noname2200 said:
Unless it's Rayman Origins! |
Or an indie game, or LBP, or DKCR, or Kirby, or...
Actually, I'm thinking the reason critics are harder on New Super 2 is because there are more games of the same genre to compare it to. Galaxy came out in '07; Galaxy 2 in '10. How many noteworthy, revolutionary 3D platformers were made between those two games? Eh... how many 3D platformers at all were made between them?
NSMB came out in '06, New Super 2 in '12. Twice as long between games. 2D platformers are a dime a dozen this generation, so they have to prove that they're REALLY spectacular to stand out, to warrant much praise. There were plenty of 2D platformers in the past 6 years that added to the genre, expanding on an old formula. For New Super 2 to come out and pretend none of that innovation took place, like it's still 2006, was... a mistake. At least, apparently, in the eyes of the average critic.
The 3D platformer genre hasn't experienced massive change since Mario Galaxy in '07. The FPS genre hasn't changed much since Halo or COD4. But 2D platformers have come a long way since 2006. Maybe it's not "fair" to grade games on that kind of scale for one genre only, especially since New Super 2 is such a high-quality game in its own right, old-fashioned or not. But I imagine there would be a similar lashback if someone released an extremely dated FPS..... (*cough*, DNF). Now, sure, DNF was a plain-old bad game when you got right down to it. But one major criticism of it that cropped up frequently was that it ignored so much of the evolution of the genre in the past decade.
Maybe it's still a bit of a double-standard. Maybe it's still a lot of a double-standard. Maybe it only looks like a double-standard on the surface, but is pretty consistent when you look closely. Maybe I'm not going to commit to a clear opinion of my own, because (maybe) I don't really care. :P
