I feel alone (Nintendo related)

I get so upset with the people here when it comes to anything Nintendo. Recently Mario, again, came out. Oh it’s amazing, it’s graphics don’t matter, gameplay is important. People here always talk about innovation, about being fresh. Unless it’s Mario, the same thing over and over again.

Oh it has high kinda cartoony graphics. Looks like the same thing again. Talk about innovation, mario / Nintendo do nothing. Oh call of duty is the same each year, mario gets a pass. Let me collect these things over and over again. Is that a Ubisoft or mario game? Fetch quests? Talk to me once you have 100 *s. I hate the pass Nintendo and mario get. Of course dan will give it 5*s, why let him review it? Look at how the East cost hates sunshine.

I’m not the most articulate person haha just sick of nonsense.

I disagree wholly and will simply reply in meme form:

Let people like what they like dude. Personally I think the new Mario and Zelda games are fairly mediocre but it doesn't bother me that everyone else loves them.

They're just games, man.

My call of duty thing was just to show how ignorant people can be. You are missing the point. Nintendo hasn’t changed anything, in my opinion. I wasn’t talking about the latest mario alone, so maybe you don’t know what I am saying.

Anyway, I like the passive aggressive responses, nice.

Anyone can say things, but if you don't back them up it's worthless. Come back with a solid argument as to why you think Mario is in any way comparable to Call of Duty or Ubisoft open world games and let's have a real discussion.

Right now it seems like you're just throwing a fit because people like something you don't, and you haven't really provided any genuine criticisms beyond surface level observations and comparisons that don't hold up under even the most basic level of scrutiny.

Ok. I can’t really put my opinion across, please a mod close this discussion. Cheers.

Might be one of the worst take I’ve read on Nintendo. Breath of the Wild sure is innovative in open world design as it throws away a lot of the genre conventions. You might not like but you kinda have to recognize the craft of the open world.

Mario is less of a change, but comparing it to Ubisoft open worlds is disingenuous. All moons in mario are placed with at least a little bit of intent, they tend to include a variety of challenges to get them. The fun comes from the challenges, not the collecting itself.

Also both those games look pretty good with some technical problems, so here’s that.

There’s plenty of bad Nintendo games that get reviewed accordingly. Those two are really great though, you might not love them as much as the reviewers, doesn’t mean they’re not impressed at what they’re doing.

It seems like you have some sort of emotional attachment to Call of Duty. Do you follow competitive CoD or something?

tbh I think CoD is intensely basic, shallow, uninteresting, tired, a monumental ongoing waste of money and dev talent, even a compelling argument against the modern free market. But I don't tend to pick fights over it or labour the point, because people still seem to want their CoD and I'm fine with stepping out of the way and letting them have that.

If anything, it has bugged me before that the GB crew ripped on traditional Zelda. GB seems much more tolerant of the yearly CoD than the traditional Zelda despite its infrequency, whereas I'd be very interested in Nintendo setting up a three-studio yearly traditional 3D Zelda rotation a la CoD. Zelda dungeons are puzzle porn, they lavishly glorify the act of solving puzzles and manipulating spectacular dungeon contraptions to make progress. Sure they're intellectual junk food, but it can be nice to indulge rather than having to get all my intellectual fulfillment from hard things like proving theorems. But the GB crew are allowed to want something more, and BotW is an amazing game that I got a ton of enjoyment out of and am super thankful that it exists. (Though it doesn't quite scratch that traditional Zelda puzzle porn itch for me.)

I'm sure Nintendo will appreciate me apologizing to you on their behalf for not focusing on making Mario look ultra-realistic and edgy, as is the true aspiration of legit AAA production.

Regarding the five star rating, (that Beastcast rightfully joked about, bless them) if you’ve listened to any of the other duders talk about Odyssey, I’m fairly sure that they would all also give it at least four stars. I think Rorie would maybe give it three stars, so perhaps you should ask him to write a review for you?

I didn’t necessarily love Odyssey, but I still thought it was a great game and refreshing to play. Maybe that’s because I haven’t owned any Nintendo consoles since...forever and thus haven’t played any 3D Mario games before. But even if I had, mainline Mario games still don’t come out EVERY SINGLE YEAR, unlike CoD.

I also enjoy CoD and don’t care about the hatred the series receives, but I’d be blind if I said that it hasn’t become stale by now.

Odyssey is the first game in this mould in about 15 years, and it does a ton to move this kind of game forward. If you think it hasn't changed, then I'm assuming you haven't played it. I'm fairly sure that any other editor would give it 5 stars too by the way.

Also not sure where you're coming from regarding graphics, since the game looks stunning.

I sort of understand what you mean (I think...maybe) I bought both Mario and Zelda day one this year and while I can say Zelda will likely be in my top ten this year Mario has left me a little cold.

The whole thing feels forcefully whimsical with an emphasis on collectathon puzzle platforming, which gets old to me really quickly. Its getting almost universal praise and personally its about a 7. It feels weird that a lot of people aren't having the same reaction.

I'm at the point that I haven't played if for about a week and a half and at this stage i might not go back to it because other games are taking up my game time.

Even with Zelda tho I do feel like Nintendo got a bit of a pass. The weapon combat was mediocre, the world had very little actual content apart from the repetitious shrines and fucking korok seeds. It relied on its physics gimmicks and its charm, but it was able to keep me engrossed for 60 hours which is something a lot of other games cant do.

@fear_the_booboo: just curious but how is the open world in Zelda innovative? Imo it kinda falls into the same trap other games do where it gives you a bunch to do but no real reason to do it. There were large chunks of the map I didn't even see because there was no reason to go there other than to see more shrines or korok seeds.

As I grew up with Sega I have no inherent love or nostalgia for Nintendo I find alot of their games tend to be the same from game to game but with a new gimmick/twist albeit very well made.

Breath of the Wild open-world may be a radical depature for the series however open-world games are a dime a dozen BotW doesn't add anything new for me but adds what I've been doing in every other game to Zelda with its own missteps and quirks.

Odyssey feels very much the same with a new gimmick, I feel alot of Nintendo fans really like Nintendo games as nobody else really makes them anymore so they get alot of praise for just making another good one and the time between releases helps.

GB rarely get excited for anything but were high for Odyssey as I was watching thinking yeah that's Mario.

I haven't been a fan of Nintendo since the Gamecube, but I must say Odyssey is pretty fantastic. The way that game handles character movement is top tier. I haven't played Zelda yet, but I've been very skeptical on how much I'd enjoy the opened world approach they are taking so I'm taking my time before I actually get it. Nintendo tends to get a free pass because of nostalgia and it's rabid fan base.

I think all video games have 'blind areas' where we give them a pass for not changing. Is Mario still Marios without collecting stars? Is Mario still mario if he isn't saving a princess or jumping on heads? So, perhaps, we have to give them some passes for staying similar in key areas.

I think the struggle is that video games CAN change drastically we give them that freedom in a way that Chess or Basketball does not receive. We could accept Mario 64 could be 3D and in nearly an open world. We slide into GTA 3 without protesting the GTA had to be and overhead view. That might be why videogames are interesting there is leeway to change, sometimes those changes can be massive - game changing.

For the sake of argument, let's just partially agree with OP and say that each Mario game is pretty samey in terms of structure/gameplay/overall design, in the same way that CoD campaigns are.

Even if that were true, I think it's pretty understandable that the staff is more fatigued with these yearly CoD campaigns than the Mario games that only come out once every 3-4 years.

Also, as everyone else points out, the Mario games (and Odyssey in particular) tend to be exceptionally well made and do have gameplay differences game to game, and certainly aren't Nintendo just phoning in the same formula each time they make one.

For me at least, the innovation in BotW comes from the way it was crafted and what's allowed there. Hyrules was crafted so that everywhere you went you could see somewhere else that looked like it had something of value; sometimes those somethings of value are just vistas or korok seeds, sometimes it's a shrine, sometimes it's a town. On top of that, there was the challenging of expectations and the sense of discovery that came with it: was the world truly open? Open enough to literally walk to the final boss and kill it from almost minute one. Could I use this tree cutting mechanic to get a log on a hill, push it down into an enemy camp, mowing bokoblins down? Hell yeah, and you can set the log on fire too. Surely having a torch out doesn't affect the temperature gauge--oh wait, it totally does. And, you know, they tripled down on "see that? You can go there."

BotW basically just said "Here's this big world that we crafted so that it's hopefully cool, and we made a bunch of systems that interact in weird-yet-intuitive ways, go have fun. Do what you want." For me, as someone who likes to explore in games for the sake of exploring, that was cat nip. The innovation there was, counter-intuitively I guess, not putting shit to do in every place in the game. Some places were just there to exist (and have a korok seed) and be part of this world they want you to believe in. To use another game I like for this as an example, Final Fantasy XV, a big (legitimate) criticism is that the world is big and designed pretty well, but doesn't have a lot of stuff to do in it. There's this gigantic lake area with swamp-like shores, a big plains area around it and a basin. They never use the lake for anything except a hidden fishing spot. In another sprawling field, there's a deprecated tank rusting away in a corner of the map. If I'm not mistaken, it's the only one of its kind, or very close. There's no quest involved, I don't think the party even really has anything to say about it, it's just there to be a relic of a war in the world's past. For me, it's things like these that I really appreciate in game worlds; I'm honestly pretty tired of the fact that any time I see a unique thing/location in a game I can shrug and think "Guess I'll do something here later." It just feels so contrived to not let a world be.

Ok, coming from someone who doesn't have a Switch yet and hasn't played Mario Oddessy - I think the game looks fantastic as far as graphics go. And I don't mean relatively, either. Also every Mario ive played has had more innovation and creativity in each individual level or world than most games manage in their entirety.

The only argument I can see for Mario being anything like CoD is NSMB, which hasn’t had a new entry since 2012.

I’m not going to say that every other Mario is overwhelmingly innovative, but they are pretty creative within the confines of the series. All of the major games (64, Sunshine, Galaxy, 3D World) are pretty different despite following a familiar framework. Suggesting that Galaxy and Odyssey are as similar as WW2 and Advanced Warfare (or any other 2 CoD) is lunacy,

@dark_and_grey: Nah man, your're not alone. I feel Nintendo gets more praise when the do make good games based off of nostalgia alone. I have a Switch and BotW & Mario are really good games, but they aren't without flaws. Some people made it out to be that they were these perfect divine games without blemishes and they aren't ( no game is).

Not that it matters, but once BotW came out to rave reviews, it was basically a lock for GotY. I've played MOST of the heavy hitters this year and BotW would ranked 3rd for me. Mario doesn't scratch the Top 5.

@mems1224: you can finish the main quest immediately it doesn't really have a traditional quest structure.

So in a sense you have full control in how the main quest line is completed.

Has there been a new 3d platformer Mario game yearly for the last 12 years?

Here's the actual difference, besides whatever preferences you have on graphical style, music, gameplay etc: CoD had 12 similar games in 12 years on two generations of hardware. Mario had seven 3d platformers in 21 years, on six different generations of hardware. One pumps them out every year, the other one does not. I can understand being tired of Mario as a brand, and the New Super Mario Bros. series in particular was annoyingly similar despite having all its games on different consoles, but they are not the same thing at all.

Lol. This post is so ridiculous it's hard for me to even find words to respond. There hasn't been a Mario game along the lines of Odyssey since Sunshine, over 10 years ago. CoD has released 10 games in that same time that are all fairly similar with minute (but important) differences.

@dark_and_grey:

The thing is, the new Mario does innovate a whole lot of things. The way it intentionally directs and encurages the players to try new things for instance.

For the most parts, SMO is seperated by any other Mario game in the sense that they completely designed it with speedrunning in mind. The came also does communicate this by intentionally signifying to the player to "break the game" in order to reach places you wouldn't think of it as possible all the time, while getting rewarded with coins or moons. This encuragement of discovery exists for one purpose, to let the players figure out movesets on places that they didn't believe were possible before.

Just look at some of these videos, This game intentional works as a tutorial for people to speedrun it. And as time goes by, people will more and more find ways to skip through stuff even in ways that were probably, for better or for worse, unintentionally put in by the devs.

In previous Marios, people just speedran through the games for the heck of it. Ways to warp through zones were nothing but secrets for instance, but in this game it seems more like that the game is pointing the player towards a different way of playing the game while adding a lot towards the sense of discovery. This requires a lot of design consideration in order to pull this off without the player to think of it conciously, its not so easy as you may think. That not everyone is realizing this shows how genius the design choices in this game are

As an example, its kinda like how you can finish BOTW in 40 minutes without much problems but then you're sealing yourself off from the rest of the game. So consider SMO the antithesis of what BOTW did, actually skipping stuff by using the things the game teached you beforehand opens up a whole new world for the player (in a figurative sense). You're cutting yourself off from the game by playing it "like its your normal cookie cutter Mario game".

Personally, I think the astonishingly high praise the SMO is getting is related to this way of telling the player to try out new things, so learning how to speedrun becomes a direct process of just playing through the game.

All videogames are the same, it's just a controller and a screen.

Read a book.

I agree that I really don't get what people see in Mario games, but it's just a game duder. You don't have to like it, and you don't have to hate that other people like it. Plus, why be mad about a review? Reviews are irrelevant and useless.

Since when does the East Coast hate sunshine?

Have you played the game?

I usually roll my eyes at the blind love that Mario and Zelda games get. The praise they receive is overly-effusive more often than not. The only Mario game I enjoyed playing before this year was Super Mario Galaxy. I don't like Mario games. This one is very good and it is my favorite Mario game that doesn't have "Kart" in the title. The praise for Nintendo titles this year is not hyperbolic. These really are special.

All I'm getting from this post is that you want a photo-realistic Mario and, well, I can't follow you down that road.

Opinions, eh?

@nnickers: Thats so internet!