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HappySqurriel said:
tastyshovelware said:
HappySqurriel said:

In every entertainment format (movies, music, television, book and videogames) you can look at the quality of a product based on its 'artistic' merit or based on the pure entertainment value from it. The unfortunate problem is that videogame reviewers arbitrarily choose the metrics and scale that they judge videogame based upon, and these metrics and scales tend to be (very) unfair to certain games and genres.

 


well video games are a little different cause it's the only medium where the user is physically involved and controlling the action.

I understand the wii is a bit different and casual games were meant for causal gamers, but a poorly designed game is a poorly designed game.

When I say poorly designed, I'm not talking about the basic how tos of the game. I'm talking about graphics that are 1st gen ps2 quality, games with soundtracks that consist of 3 songs that endlessly loop, IR controls that don't work, a broken camera system, under 2 hours of real content, and a retail price of $40-50 to boot. Causal or not, simple or not, you can't just inflate scores for games that are obviously handled by a b-team of a dozen or fewer people for the lowest possible price. 


But how many of those things are true of games like Mario Party 8 or Carnival Games?

Regardless of whether anyone wants to admit it or not there is a lot of hypocrisy in how games are reviewed. Halo 3 is a game which has a weak single player game but gets nearly perfect scores because of how enjoyable its multiplayer gameplay is, in contrast Mario party 8 is an amazingly enjoyable multiplayer game gets lower scores because it has a weak single player game. I'm not saying these games should have received the same score, but you can't arbitrarily decide to apply your criteria for judging games.


i can't speak for carnival games, but on behalf of mario party 8, i mostly agree with the reviews.

Casual or not, there are general gaming flaws. the game is down right boring with fewer then 3 people, the games still move too slowly, victory is based too heavily on chance, the graphics still looks like mario party 4, and there is no 480p or wide screen options. 

it can definitely be fun, but there are flaws that have appeared in the series time after time. in the end, mario party 8 is as mario party 7, is as mario party 6, etc.