Topic: Nintendo Has Created Best Games For Almost Every Genre

Sure, but quality is not determined by majority. And 18+games tend to be the best, looking at the titles your provided. Normies who find a game socially inappropriate shouldn't even have a say in the matter, if they are choosing not to be able to compare.

Every application of "better" is stronly subjective. There is no objectively good or bad game. The fact that there is multiplayer can be a hinderance in the eyes of some poeple. And as for the good single and multi, would you like 2 stale cookies, or one fresh cookie?

Hahahaha, NO! Video games are subjective. Lots of people don't care about the multiplayer modes in games and are only interested in single player. So why would a game that has both make it automatically better for them than a single-player only title? Makes no sense.

Sorry everyone, my bad. New Super Mario Bros. U is only subjectively a better multiplayer game than Ori or Celeste. Thanks for putting me straight on that one.

PS. equivalent - adjective - equal in value. Does that make sense?

Two games, equal in value as single-player experiences, but one also has fun multiplayer. I wish all those who would choose the single player-only game over the other as the greatest the very best in life.

If Nintendo could figure out a Realistic Military shooter they would bet set. People really like to pantomime killing other people.

@EaglyPurahfan I agree that you're not disrespecting my opinion, but you seem to be misunderstanding what I am saying, so apologies for any confusion.

I was trying to make a general, theoretical, point about comparing two theoretically equivalent games, one that has multiplayer, one that hasn't.

I was not trying to say that NSMBU is objectively better than Ori or Celeste because it has multiplayer. I was just working off example games some else had mentioned above.

To try and make things clearer for those who couldn't follow my meaning from my post, let's try this - we'll take a different game to avoid any confusion:

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. Good game. Can be played in single player or two player. We'll call this 'Game A'

Now let's imagine the exact same DKC:TF game, but with the two player functionality stripped from the game, it can only be played in single player. We'll call this 'Game B'.

Is there anybody that disagrees that Game A is indisputably, objectively, a greater game than Game B, because it's the exact same game but offers additional gameplay options and a whole extra experience of playing it in two player mode? It doesn't matter if you think it's better played single player or not. Just the fact that it's the same but with additional functionality must make it greater to any sane person. Surely...

In the hope that we can all accept that Game A is better than Game B in that example above, then can you not see that if you had two different but equivalent single player games (maybe this is Celeste/Ori and NSMBU for some people, maybe it's not - it doesn't actually matter cos we're just taking theoretically!), but one has multiplayer as well and the other doesn't, then the multiplayer game would ultimately have to be seen as greater? Cos that was all my point was. I couldn't actually give a flying frog's crap whether anyone thinks NSMBU is actually greater than Ori/Celeste or not, I just mentioned them as an example cos someone else had.

I hope my point is clearer now. I'm not sure there's much point in trying further after this.

Clearly 2 stale cookies; that's twice the cookie!

The Celeste versus Mario argument is subjective, although Mario objectively wins in variety since it's a whole franchise with both 3D and 2D with many excellent games.

Also, for what it's worth, one objective fact is that metacritic and opencritic review scores (both formal review score and player score) are higher for several Mario games than for Celeste. Objectively, more people subjectively think Mario is better than Celeste although the consensus is both are great.

As for Ori, I would rather compare it to other metroidvanias than standard platformers. Personally, I think it's better than Hollow Knight (or, like, actual Metroid).

@FishyS I mean if you want to compare a franchise of 100+ games to a single indie game, it's kinda obvious, but also not really a fair fight.

Well review scores are higher, but it honestly doesn't amount to much. Neither "critics" nor the common rabble (including, but not limited to, normies) know much about video games, so I tend not to get carried away with review scores.

All in all, you could also say Celeste is objectively better because it has more story than Mario, and it's a great story of a girl struggling with her anxiety. But it wouldn't be fair either as Mario simply isn't designed with story in mind.

I would hard argue that New Horizons isn't the best life sim that Nintendo made, for most of the life simulation aspects of the Animal Crossing series as a whole are watered down. New Leaf is probably the best life sim they've made, given that it has a good balance of customization, whilst prioritizing the life simulation aspect. New Horizons is a decorating sim. You have the ability to decorate the island as you see fit, and customize a ton of things. However, things like the actual villagers and holidays were dialed back. A ton of series staples were missing upon launch, only to later be updated back in down the line. It was missing features that would've actually been useful for a game about decorating for a good few months as well.

New Leaf itself was a complete game at launch, with a massive free update later on in it's lifespan that added even more new content to the game on top of what was already there. It had more of a focus on the villagers, and you had a reason to keep playing the game every day, as you had to do things like water flowers, or talk to the people in your town. You were given more of a reason to interact with the villagers, since while they were more dumbed down than previous entries, they still had something of interest to say. The holidays had actual build up to them, and for things like Toy Day, you had to memorize hints that your villagers left you through the month in order to get the event just right. There were so many things to sink your bells into as well in New Leaf, compared to New Horizons where most of my bells were just sitting in the ATM, as I had nothing to really spend them on, as I'm not really a massive decorating type.

Also, as for "Best RPGs ever made", I wouldn't say Nintendo has that market cornered. The Xenoblade games are some of my favorite RPGs, but in a market so diverse, there's a lot of games that do just as good, if not better. NieR is a good example of a series that left a massive impact on who I am as a person, and my own creativity. NieR Replicant is such a good character-driven game, with ideas that make the creator of the game seem like a madman. NieR Automata is more philosophical in nature, and is pretty good in it's own right. You have games like Drakengard, also made by Yoko Taro, which makes him seem less sane than the NieR series makes him seem.

oof, yeah, big no on this take. And frankly the same to the response

While I kinda see where @gcunit is going I don't really agree with the conclusion. There are plenty of occasions where art is improved by pushing against some barrier. Making you uncomfortable, challenging your beliefs or even just going for a style or feel that can't be expressed within some often arbitrary classification. To make a very, very quick point, would you seriously argue that a radio friendly version of track 5 on this album would be "better"?

No need to answer, I think the answer is self evident

But equally on the other side. Sometimes you don't need to push against some limit to the point that some arbitrary classification board gets antsy to be "good". There are plenty of truly great works that don't have the mothers grasping at their pearls in the P&C meetings. I mean personally I'm quite a huge fan of Hanz Zimmer's themes (aren't we all). But despite being in plenty of "mature" movies I still think this is the best scene his works have ever been in

I think I’m just going to 10 IQ mode again, but I don’t really understand the argument, is the argument that a game that has a rating that can universal played by means it will automatically get a boost reception wise in comparison to 18+ content? Or is the argument that the universal thing is better because more people can play it without said content bothering them? I’m confused ):

Because if it’s either I honestly disagree, i feel like a rating (for video games) just tell you if the content is suitable for yourself or for who you might be getting it for, doesn’t mean that the story they tell can’t be mature, however I would be lying if I said that being more mature doesn’t work, it usually give the person more freedom and opportunity to do things, with the story and such, that you just couldn’t otherwise. And if it’s none that I mentioned then I guess I just wasted my time…….and I writing this at like 5am I’m tried goodnight.

I think we can all agree that Nintendo makes every genre they hang their hat on their own. Their creativity is certainly the greatest. Take Splatoon. 3rd person shooter. Check. Fighting over territory. Check. Coming up with so much gameplay around ink? Genius. It's like when rumours of Smash Bros on N64 started as 'Nintendo making a fighting game.' Everyone made fun of repetative sound bites as Mario spammed a fireball move 'Its-a-me. It's-a-me. etc' And that's the thing about most commentors. We just comment on what we know. Like we think video games a created because a company reckons 'we need to make that game too.' And I dare say that's because it's obvious a lot of companies DO think that. But only becaue stuff like that 'inspires' the industry.

So I reckon their games tend to be the best in terms of innovation, inventiveness and creativity. A peak Nintendo game plays effortlessly. Something I don't think very many devs have ever nailed. Some people will harp on about other games having better story, voice acting, narrative. How the LAst of Us changed their life or something. But in terms of actual gameplay, yeah, they are a league in front of everyone else. If they weren't, how'd they make 10 year old tech so popular??? The story has and hopefully always will be simply an excuse to play some gameplay. They don't need lore, timelines etc for me. I much preferred The legend of Zelda being a Legend. Not quite following on from each other. Almost like every generation had a re-telling, their own version, of that Legend. More than happy for Princess Peach to be kidnapped again, so I have to jump my way from point A to point B. But anyhoo.

I think the argument was that if all else is equal, being able to be enjoyed by a larger number of people can be a tie-breaker. Since we are arguing about the impossible to define 'best' game, this seems ok. If you have 2 amazing 10/10 games and one can be enjoyed by 10 million people and the other can only be enjoyed by 10,000 people? On the one hand, games for niche audiences should 100% be made and applauded, but if you absolutely have to rank them, you may as well put the more popular or accessible game first.

If, however, the more niche game is a 10 and the more broadly appealing one is only a 9.7? That's not a tie-breaker situation, so put the 10/10 game first.

This of course assumes you somehow made the scores in an unbiased way which is not actually possible, but it's a thought experiment.

GrailUK makes a good point about gameplay versus story. For me, this is why I would put Some Mario games slightly ahead of Celeste. Worse story, simpler gameplay in some ways, but just absolutely fun gameplay.

@GrailUK Also, as to the Peach comment (Edit: you edited the comment to be less controversial but I already replied), we just want to play as Peach!! We got to in the second (third) game in the series. If you need to kidnap someone, there are plenty of Toads. 😝 Although personally I want to play as Toadette also. Mario games make super lovable characters (discluding Nabbit may he burn in Tartarus) so the problem with kidnapping one consistently is you don't get to play your favorite character.

@FishyS oh, ok I think I get it now, while I might not agree with the point overall, I do understand the thought process and reasoning now, thank you!

@FishyS Yeah, I didn't want people to read it as being snooty or anything lol. Yeah, kidnap a toad. But then there will be a large chunk of folk theorising what Toad is to Bowser. Does he mean that much to Mario? And why? Aaaand, yeah, all that kind of stuff to me is just tiring. It doesn't matter. And as such, shouldn't even be a concern that it's always Peach. Precisley because (to me) it doesn't matter

OMG, someone actually gets it. Thank you. Thank you.

It's kinda fascinating how many people rush to misinterpret what I was saying. I get we're spread across the world, different nationalities etc., but... woah.

@Skywake Would you seriously argue something like Toy Story would be better if it dropped a few more N-bombs? Please do answer, it'll help measure your understanding 😝

Please note that where Skywake quoted me, my post included "...give extra weighting to" and "...may get a boost" - but people seem to want to comprehend that as "absolutely always comes out on top", as if some U-rated Peppa Pig straight-to-DVD automatically outranks Boyz n the Hood or Silence of the Lambs. That's not what I was saying and anyone who thought so wasn't paying attention.

@gcunit
No, what I'm saying is that age ratings and critical ratings are entirely separate things. The idea that there's some kind of universal accessibility tie-breaker is nonsense. Would Toy Story be better if it dropped a few N-Bombs? No, obviously it wouldn't be. It would detract from what it is trying to be. However Sucka N**** would most certainly be worse without it given that repeatedly dropping the N-Bomb is kinda central to what that track is trying to say

What I'm saying is that both sides of this argument are wrong. A higher or lower age rating doesn't give additional weight to the quality of a work or detract from it. It's a side measure, completely unrelated to quality in either direction

If you had to rank 2 games and the critical ratings (or more generally 'goodness of the games') were identical, what would you use as a tie breaker then? I realize the correct answer might just be 'don't rank them', but this is a hypothetical. The fact that 'larger numbers of people can enjoy the game' is (potentially) independent of critical rating is precisely why it could be used as one example of a tie-breaker. If something wasn't independent, it already would have been factored in (here, we are pretending critical ratings are accurate and that if one game is better it gets a 9.98 rather than a 9.97 or whatever).

Edit: If you think the theoretical question of ranking all games is stupid, very fair. Although it sort of is the topic of this thread.

Second edit: Another reasonable tie breaker would be 'did it earn more money'. Again, not technically part of how good the game is but it has secondary industry/society effects.

@FishyS
A critical ranking would by definition be subjective. By definition you'd be making a subjective decision on which one to rank higher. What letter some process decided was appropriate to put on the box shouldn't really factor into that. There's no tie-breaker, not even theoretically, it's a subjective decision based on what you perceive the quality to be

Now you might decide to consider the age appropriateness in your personal subjective opinion of quality. It is your personal subjective measure after all. But even then you're still making a subjective judgement about which one is better. You could just as easily decide one work is better than the other based on the number of dogs in it. Why not? It's just as arbitrary

And you might want to argue here that no, you're talking about a critics reception or an aggregate critical reception. It's not your measure it's someone else's. These two games literally got an identical score. But even then you could always just dig deeper. There are loads of top 100 games of all time or other similar things where critics rank. Use that to decide which one is better

Just out of interest, if you applied the theory that the wider the popularity - the better the work to, say, novelists, you end up with Harlan Cobern being a better writer than Proust.
Or Stephen King and James Patterson are the greatest due to their income.

To me, ranking and scoring are just odd. But that appears to be just me.
Back to gaming: I think BotW is hugely flawed, but is also one of my favourite gaming experiences. So in what way could i score that?

If we are talking about age-appropriateness, everyone (just about) is able to appreciate works aimed a babies. That way lies madness.

I would argue very few people can truly enjoy games aimed at babies; they tend to be boring and you only put up with it because your child enjoys it. There is a reason single adults don't generally watch Barney the dinosaur. Making a game which is truly enjoyable and great seeming to an extremely varied-age audience is actually a fine art, a fine art Nintendo has generally been quite good at.

As for the arguments that precise ranking is subjective or silly, those are 100% valid arguments... it just happens to be the subject of this thread which is why some us were thinking about funny edge cases. I would generally agree there is no actual 'best', although I find approximate ratings and rankings useful to help narrow down what to play.

I personally also agree with the difficulty rating BotW. For me I can never quite fully enjoy the game, but it still 'feels' like an amazing game. Hard to put that into a score.