Topic: Yahtzee's review of Super Mario Maker left me feeling oddly conflicted...

Caring about others opinions is the basis for a discussion.

@Bass_X0: You can still discuss it without being influenced by other opinions.

I haven't made a level in a while but I agree with the OP on that, my enjoyment from the game is KNOWING people who played my levels enjoyed them, and I got that from the feedback from people on this site and the few comments on the Miiverse from people who commented on my levels.

When you break it down, I guess yes the entire game is a waste of time but the same can be said about games like Minecraft, Animal Crossing or any user-builder game. The most important part is your having fun.

I thought the reviewer has a very negative outlook on the game. He makes it clear he thinks any Mario game that isn't 3D is a step backwards. The entire point of Mario Maker is to make it user friendly for people to create levels. Not everyone is a game designer, and his claim that the only difference in 2D Mario games is cosmetically is wrong.

We're all going to die eventually, what exactly is a productive use of our time?

According to nature, reproducing.

But that's too mainstream.

But reproducing is unproductive as well, really the only productive use of our time is trying to achieve immortality.

I think Yahtzee's style of commentary is 90% comedy and 10% opinion- he really does grind on games in a way that you would think he hates almost everything he plays. It's an extreme criticism of a thought we all have in the back of our minds- the game is only as strong as how we use it, and it has been slightly overrun by autorun levels and lazy level design. The game could do with a bit of DLC just to give us a reason to think up better ideas in our levels.

Slightly off topic, but has anyone seen Yahtzee guest on GameTrailers Huber Hype? Why on earth they thought 'hey, we've got a deeply American, clean cut, positive, slightly cheesy show here. What we really need is to guest star Mr British Sarcasm to humiliate our host and question his creepy statements'.

Or one could say it's to enjoy the time you have here on earth... Like, say, by playing video games

Reviews don't exist to tell you how right or wrong your opinion is. It's a consumer tool, intended to inform the audience of a product before committing money to it. The consumer doesn't have an opinion of the product before buying it. That's the point.

Weird how this "who cares about others' opinions" argument only seems to come up for movies and games. Like, you wouldn't decide you wanted to buy a computer or a car, read reviews on a few models, and go "well who cares what they think," and buy whatever you wanted anyway. That's just silly.

What Yahtzee does isn't consumer review though. It's ranting about whatever recent popular game gets him the most clicks/views. His opinion, and that of his audience, is pretty irrelevant in his format.

@Harvan: I know exactly what you mean in all regards. With millions to choose from its a surprise my levels are played at all and even moreso that they're starred. But it's like you said, if you're having fun then why bother what he said? Nintendo have more heart than almost any other company out there and you see that with the way they interact with their fans.

I'll give your levels a bash when I'm next on. If u have a levels code somewhere i'll find it.

And another point... why would anyone trust a video game review from someone named after a dice game?

@LavaTwilight: thanks for offering to try my levels. I hope to get back into making more soon.

I think people are taking my post too seriously - I'm not basing my opinion of this game solely on Yahtzee's review. I'm just pointing out that in this case he managed to say a few things that make sense and kinda do reflect the somewhat silly way we tend to look for attention.

@Harvan: I should probably cancel my plans then to walk around town dressed in my home-made mario cosplay handing out flyers with my level codes on then...

I say this with a completely serious face: As a WoW player from day one, I've learned to not read/watch "reviews." Enjoy your game(s) because you enjoy them and they mean something to you. The moment you let other people enter the equation is the moment you start to lose the joy.

Seriously.

Good luck, OP!

@SpookyMeths: Don't be a smart with me. You're not cute. I'm sick of how people just get away with it on this site.

Of course the viewer doesn't have an opinion yet unless someone has already played the game, like OP...?

And even if the person watching doesn't have an opinion about it yet, the reviewer's opinion of the game will influence whether that person will buy it or not... But what if the consumer would have liked the game a lot? Now they won't buy it because an idiot said it was bad.

I have so much I could say but I don't know what's the most important thing here. There's so many ideas floating around in this topic.

I will say though, that if creating Mario stages isn't your thing then yeah, the game may be very "meh" to you, but if it is your thing, the game is absolutely amazing! No matter how my feelings for this game change the fact of the matter is we actually have a Nintendo endorsed stage editor. Even if it has a lot of things missing it is a decently powerful and easy to use tool and even if I got bored of it tomorrow it still is a very important release for me. A review is important for people who aren't concerned about the core value of this game, but rather will they get their fair share of money's worth from it, if that makes sense.

From what I remember, it wasn't so much that Mario Kart 8 sometimes dipped to 59, but that it would repeat a frame every second. It's still inconsequential, but some people said they could see it. I tried and tried, and I couldn't see it at all.

@DarthNocturnal: For all I know, it could have even been the equipment that was measuring the fps. If it's counting how many frames that played in the last second, it may have stalled the game a frame every second for the count. Perhaps the Wii U does that with their equipment? Either way, even if it mattered, who's to say that Digital Foundry is even accurate with their findings?

lol.

If they look at one review and decide not to buy it, that's their choice. The role of reviews, and the reason why there are so many, is to give consumers the option to shop around and make informed decisions of their purchases.

Tyler the Creator, I think you're out of line and I do recall you leaving a very passive aggressive comment on one of my stages on the MiiVerse and then you got even more upset when I deleted it.