I started gaming with NES and SNES is my 3rd best gaming console of all time, however, Nintendo is fucking old, outdated and obsolete for someone like me who moved on to better like PlayStation and Xbox. I’m sure Nintendo’s games are excellent but at the same time, I look at Tears of the Kingdom and excluding the cool shit you can build and put together, im like, Immortals Fenyx Rising shits all over it and BOTW because it simply does everything else better with far better performance and without all the tedious garbage that plagues those two Zelda games.
Yeah, im NOT a Nintendo guy. How I ever actually played and completed 5 Switch games from 2017 to 2019 is still beyond me and 2 of them, I could have completely skipped and nothing of value for me would have been lost. lol
I think it’s weird a lot of people try to dismiss TOTK and in general, Nintendo titles because of some perceived Nintendo bias. Yes, I can definitely agree that there’s a lot of nostalgia at play - I’m guilty of it! But to try to downplay the quality of these games is so odd and frankly off-putting. I’ve played around 2 hours of TOTK and the game is excellent. There’s absolutely no denying that, even if it’s not a graphical showstopper. Same goes for games like Mario Odyssey, Metroid, etc. Nintendo simply makes top-of-class games. And this doesn’t diminish anything anyone else does, it just speaks to how talented Nintendo developers are.
Nintendo are simply best in class. They make games with a strong gameplay focus first, and spectacle second.
It can both be true - there is bias towards Nintendo, sure, as their shitty practices don’t get called out enough. But then TOTK is absolutely incredible after five hours. Genuinely a masterpiece.
Oh but I wasn’t downplaying the quality of the gameplay at all, or the audio. That certainly wasn’t my intention. I know they nail that. For me it’s really the visuals and performance. I saw Alannah Pearce playing it yesterday and she noticed the extremely ugly shadows and how they constantly seem to flicker too. It was quite distracting, she said she had to shut off her mind about it and not focus on it.
It doesn’t take anything away from gameplay, which remains great, but we really are at a point with Switch now where it’s definitely holding back the dev. The new hardware can’t come soon enough but at the same time why would Nintendo be in a hurry when it sells like hotcakes?
I’ve been playing mainly handheld as I do, it looks fairly nice on the little 720p screen. I’d imagine it’s not super on my 4K OLED at home, I know there’s some devices that can mitigate that such as the mclassic but overall I think it’s a nice looking game.
So much has to do with art direction over raw graphics to me I suppose. I think the only game on
Switch I dropped due to performance were the newest Pokémon games. Those kids in the classroom wagging their legs…bad.
I’m not trying to downplay the game (since I haven’t played it yet), but rather that I can’t take reviews for Nintendo games seriously. In general, I only ever seem to agree with people’s opinions on Mario games. Everything else seems to fall into the “I don’t get why this is rated so high” category.
Nintendo fans tend to deify Nintendo in a way that’s hard for me to take seriously. Like, I remember hearing someone on a podcast (I believe it was an IGN podcast) talking about how Mario Odyssey is the greatest looking game of all time and how Metroid Prime is the best FPS of all time. And he wasn’t joking, lol.
So, I believe that there is definitely a “Nintendo bump” when it comes to reviews and things other games would be harshly criticized for often get glossed over.
Oh there’s bias towards Ninty for sure, both positive and negative though. The thing is that a good portion of PS and Xbox fans would sing a different tune if Zelda, Metroid and Mario were their exclusives…looking at a game through your console preference lens is dumb but it happens a lot in this industry. A big example is Hellblade 2, a lot of Xbox fans criticize Playstation for their “pretentious, cinematic, sad dad, graphics over gameplay, over the shoulder” games but at the same time can’t wait and are hyped AF for Hellblade 2.
I see that the media hasn’t tired of their Xbox shit yet. Ryan from IGN a few hours ago on Twitter linking to a article about what’s going on with Xbox. Destin calling his latest video “don’t count Xbox out just yet.”
I wish more games have recycled content. Look at Yakuza.I adore Yakuza and was never annoyed that Kamarachu got recycled
Re TOTK so far I don’t think the general world looks much different but you can see certain points of interest in the distance that look substantial different. How much it differs I have yet to find out.
And TOTK is in my opinion a gorgeous game. The artstyle resonates with my substantially.
I think the only negative aspect of Nintendo games reviewers tend to turn a blind eye to is graphics/performance.
I am now playing TOTK and wow, it is legit bad, resolution is really low and framerate drops are quite common.
The thing is that everything else is SO good, that you can forget about technical annoyances quickly, as the level design, mechanics, moment to moment gameplay captivate you without you realising, and your just engrossed in the game.
My gameplay loop with TOTK: okay I see that shrine in the distance, Imma complete it and call it a day. In the way, I see 1 or 2 more shrines I mark in my map to visit later, or a cave begging to be explored or an enemy encounter in the overworld. I end up playing for more time than I anticipated.
I would like to meet Nintendo designers someday, just to congratulate them. They are the best in the world, simply unmatched.
I’m just tired of Nintendo games getting away with shit other devs would get destroyed for, people are welcome to think they games are great or even masterpieces
but until there’s some consistency, Nintendo reviews above any cannot be taken seriously
I think there is a difference between games like Gotham Knights and Tears of the Kingdom just because of the hardware they are running on. Gotham Knights could easily run at 60fps on new gen hardware while tears of the kingdom runs on a handheld from 2017 and it’s probably a miracle that it runs at all on that hardware. So while both doesn’t run well it is a big difference. So yeah Nintendos hardware is shit and is in bitter need of an upgrade but I think they did the best they could with the hardware they had. I still think that 97 is an extreme score and probably overhyped, but I haven’t played the game yet so I don’t know
Nobody if forcing Nintendo to put out shit hardware, if’s clearly successful for them but that doesn’t mean critics should just handwave shitty performance
Anyway, I’m not talking purely about performance, Nintendo games have plenty of issues unrelated to performance that critics and plenty of fanboys just handwave constantly that other games and series would never get away with
This isn’t purely a Nintendo problem though, there’s other series that get special treatment, it’s just been happening with them much longer
I actually muted Ryan on Twitter this week after he took the opportunity to dunk on Xbox instead of just praising Zelda for the amazing game it is. Using it as an opportunity to criticize the output of AAA games coming out of Xbox studious. Like fuck man, can media types celebrate games without shitting on others?
