Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

The 2020 Mario direct was about 16 minutes and that had a lot of stuff. Since this is a general direct, any Mario game announcements are just game announcements, but I wouldn't imagine the Mario Merch /random mario apps/ maybe movie trailer section would be more than around 15 minutes.

I really feel like Sonic Racing Crossworlds is a super over-hyped game and really killed the hype for me. I find that it is constantly compared to Mario Kart World and many people say it is better. All the hype made me have high expectations for the game, and I feel like it will not hit those expectations.

@WaveBoy I won't disagree with your take, but you've felt that way about PlayStation since the PS2? Really???

PS2, PS4 and PS5 have the strongest games library choice for 3rd party kids games in my opinion.
PS2 have tons of cartoonish 3D platformer games, girly games, cartoon franchise or movies to video games, rhythm games like DDR.
PS4 & PS5 have the strongest home builder genre games such as The Sims 4, Portal Knights, Dragon Quest Builders 1 & 2, Fantasy Life I, etc.
I felt granted to have PS1 - PS5 with different signature of 3rd party games I can play.

@Anti-Matter welcome back.

I've probably said it before, but with all the buzz around the duology, I might as well say it again: I never want to see a Super Mario Galaxy 3 and I would be disappointed and quite frankly concerned if it's the next big 3D Mario game. I just don't wanna see Mario games get any direct sequel tbh. I like them because they're all so distinct and different from one another and pigeonholing 3D Mario into having future installments based solely on one game's mechanics would just make them feel stagnant and uninteresting to me. It'd be the New Super Mario Bros. thing all over again.

@N00BiSH The only way I'd be alright with a Mario Galaxy 3 is if they had ideas for a third game that used the planetary system they developed for the first two. Even then, I think 1 and 2 are enough and that the next game should try to do something else. It would be like getting Super Mario Odyssey 2..

@VoidofLight that's the thing: I don't think there's anything else they can really do with those mechanics anymore. By Galaxy 2 they were already pulling back on most of the planetoid stuff in favor of more standard 3D platforming challenges for the most part. Makes sense, given its roots as DLC, but still, I think to me, that says it all - they wanted to try new ideas beyond the framework of Galaxy.

Okay, I've got another unpopular Galaxy opinion: I don't think the space themeing is particularly well utilized. I mean, yes, there's the planetoids and gravity and the shooting stars, but in terms of overall aesthetic and level motifs, it just feels like the typical Mario fair. It's mostly standard grasslands, fortresses, beaches, haunted houses and Mario 64-esque non-euclidean environments, but in SPAAAACE. Compared to Sunshine and Odyssey, which went all-in on their tropical island resort and world travel themes respectively, Galaxy by contrast feels kinda lacking.

@N00BiSH
I understand what you’re saying but I can’t think of an example of theming that would go more all-in on the space theme than it already is. Isn’t that what space is? A collection of haphazard planets strewn together with some stars and meteors and such? Making those planets themed to things Mario is somewhat used to with these various gimmicks thrown in adds enough familiarity to keep it from feeling like this is somewhere Mario doesn’t belong. Also, Freezeflame and Dreadnought are ideas that the series has never done before, even if a fire/ice world and an enemy base aren’t exactly new concepts to the series.

Edit: Hard agree on the Galaxy 3 take though, 2 games are quite enough and might even have been too much if they hadn’t have taken place pretty close back to back. I much prefer the homages games like 3D World throw its way.

You're not entirely wrong, but it's just that I wished it leaned more into unconventional spacey/sci-fi stuff more rather than Mario stuff. Like, when I think of space themeing, I think wacky planets with strange ecosystems, or giant, intricately designed space stations, or weird alien species with totally out-there designs, etc. The kind of stuff you see in Hitchhiker's Guide or Wander over Yonder or even some of Nintendo's own franchises like Metroid or Kirby.

That's the kinda stuff I wanted to see in Galaxy, and in some cases it does have those, like the Dreadnought, but it just doesn't push them as far as they can go in my eyes. It's a bit restrained, I guess is what I'm saying. Am I making sense?

@N00BiSH
I understand what you’re saying, I do think the lack of new NPC’s besides the Lumas (and the bees, I guess?) is a little lame, but I think cramming the game with weird creatures would have counteracted the sort of lonely feel that a lot of the galaxies try to go for. In terms of space adventure, I think this game is trying more to be of a similar tone to something like Interstellar than Hitchiker’s, which is why it’s pretty muted in terms of out there things, which if it’s not your style I absolutely get, but the tone is one of the main reasons people absolutely love Galaxy and throw out the word “atmosphere” without really elaborating as to what they’re even talking about.

I couldn’t disagree more with people hoping that Nintendo tries to refine the open world concept for the next game. The open world/intermission system is antithetical to Mario Kart’s strengths and while I think they could have handled it slightly better in World, Nintendo could never get it to the point where it would be as satisfying to play as their three-lap courses in 8, Wii, and even World.
Let’s run down Mario Kart’s strengths as a series and why you can’t make any of them work in an open world.
Engaging Track Design
Many people have derided the intermissions in World for being a straight line, but in order for them to work, the intermissions kind of have to take you somewhere, and excessive turns can’t really do that. On the other hand, Mario Kart has made going from one place to another work in tracks such as Mount Wario, Big Blue, and the Wuhu courses. But could you imagine how obnoxious it would be when you’re just trying to get to another city and in your way was 47 hairpin turns? You can’t make courses but so engaging in order to create a proper open world, and while the intermissions could be slightly better in this game, the ceiling for them isn’t that much higher than in World.
Interesting Item Play
This one’s pretty simple. While it can be fun to cut a long stretch of intermission with a golden mushroom, the fact that these long off-road stretches exist means that offensive items are hardly ever what you want to receive, making shell snipes and item management not nearly as important.
Newcomer Friendliness
While this initially seems like something that would play in the long, uneventful stages’ favor, someone who is playing for the first time can often get screwed over by the long shortcuts and sometimes arbitrary places in which the game places out-of-bounds lines, and ending on a three-lap track usually brings things back to the status quo.
Kart Customization
Speed builds are even less useful than before when a long off-road shortcut can usually balance everything out just as easily.
Interesting Locations
I am not at all saying World is a boring game, but having to make the world itself feel somewhat tangible leads to the more out-there track themes like Squeaky-Clean Sprint, Ribbon Road, the F-Zero tracks, Cheese Land, or Tick-Tock Clock not really having a place.

I really hope that the next Mario Kart game doesn’t try to fix World’s problems and instead puts the great parkour system into a variety of three-lap tracks.

I again don't understand the level of disappointment for Mario Kart World, on the basis that DS and 8 Deluxe are the only games that truly live up to the hype Mario Kart gets as a series.

Double Dash can have as little content as they can get away with while plenty of other racing games with more to offer are on Gamecube at the same time and its still considered a classic, but a new one just falls into some of the traps open world and larger games tend to have (in admittedly a more unique way I guess) and its some massive disappointment even though Mario Kart 8 is proof that World has plenty of time to be awesome in the future.

I don't want to defend the 80 dollar game that will probably rely on DLC, but I just don't understand why Mario Kart not being the standard of 8 is anything but the norm for the franchise. It's like being mad that a Star Fox or Yoshi game isn't 64 or Island...like...what else is new?

@kkslider5552000
For what it’s worth, I really like World despite its problems. Even at launch I think it just misses out of the podium of games in the series (which is 8, DS, and Wii imo). I just don’t want them to lean in the open world direction in the next game or even in future DLC because there’s not a whole lot more they could do to make that concept any better.
World was put in a very unenviable position after how good 8 and its two sets of DLC were, and I think it’s led to a lot of doom and gloom about the franchise from people who are only ever used to Mario Kart being great, when in actuality an 8/10 game is probably around the mean in a series that includes 64 and Super.

I didn't care about hype for MKW. I just expected a decent game, but it isn't. 24 character races that then make the item spam worse, alleviated only slightly by wider roads, which in turn makes the actual act of racing when you're in the lead or against only a few friends significantly less interesting. It's just bad Mario Kart game to me, it's that simple. The open world format also impacts how interesting the design of courses and decorations around them can be, because of technical constraints. Overall it's just really not good. And the open world could've been a good counterweight to the downsides, but it's just absolutely dreadfully boring after no time at all.

@JakedaArbok Honestly that's probably the most unfortunate part about it, that assuming that a game series will go open world, especially for a game that will inevitably succeed...makes me kinda doubt they're going back on it.

Like maybe they won't have it as the focus and even the DLC for this game will be more based on new courses, but I just assume they're gonna try something like that once per game, in some way, because its a modern video game that went open world in some way, so unless literally every metric they have shows them that there is minimal interest in that, they will because that's assumed by companies to be part of what makes your game worth full price now.

@kkslider5552000
Yeah, I fear that in between this, the Zelda, and Pokémon, Nintendo will soon fall into the trap that has plagued modern AAA companies that more money being put into an open world makes the game automatically worth the higher prices they’re charging. There are still plenty of exceptions to the rule of course, but it’s not a good road to go down.

@JakedaArbok I feel that the 3 lap formula was perfected with MK8. Outside of just adding more content to MK8 Deluxe or creating an "everyone and everywhere is here" Mario Kart Ultimate style game, doing something drastically different was the right move.

World is a solid start for something completely different. I think it could do with more Knockout Tour rallies including an option for custom rallies meanwhile free roam could do with a story mode (at the moment free roam feels like BotW/TotK Korok seed hunting which is a bad thing). Add in a jukebox mode and volume controls so that you can better enjoy the soundtrack.

@JakedaArbok Zelda I'm less worried about because the gap between the open world ones would be too long to just rely on that. I'm expecting a Torna style stand alone DLC a bit closer to the old games for the next one tbh, let alone spinoffs and 2d games.

Yeah but Pokemon's never going back, look at all the money gen 9 made, life is unfair lol.