a lot of people won't spend $60 on a game with mediocre reviews.

Rayman was outstanding - certainly an experience as good or better than New Super Mario Bros U. If you bought a Wii U early, chances are you like New SMB U. You could buy two well-reviewed platformers, and Rayman certainly would have had a higher attach rate because there was nothing else to play. Instead, the delay angered some fans. Nintendo basically had 9 months of bad press from post-launch up until around the time Rayman came out, and then Rayman came out right when people were buying Pikmin, Wind Waker HD, Wonderful 101, and if they owned another system GTA V. Perhaps if Rayman releases in the launch window, and ZombiU releases in the early fall so it's flaws can be fixed, they have two great 3rd party exclusives on the system instead of one mediocre game, and one great game which turned out to be a timed exclusive.

So now, Ubisoft says that Watch Dogs is their last mature title. It should sell poorly, and deservedly so. It received less than stellar reviews on the other consoles, and they're asking full price for a six-month-old game that could have, but does not, use the Wii U in a unique way. Somehow, this will be the fault of the Nintendo consumer.

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TalkBack / Re: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - Review Revisit

« on: May 21, 2014, 10:05:52 AM »

I do wish more sites would do features like this because time does seem to change how we feel about games. If you think about how many sites gave GTA IV or V perfect scores, how many of them would do it now? Skyward Sword got great reviews, and in hindsight, many people don't feel it holds up as well as it reviewed. On the flipside, a lot of people were down on Wind Waker when it released, but think it's among the best Zeldas now (especially the HD version).

As far as A Link Between Worlds, this game just hasn't hooked me the way other Zeldas have (I've been sitting by the save "wind vane" for the final level for months, just not caring enough to go in. I love how it uses the wall merging mechanic. I think it uses the system's 3D effects as well, if not better than any game on the system. However, putting it in the same world as LTTP makes it feel too much like an extension of LTTP and not its own game - especially when the story is formulaic Zelda (light world/dark world, collect trinkets, save Princess). It's like when a band releases a 20th Anniversary edition of one of their masterpiece albums. They tweak the sound to make it pop more, they add 6-7 unreleased songs, but no matter what they do, it's not going to feel new. It's a good game, it's the best Zelda handheld game since the Game Boy era, but I think I too prefer the era of 3D Zeldas.

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TalkBack / Re: Mario Kart 8 Review

« on: May 16, 2014, 04:26:37 PM »

pokepal, I didn't say the low score was to bring down Metacritic. I said, here's the expected window of scores. NWR is an outlier. Outliers are often done as clickbate. I saw the review, disagreed with the methods used to dock points down to what I consider clickbate level. My issue is more the integrity of the review than the score. If the game played like crap, or if it played at a level just much lower than what we've come to expect, then fine. Take away points as needed. Instead, points were taken away for not including things that didn't need to be included and for Mario Kart TV (a bell and/or whistle at most) not being anything special.

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TalkBack / Re: Mario Kart 8 Review

« on: May 16, 2014, 03:55:27 PM »

Khushrenada, your movie analogy is apples to oranges. You disagreeing with your friends has no potential conflict of interest because you are not getting advertising revenue based on page views. Also, Mario Kart must maintain certain elements to be a Kart racing game with Mario characters. There are certain aspects of Mario Kart that you know it's going to be rated on: graphics, game play balance, controls, online options, etc. There needs to be racing, there needs to be weapons (per the brand's formula). We have a frame of reference. The reviewers docked it points for not being something it's not. They wanted to see it do something like a story mode like Diddy Kong Racing. That's not Mario Kart, so it seems unfair to penalize it for asking Mario Kart to not be Mario Kart. Had Smash Bros Brawl not included Subspace Emissary, would it have lost points?

Movies on the other hand can stand on their own. For example, Gravity was well-reviewed and I thought it was terrible. I thought it was terrible because the characters were cardboard cliches (Clooney is one mission away from retirement, Bulluck has to learn to let go of the past, etc.), the science was bad, and overall, it was a little too corny for my taste. I didn't think Gravity was bad because there weren't enough lightsaber fights which worked well in other space movies.

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TalkBack / Re: Mario Kart 8 Review

« on: May 16, 2014, 02:43:07 PM »

So, Qbert, what you are saying that since NWR is a Nintendo fansite, Mario Kart 8 and other staple series cannot have low scores? I'm curious, what exactly is "click-bait" about the review? You can't see a score without clicking on the review already and nothing about the blurb makes it seem like click-bait.


To me, it sounds like you're a Nintendo fanboy who is a little peeved that a Nintendo fansite didn't share your opinion. I think a fansite is good for being more critical than the popular press; they seem to know Nintendo and get sick of the **** Nintendo does far more than the IGN reviewer that plays one Nintendo game a year.

I didn't say they can't have low scores. In my other posts, I said that one could estimate the range of scores for this game without reading a review. It becomes click bate because aggregate sites like Metacritic use the NWR score.

If you estimate that Mario Kart will score at least an 85, then you can guess that a 75 would be much lower than the average and it stands out more than say an 80. In truth, the Metacritic score is 88. The NWR review docked it for the same offenses as other reviews, but then docked it extra for not innovating enough. The Mario Kart bar was raised so high. It seems pretty hard to expect another Mario Kart game to raise that bar higher, and it seems asinine to dock points for failing to do so. If the controls were bad, framerates were choppy, if the game was laggy, if the game was unbalanced to the point of being unplayable go ahead and dock points. That doesn't seem to be the case. It seems to be a case of a good series producing another good game, but the new game merely maintained the previous level of quality rather than being transcendent.

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TalkBack / Re: Mario Kart 8 Review

« on: May 16, 2014, 02:17:54 PM »

NWR insanolord, don't you think you're being disingenuous regarding Metacritic. Even if you don't check it out, your review gets used on it, and no part of me believes that you didn't think your score would be lower than the average, hence why I called it click bate.
If the Metacritic process is bullshit (it is), why allow your score to be included? Why not change the reviewing system to something like Kotaku's "Should I play this? Yes or No?" You did a review and a second opinion piece on it. Why not do a Siskel and Ebert "Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down" system with two reviewers? If you give a game a 7.5, they can convert that into a 75 on their system rather easily. If you give them only two thumbs up, two thumbs down, or one up, one down to work with, they can't convert that to their system because then a 0, 50, or 100 does not come close to accurately reflecting a review. If you don't give yourself a chance to be seen as an outlier, then you don't create the opportunity for clowns like me to perceive your outlier score as click bate.

That's just my two cents. (I generally enjoy your site).

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TalkBack / Re: Mario Kart 8 Review

« on: May 16, 2014, 12:56:13 PM »

We don't factor Metacritic into our reviews. We don't base our reviews at all on what other reviewers do or have been perceived to do. Our reviews are the opinions of the reviewer with as little outside influence as is possible.

If you don't like what we write, might I suggest reading a different site?

Talk about some thin skin. I wasn't aware that discourse was discouraged.

You gave your opinions on the game. I gave my opinions on your opinions including the impression that it seemed a little click-bate-ish. I find it unlikely that you are unaware of what competing game sites might say of the game. You have a website with "Nintendo" in the title. Surely you are aware of how well previous Nintendo titles were received by video game journalists.

No non-Wii U owner is looking to a website with Nintendo in its name in order to make an objective decision on whether or not to purchase a Wii U and Mario Kart 8. Surely you know that by offering what is perceived as a low-ball 7.5 score, all you are doing is trying to catch the eye of Nintendo fans to come to your Nintendo fan site (or so it seems). I generally like the work NWR does, so the perception of a click-bate score bothers me more than the score itself which is ultimately irrelevant since I was buying this game anyway (because what else am I going to play).

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TalkBack / Re: Mario Kart 8 Review

« on: May 16, 2014, 12:13:40 PM »

Qbert, our two reviews of this game were posted at the same time as dozens of others. We have no way of knowing or predicting the Metacritic average. To suggest that our site's scores are intentional outliers is ignorant of the actual review process, which is independent, personal, and honest.

That's fine. As a Nintendo site, you surely know the ballpark of what a game is going to receive based on their track record. Most reviews of a 3D Mario game will be 90-95 out of 100. A 2D, side-scrolling Mario game will be 80-90. Zelda will be 90-100. Mario Kart will be 85-90. Smash will be 90-95. Barring some huge glaring flaws which will be noted when video game websites get hands-on previews, we know the scores will be in these areas.

What I'm saying is that worst case scenario, you knew Mario Kart would be no lower than an 85 average (some scores would be higher, some lower). If they game was underwhelming to you, you could have gone with the 80 out of 100 (or 8/10 on your scale), but that gets lost in the shuffle with the other less-than-impressed scores. Nobody who doesn't currently read the site comes to read the review with an 80. But a 75, that's a full 10 points lower than the worst-case scenario Metacritic score. That shouts "Hey look, we review Nintendo, but refuse to be seen as Nintendo fanboys." That gets more attention than an 80, more attention gets more page views, more page views equals more ad revenue.

I also believe it's foolish to dock Nintendo for merely meeting the bar which they themselves raised. They more or less invented the genre. Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 are two spectacular kart racing games. Others Mario Karts have reached those levels, others have failed. It's no different than New Super Mario Bros games. By all accounts, Sega would kill for Sonic games that good. Sony would kill for Little Big Planet to be that good. If they created games that good with Sonic or Sack Boy, they would be lauded. But because it's Mario,  because it's up against Super Mario 3 and Super Mario World, the reviews are just ho-hum. That's what this review feels like. If Sonic, Little Big Planet Racing, or Mod Nation made a kart racer this good (by almost all other accounts), the reviews would be "Mario Kart has met its match." Instead, you dock points for a Mario Kart game being a Mario Kart game.

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TalkBack / Re: Mario Kart 8 Review

« on: May 16, 2014, 10:53:19 AM »

Flawed as it is, and like it or not, aggregate score sites like Metacritic have become a part of the perception of video games. It always irks me when sites will post a low score outlier as it reeks of drawing attention to itself (see GameSpot's review of Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze). There's just a little too much "Hey look at me! I'm docking a lot of points on a game everyone else likes. I'm an independent thinker."

Both this review and GS's DKCTF review dock in inordinate amount of points for the game not feeling new enough. In the age of annual Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed releases, it seems like nitpicking to dock a game that comes out once per platform for merely fitting its genre. It's a racing game, and your Diddy Kong "appease the hub world elephant kart adventure games" are the exception. The fact that Mario Kart lives on while Diddy Kart has not shows that the Grand Prix cup formula is what kart genre fans want. To dock points for fitting a limited genre would be like holding it against Madden games for not having the guts to add more platforming elements.

Beyond that, your criticisms are in line with every other review of the game - most of which docked 1 out of 10 points for them.

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TalkBack / Re: Super Mario Bros. 3 Review

« on: April 22, 2014, 10:14:02 AM »

Pretty sure the game always had the graphical glitches - mostly on the sides of the screen. Back when the NES was out, most TVs were rounded off on the corners so you couldn't see as much of the screen. Nintendo used the invisible sides, and the scoreboard on the bottom to allow for more things on the screen with less flickering or slow-down. Now that TVs no longer have those rounded-off corners, the glitches are visible.

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TalkBack / Re: Why Wii U Needs Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball

« on: March 17, 2014, 02:08:34 PM »

I was like you in that I was a sports gamer and only owned a GameCube during that generation. I remember trying to track down the NCAA 2K3 Basketball title which was so rare for the system that I ordered it from some guy in Iraq on eBay. A funny thing happened in that GCN/PS2/XBOX generation - sports games stopped advancing. I bought Madden 2011 on PS3 and realized that outside of graphics and a tweak here or there, it's essentially the same game as Madden 2002. MLB The Show doesn't do much that wasn't done on MVP Baseball 8 years ago.

As I've grown older, I've realized that I just don't have time for sports games any more. As a kid, a game of Ken Griffey Jr Baseball on the SNES took 15-20 minutes so a full 162-game season took 40-50 hours. A game of MLB The Show takes 40-minutes just for the on-field stuff. Likewise, a full-season takes 120 hours or more. I can play 3-6 regular games in their entirety in that amount of time. Until a sports game comes out that is described as "changing the way you view base/foot/basket-ball games," I can safely set them aside.

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TalkBack / Re: Donkey Kong Country, Through the Years

« on: February 13, 2014, 09:55:33 AM »

The first DKC was brilliant. Fanboyism has taken on a religious zealotry in this day and age, but back then I remember inviting one of my friends over who happened to be a Sega kid. He converted. To this day, the snowstorm level where it gradually snows harder and harder until you can't see is one of my favorite video game levels ever.

DKC 2 was also great, but it started my platforming pet peeve: you can't get to this part of the map unless you collect a certain amount of hidden coins in a level. It's such a cheap tactic to get you to replay levels and extend the life of the game, and now the New Super Mario Bros series just abuses it.

I remember DKC 3 being frustratingly hard in some parts. I played through it once, and never touched it again.

DK64 was trash. "Oh no, you can't collect those bananas right now. Come back as Lanky Kong for that color." I always prided myself on completing the games I owned, no matter how bad they were. This was the first game I ever quit because of sheer boredom.

DKC Returns was solid on the Wii, and better on the 3DS. There was no need to force motion controls into the Wii version by that point in the system's life.