robzo100 said:
Nintendo does have the refined experience. This is true. But you're wrong on the consistency within franchises. Just think of Halo or Call of Duty. The amount of innovation between each sequel is much smaller than that between let's Say Mario (Sunshine-Galaxy-3DWorld) or Zelda (Majora-Wind Waker-Twilight-Skyward). Nintendo has consistent franchises in terms of their worlds (Story, Characters, etc.) but they try hard to innovate (sometimes too hard imo) the mechanics of each new installment. Twilight Princess was an exception due to their previous over-innovation on WindWaker which was rejected by the masses. And yeah the Wii U has not innovated as much as the jump from Gamecube-to-Wii as from Gamecube-to-WiiU, that's for sure. But, it is another attempt at trying hard to innovate when they could have set up shop in the same place and had some guaranteed success. I'm not even saying it's a good thing on their part to innovate, I'm just saying it's what they do. But I'm not trying to make this thread about Nintendo specifically, but rather competition and how accurate this video depicts the industry. I think @Intrinsic made a pretty solid point as only a company as financially stable as Nintendo was able to risk the WiiU idea. |
To be fair (and I'm not saying AC or COD are anywhere near the level of Zelda or Mario) those games come out once a year so they don't have time to change quite as much. Nintendo usually only has 1 or 2 Marios, 1 or 2 Zeldas a gen. That gives them a lot more time in development AND a lot of times they're getting new hardware to play with and it just goes with that (like Skyward Sword's motion plus stuff). Also I actually do think AC changes as much as any Mario in some instances. Remember Brotherhood adding the whole recruiting thing (which was extensive). Remember Revelelations' bomb making and expansion of the recruiting to a sort of strategy game on the Mediterranean? Then 4 with the ship building and plunder definitely was a big change.
Now Mario jumping gen to gen tends to have some new mechanics like the gravity gameplay in Galaxy and Sunshine did the water gun and added a new jump or two if I remember but really I just don't see them as too different from previous installments. They're like a lot of others series in which they add a couple new things along side many familiar ones and it works out because even if you hate the new stuff (like me with Skyward Swords delayed motion controlling) you can still love the old aspects (like Skyward Sword's dungeons and puzzle solving and story which were top notch). If you LOVE the new stuff then you probably love the game even more.
