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curl-6 on 26 December 2014
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Samus Aran said:
curl-6 said:
Samus Aran said:

I think Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8 and DK: TF were all better than their predecessors. So not sure if I see this "struggle".

Unless you're talking about delays, but Nintendo isn't nicknamed Delaytendo for no reason... And Zelda U also looks more ambitious than Skyward Sword and will have a shorter development time.

And yes, SMD3DW is more ambitious than SMG2 (which was very similar to SMG).

They obviously did cut some corners to shorten the development time (i.e. sucky and lazy battle mode in MK8 and the isometric perspective in SM3DW), but the games were still great overall. 

3D World and Tropical Freeze were quite simplistic in their scope and complexity. That's not necessarily a bad thing, there is elegance in simplicity, but neither are ambitious, nor would they be as difficult to produce as something like Xenoblade Chronicles X. 

But that is something that started in the second half of the Wii's life cycle and has in my opinion little to do with HD development. 

First half of the Wii's life cycle: 

- Super Mario Galaxy: revolutionary, ambitious, unique

- Metroid Prime 3: ambitious in its story telling, changes up gameplay by adding different planets and puzzles that require your spaceship to solve, voice acting, some of the best graphics on the Wii and great controls (some of the best on the Wii). 

- Mario Kart Wii: it actually had decent online compared to all the other Wii games. That is enough in my book to classify it as ambitious lol. Because the graphics kinda sucked... 

Second half of the Wii's life cycle: 

- Super Mario Galaxy 2: a direct sequel, great, but hardly ambitious in its scope. 

- Donkey Kong Country Returns: a great but traditional 2D platformer that takes everything that made the original trilogy great and improves upon it. Not very ambitious, but the back- and foreground interaction was neat. 

- Skyward Sword: ambitious in its control scheme and maybe story telling (explaining the eternal struggle between Link and Ganondorf), but very disappointing in terms of overworld (very linear, small world, ugly graphics). 

I agree that the lack of ambition continued from the latter years of the Wii, but I also think the increased costs and difficulty of HD development were a factor. None of Nintendo's Wii U games to date look anywhere near as ambitious as XCX.