Ladies and gents I feel we have finally come full circle (Nintendo hate)

[Erik Aston]

Mr Khan said:

 

See, i agree that Nintendo should put all of those titles on 3DS, but it's this persistent need to trash-talk all announced Nintendo games and start making things up (like how Mario Kart now is somehow gimmicky) that gets under my skin.

The Zelda discussion I believe i've had with you before, or if i haven't with another user who espouses your beliefs, and no more will be said about it

The reason it seems gimmicky is that it's only there to show off the 3D. Flying is one of the best ways to show off 3D, so it must be included in lots of Nintendo games whether it adds to the gameplay or not.

If the course design of Mario Kart 3DS is interrupted so that every course can have a big landing strip, and the gliding isn't as much fun as the regular driving, then in the long term it's going to make the game less fun, just so that we can see the glorious 3D. One thing I already noticed is that the wings block a lot of the screen.

The other thing that's gimmicky is the "build a kart." This always bugs me, because it becomes a game of remembering your favorite kart options instead of just remembering your favorite kart. It distracts from the actual fun of racing. Even if there were 40 different kart options, it would be much easier to remember my favorites than having 100s of possible combinations of parts.

It was the same thing with Double Dash. In order to be great in multiplayer, you had to learn the 2 riders mechanics and properly manage whose special attacks you use. I don't want any part of the actual race to be decided by a race to pick the characters with the best specials. In the long term, that new meta-game got in the way of the actual game.

How about Mario Galaxy. The basic motion and pointer controls were fine, but then the game constantly forced you to play with different controls. I didn't think much of this the first time through the game, but the second time through, I noticed how terribly the manta ray controlled. Mario Sunshine also had a manta ray level, and this controlled even worse, and that was one of the levels I never beat before I put down the game about 16 stars in. I'm sure there were people who had the same experience with Galaxy that I had with Sunshine.

Mario Kart Wii had the bikes, but these did not alter the gameplay just to show off some feature or some "creativity". I thought they were going to when I first saw them; I assumed you would have to control the bikes holding the Wii remote like handlebars. But the control options for the karts and bikes were the same. Even better, the developers clearly focused on making the wheel controls just as good as the analog stick controls, so that the motion controls did not detract from the game. The only thing that was stupid was that the bikes could get a speed boost by doing a wheely. This was inequitable and was awkward to control compared to the mid-air tricks.

Another example. NSMBW had motion controls, but they were well implemented, where there was a lag in the move similar to the lag between being able to perform the move twice. It was easy to use the move for the extra little oomph at the peak of a jump. DKC Returns also had motion controls, but they were terrible. You had to use them to perform a roll, and the move was not well tailored to the controls. Let alone the Rambi levels, where you had to play long stretches of level while constantly shaking the remote. In NSMBW it added to the gameplay, and in DKCR the same thing detracted from the game.

In Pilotwings or Star Fox, 3D flight probably adds to the game, but in Mario Kart it's just a head scratcher. Maybe it will be fine, but if you just sat down to make a Mario Kart without being pushed in a certain direction by random new hardware features, you're not going to add gliding around on kites.

(Edit: isn't it clear from my examples in this post what a big fan of Sony and Microsoft I am!)