I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Craig Harris' awful New Super Mario Bros. Wii review: http://wii.ign.com/articles/104/1044744p2.html
Closing quote: "As a gamer I love New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but as a critic I just couldn't let the issues slide."
His issues? For one, he claims that it has "very little in the way of new innovation." Yeah, except for the 4-player local co-op which is THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE DAMN GAME and which has only been attempted like once before (in LittleBigPlanet). Nobody can say with a straight face that NSMB Wii is any less innovative than, say, Generic Brown Realistic Online Counter-Strike Clone #4897 (Modern Warfare 2 - 95% on IGN), yet NSMB Wii gets downgraded to an 89% based almost solely on this perceived lack of innovation.
Second, he cites a feature (recording your playthroughs to be played back later) that the game never claimed to have, and which the Wii probably couldn't even handle, as another negative. Yeah, it doesn't print money or cook you dinner either, Harris; why not cite that as a "flaw" too?
Finally, he cites the lack of online multiplayer which is apparently only a score-breaking issue in Wii games.
So, to summarize: Harris loves the game, but really wanted to deduct review-score points from it. For some reason. Gee, I wonder why...
"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."
-Sean Malstrom
