Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@PikaPhantom I think part of that is because Mario helped save the video game industry.

@Greatluigi That's fair and all, but that shouldn't be a metric by which every game in the series should be judged. Just because Super Mario Bros. helped save the industry doesn't mean every subsequent game must be revered. I just think it's laughable seeing more critical acclaim for New Super Mario Bros. Wii or Super Mario 3D Land than some of the other games I mentioned, and some games (like Sunshine or even Odyssey) are divisive.

@PikaPhantom As a series Mario platformers have also been incredibly consistent. Granted they might not always be the best - although that's pretty subjective - but there hasn't really been a bad Mario game.

That's quite an achievement given the sheer number of games they've released. There's probably only Sonic that has anywhere near the amount of games that Mario does, and the quality of Sonic games since they went 3D hasn't been that great.

When you list four of the games as masterpieces even in a post criticizing the series, that sort of answers the question right there.

@Euler 3 of which are legacy titles and one of which has become more polarizing in recent years (and it's not the only one)? The series has been very influential, don't get me wrong, and it's definitely impressive that there are so many of them and most maintain a level of quality, but the games have their issues and other platformers tend to push the envelope more and get a bit more creative, particularly in the 2D realm.

I read it's simply because Sonic games call them zones instead of worlds, @Snatcher ....

@PikaPhantom I guess it comes down to personal preference too. I'm actually playing A Hat in Time at the moment and while it is good, it's not going to get a mention in a best of all time list - at least not mine. Same with Ori - I liked the first one a lot, but I don't think I even finished the second, and it's generally considered the better one.

I don't think anyone is claiming the recent 2D Mario games are anything other than solid entries - the Wii version probably got a lot of hype because it was the first 2D one in however many years, but from what I've seen of the entries since then, they've reviewed well enough while being nothing ground-breaking. A lot of the games you've mentioned do get the recognition they deserve - stuff like Hollow Knight, Celeste, Ori, etc are mentioned when people talk about the best recent 2D platformers, but they don't have that legacy yet of being a series with consistently great games like Mario given that they are (so far) just one or two games.

The competition is Sonic and Bubsy so Mario is keeping his rusty King Of Platformers Crown on his head for a looooong time.

I think it's partly because Mario games, even at their most derivative, are consistently high quality and just pure fun*. Nintendo knows exactly what needs to be in a game and what doesn't; there's no padding, there's nothing overly complicated, they're just expertly designed platformers that anyone can have a good time with.

*except Sunshine

The Matchmaker Stations in Octo Expansion are some of the best, most fun levels in the entire campaign. It was fantastic stuff carefully lining up my shots, constantly on edge of making a single mistake and playing it with a Squeezer especially (like I did on my first run through it) was incredibly tense yet also somewhat relaxing given that specific gun's spread. Overall, definitely a highlight of my entire playthrough, no doubt. Oh and trust me, there are FAR worse levels in OE than those ones (I still have nightmares from the break the target ones....).

Because his first one was a highlight of the arcade era and then he saved video games in North America and then he was in the most beloved NES game and then he revolutionized 3D gaming and then he was in the most critically acclaimed games on the Wii and then he was in one of the most critically acclaimed games of the past few years.

Some of the games between them are also highly regarded.

This is not the most difficult phenomenon to explain.

I prefer Ratchet & Clank games than 3D Mario games after I played the games on PS3 and PS4 since 2 years ago.
The reasons: Ratchet & Clank games have such diversity environments and different storyline that I engaged more than 3D Mario games. Honestly I found some stages from 3D Mario games were not really fun to play as they felt like Ninja Warrior style obstacle than natural 3D environments to explore.

@PikaPhantom
I sort of agree with you on Mario, at least when it comes to the 3D games.

As a huge fan of Mario during the NES and SNES days, I was never able to make the transition into the 3D Mario games. Even as a young teen, I thought Mario 64 wasn't much fun and I sold Sunshine after about a week of owning it. The Galaxy games gave me motion sickness due to the spinning planets and Odyssey was such a bore.

The only 3D Mario game I liked was 3D World.

While I love my Switch, I wouldn't be here if I didn't, it still kinda amazes me that the Switch seems to get a free pass when it comes to technical performance that would simply be unacceptable elsewhere.

I know the internet memes on the Switch's hardware but what inspired this post was Three Hopes getting 7 through to 9s by most major publications. I was really tempted to pick this up, I'd tried other musou games on Switch and they all ran like *****, but with those reviews, they surely should have figured this all out by now, then, right?

Well... no, it seems. Digital Foundry says the max resolution you can achieve in docked is 810p and downscales as low as 540p in handheld and even then cannot hit a consistent 30 fps framerate during big action set pieces. Like how can a game performing like this get even a 7 in 2022? Like even ten years ago 1080p gaming was starting to become common place and at around the same FPS as the Switch.

As far as I am concerned a game performing like this in 2022 cannot be getting the reviews it is getting. If any other platform tried to sell a game with this level of performance, it'd be getting 1s, why should Nintendo get a free pass cause they stick with weak hardware? Just seems really misleading to me.

@Pizzamorg You absolutely do have to consider the hardware a game is running on though. While sub-1080p is quite outrageous for the Xbox Series and PS5...it's fairly standard for the Switch.

Would you score New Super Mario Bros on the DS down because it ran at 256 x 192, at a time when consoles were moving to HD?

Similarly, would you score a game down because it runs sub- 720p 30 fps on someone's potato PC?

It's important to temper expectations based on the hardware. Although it doesn't sound like the performance is ideal, it's about what we'd expect for a game of this scale on the Switch.

It is that Nintendo bias which is the problem for me "the technical performance is bad, but it's good in the context of the Potato Switch, so nine out of 10 I guess". Like it just renders that review meaningless to me.

So if Xbox tomorrow chose to release a console that maxed out at 510p with a target of 30 fps and demaked their highest rated titles to run on this system, you think they'd get the same treatment? Of course not. So it shouldn't work in the other direction, either. If Nintendo choose to run games on bad hardware, that is 100 percent on them and the reviews should reflect that.

And in fact technical performance for PC reviews is a huge part of them, at least good PC reviewers. They will run the game on different machines and report back on how it performs on each of those machines, as each person has a slightly different set up, so they want to give as wide of a range of experiences as they can and the review will reflect where it suffers. No, that doesn't equate to forcing a game to run on a potato, but that is basically what Nintendo does, and for some reason that is fine here and foolish in any other context.

@Pizzamorg Not sure about Xbox, but we have examples from Sony. Reviewers weren't judging PSP games by the standards of the PS3, nor were they judging PSVita games by the standards of the PS4.

But those were pure handheld, the Switch is sold as a home console.

@Pizzamorg
It's all about the gameplay for me, not the graphics.
Switch is a hybrid console by the way, it's not a home console in the traditional sense. Yes, graphics aren't as good as its competitors, but Switch lets you play on the go. There's a trade-off there and I think most people are perfectly fine with it.

@Pizzamorg True, but the handheld component of the Switch is a fundamental difference between it and its competitors.

I understand your argument, but contextual factors just always seem to come into play when it comes to review scores. Why else would we still be seeing 9 and 10/10s for rereleases N64 games when, if released today, they'd get no such praise? And how does an indie 9/10 compare to a AAA 9/10? Is one better? Is it worse?

Using a single numeric scale to judge a game is always gonna have its problems, especially when different factors mean more or less to different people.