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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Does Nintendo get too extremely judged for sticking to a formula with their franchises?

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I noticed a trickle of Pokemon Black & White 2 reviews coming in lately and - as a point we've seen before with a 3DS version of a long-running franchise - there seems to be a really mixed bag of reviews.  On the one hand, we have a particularly gushing review by Audrey from IGN:

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/10/04/pokemon-black-version-2-review

"Look no further - the perfect realization of Pokemon on the DS has arrived" - 9.6 / 10

And on the other hand, we've got a particularly scathing review from Gamespot:

http://uk.gamespot.com/pokemon-black-version-2/reviews/pokemon-black-version-2-review-6397588/?page=1

"Despite being plenty of fun and sporting a few new tweaks, Pokemon Black 2 fails to outshine its predecessors" - 6.5 / 10

Basically, the reviews seem to be falling into two camps - either that it is the perfect refinement of the Pokemon formula, adding just enough tweaks to make it the best Pokemon game ever; or that it is simply a tweaked version of a game we played just over a year ago and not worth getting unless you're a diehard fan.

I'm sure this is going to have absolutely 0 effect on sales - as we saw from New Super Mario Bros. 2 recently, a wild range of reviews (using IGN & GS as examples, we have 8.5 from IGN and 7.0 from Gamespot)

 

Comparing this to the well-worn example of Call of Duty games - which have been similarly criticized for sticking to a formula, the reviews don't seem as polarising:

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2011/11/08/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3-review?page=2

"Another year... and an even better Call of Duty" - 9 / 10

http://uk.gamespot.com/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/reviews/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3-review-6344474/

"Modern Warfare 3 sticks to its competitive, co-operative and single player guns and reminds you why the series is the best in the business" - 8.5 / 10

The consensus seems to be yes, they are more of the same - but they were good last year and they're still good this year.  What there doesn't seem to be is such an extreme degree of reviews - neither is as high as the IGN review for Pokemon B&W 2 which praised the game for being a refinement of the formula; but neither is as low as the Gamespot review which criticized the familiarity of everything.

 

I know this is a topic that tends to get discussed a lot around here - at least, there were a lot of articles discussing the polarising reviews for NSMB2, but I thought it was at least worth a try at bringing up again.  The questions I guess I'm posing are:

Do Nintendo get too extremely judged for sticking to a formula with their franchises?

And if so:

Why do you think they get so extremely judged for sticking to a formula when other franchises do not?

I expect there to probably be a few cries of 'internet hates Nintendo' and so on - and clearly it's not reflected by consumers who buy these games no matter how small the tweaks are, but do you think reviewers have a point by marking down games like B&W2?

For example, do you think that because Nintendo have demonstrated that they can be incredibly inventive with their games (i.e. Super Mario Galaxy), that they're held up to a higher standard for everything - and where they stagnate, they're kind of encouraged (by less-than-stellar reviews) to improve?

Compare this to Capcom, who recently evolved their Resident Evil formula well beyond the original game's design, and proved - at least to many reviewers - that they don't really have what it takes to change things up.  Does this difference mean people expect more of Nintendo?

Or is there even any point Nintendo changing anything too drastically, when their consumers are happy with small tweaks to the formula?

Idk, just thought I'd share my... thoughts, in a thread.  Let me know your ... ... thoughts ... below :)



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On the one hand: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
On the other hand: If there's nothing dramatically new, what makes it different from the previous one(s) that should force me to get excited?

I mean, we give EA and Activision for not changing anything drastic with regards to FIFA and COD, so why not Nintendo and Pokemon?



PS One/2/p/3slim/Vita owner. I survived the Apocalyps3/Collaps3 and all I got was this lousy signature.


Xbox One: What are you doing Dave?

I love how stupid reviewers are sometimes.

They go and say :

START OF FAKE REVIEW:

"Its a great game but its not that much better than the original game. It is as much fun as the previous game but doesnt add enougn NEW stuff. But the little stuff they added is a welcomed addition."

I give it a 5 compared to the 9 the first game got.


ITS JUST BASIC LOGIC THAT A GAME THAT IS AS GOOD AND EVEN ADDS SOME NEW STUFF WHICH IS AWESOME TOO GETS A LOWER SCORE!!!! BASIC LOGIC!!!! IT IS !!!!

We dont have to worry that our review would trick people in thinking the second game is worse as the SCORE might suggest and which is def not the case its better than the first game! But I am used to the stuff already so I cant give this game a 9 again  it doesnt matter if its better.

.And because everyone on the planet played the first game they should feel like I did and so my lower SCORE will be accepted by all 7 billion people on the planet."

END OF FAKE REVIEW



JazzB1987 said:

I love how stupid reviewers are sometimes.

They go and say :

START OF FAKE REVIEW:

"Its a great game but its not that much better than the original game. It is as much fun as the previous game but doesnt add enougn NEW stuff. But the little stuff they added is a welcomed addition."

I give it a 5 compared to the 9 the first game got.


ITS JUST BASIC LOGIC THAT A GAME THAT IS AS GOOD AND EVEN ADDS SOME NEW STUFF WHICH IS AWESOME TOO GETS A LOWER SCORE!!!! BASIC LOGIC!!!! IT IS !!!!

We dont have to worry that our review would trick people in thinking the second game is worse as the SCORE might suggest and which is def not the case its better than the first game! But I am used to the stuff already so I cant give this game a 9 again  it doesnt matter if its better.

.And because everyone on the planet played the first game they should feel like I did and so my lower SCORE will be accepted by all 7 billion people on the planet."

END OF FAKE REVIEW

Even if the prequel was quite literally the best game ever made my mankind, you can't just reskin the game and call it a sequel and hope to get the same high score for it. You should be getting marked down for having too much in common to the last game (even though the last game was the best game ever). Yes sequels to a franchise are meant to be similar to the previous iterations and have core mechanics/aspects in common, but simply copy pasting majority of the last game is not the answer. These kinds of practices shouldn't be promoted.

The changes that were made in BW2 should normally be released as dlc, not as a brand new game with a full price tag. The tweaks in movesets of pokemon and slight changes to the gameplay mechanics should really be free dlc, while the entire post game area and the additions of different pokemon formes should be paid expansion packs.

This obviously wasn't possible on the DS, but now that the 3DS is out with the ability to have dlc, I would be very interested to see if Nintendo continues this money-grabbing scheme or actually do what is right. In fact this goes not only to Nintendo, but to any other developer who does the same thing. Nintendo just seems to be too blatant.



 

UltimateUnknown said:
JazzB1987 said:

I love how stupid reviewers are sometimes.

They go and say :

START OF FAKE REVIEW:

"Its a great game but its not that much better than the original game. It is as much fun as the previous game but doesnt add enougn NEW stuff. But the little stuff they added is a welcomed addition."

I give it a 5 compared to the 9 the first game got.


ITS JUST BASIC LOGIC THAT A GAME THAT IS AS GOOD AND EVEN ADDS SOME NEW STUFF WHICH IS AWESOME TOO GETS A LOWER SCORE!!!! BASIC LOGIC!!!! IT IS !!!!

We dont have to worry that our review would trick people in thinking the second game is worse as the SCORE might suggest and which is def not the case its better than the first game! But I am used to the stuff already so I cant give this game a 9 again  it doesnt matter if its better.

.And because everyone on the planet played the first game they should feel like I did and so my lower SCORE will be accepted by all 7 billion people on the planet."

END OF FAKE REVIEW

Even if the prequel was quite literally the best game ever made my mankind, you can't just reskin the game and call it a sequel and hope to get the same high score for it. You should be getting marked down for having too much in common to the last game (even though the last game was the best game ever). Yes sequels to a franchise are meant to be similar to the previous iterations and have core mechanics/aspects in common, but simply copy pasting majority of the last game is not the answer. These kinds of practices shouldn't be promoted.

The changes that were made in BW2 should normally be released as dlc, not as a brand new game with a full price tag. The tweaks in movesets of pokemon and slight changes to the gameplay mechanics should really be free dlc, while the entire post game area and the additions of different pokemon formes should be paid expansion packs.

This obviously wasn't possible on the DS, but now that the 3DS is out with the ability to have dlc, I would be very interested to see if Nintendo continues this money-grabbing scheme or actually do what is right. In fact this goes not only to Nintendo, but to any other developer who does the same thing. Nintendo just seems to be too blatant.

Well BW2 is a different game but I know what you want to say and in case of Fifa 12 vs 13 it should just be DLC.  But then again not everyone owns Fifa 12 so why  should they not be able to play 13? It cannot just be DLC. It could be both a retail game and a cheap addon for people who own the previous game.

The review system is faulty and sites like gamerankings or metacritic are also stupid because they distort the value of games and individual review scores.

Unless we have  different scores ( for Singleplayer, Muktiplayer, compared to all games, compared to previous games of the same series and whatnot) and drop the  OVERALL SCORE thing   the whole system is faulty. 

I mean just look at gametrailers.  The have story gampley etc.  and after the review you see the games end -score but it is not as easy as  10+9+9+10 /4 = 9.5 . it sometimes is a 9 and sometimes a 10.Under every review you see people saying  "GT FAILS AT MATHS" because people dont know whats going on. Sure most people undertand that its not just ++++/=  but noone knows how it exactly works and I even doubt the reviewers know it lol.

And every site with similar terms (story gameplay etc.) has another standard of how to come up with the end score.  Some just do the 10+10+10+10=4. Some use more complicated methods. etc.

I mean lets say I dont care about multiplayer and a game has awesome multiplayer and  good singleplayer  how does the OVERALL 9.5 tell me how good the single player is? The end score is useless for me.
Why do we differentiate when it comes to gameplay story visuals sound but stuff like MP/SP is irrelevant? And reviewers forgetting that not everyone played the first game and therefore giving it a lower score even if its better dont help at all.

And sites where reviewer A lowers the score because the game is to similar to the previous one   and then reviwere B judges another game on its own and just mentions the small differences as a small side note make all scores of the whole side useless because they have different ways to rate a game at the same site....

Every single site needs to completely overhould their review system and we need a global standard. But that wont happen...



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Yes, they unfairly are judged. This criticism seems to come from people who very much likely have not played the games/series they are criticizing and rather see the same character and make assumptions. It's not like they really milk any series. 1 mariokart, 1 smash bros, 2 3d marios with a 3 year lapse, 1 2d mario, 2 radically different kirby games, 2 extremely different metroid games, 1 DKC game, 1 Fire Emblem, 1 Paper Mario, etc. 1 to 2 titles in a series every gen keeps the series from getting stale even if they only add minimal upgrades imo.



"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." -My good friend Mark Aurelius

it may be possible that certain types of games are viewed as having more potential for expansion than others

for example i'd think that a game like pokemon would be more capable of changes to its formula than something like CoD or fifa
back when diamond and pearl came out years ago i remember being a little disappointed that it seemed to have basically the same layout as all the previous games
i'd been thinking stuff like maybe as the series progressed you might actually gain more control of the pokemon in battle for example

stuff like that may have something to do with it



nintendo isn't unfairly criticized. CoD is unfairly uncriticized.



JazzB1987 said:
UltimateUnknown said:
JazzB1987 said:

Well BW2 is a different game but I know what you want to say and in case of Fifa 12 vs 13 it should just be DLC.  But then again not everyone owns Fifa 12 so why  should they not be able to play 13? It cannot just be DLC. It could be both a retail game and a cheap addon for people who own the previous game.

The review system is faulty and sites like gamerankings or metacritic are also stupid because they distort the value of games and individual review scores.

Unless we have  different scores ( for Singleplayer, Muktiplayer, compared to all games, compared to previous games of the same series and whatnot) and drop the  OVERALL SCORE thing   the whole system is faulty. 

I mean just look at gametrailers.  The have story gampley etc.  and after the review you see the games end -score but it is not as easy as  10+9+9+10 /4 = 9.5 . it sometimes is a 9 and sometimes a 10.Under every review you see people saying  "GT FAILS AT MATHS" because people dont know whats going on. Sure most people undertand that its not just ++++/=  but noone knows how it exactly works and I even doubt the reviewers know it lol.

And every site with similar terms (story gameplay etc.) has another standard of how to come up with the end score.  Some just do the 10+10+10+10=4. Some use more complicated methods. etc.

I mean lets say I dont care about multiplayer and a game has awesome multiplayer and  good singleplayer  how does the OVERALL 9.5 tell me how good the single player is? The end score is useless for me.
Why do we differentiate when it comes to gameplay story visuals sound but stuff like MP/SP is irrelevant? And reviewers forgetting that not everyone played the first game and therefore giving it a lower score even if its better dont help at all.

And sites where reviewer A lowers the score because the game is to similar to the previous one   and then reviwere B judges another game on its own and just mentions the small differences as a small side note make all scores of the whole side useless because they have different ways to rate a game at the same site....

Every single site needs to completely overhould their review system and we need a global standard. But that wont happen...

What you state is not a problem with the reviewers, but rather a problem with the consumer. Instead of skipping to the end of a review and just looking at the final score, the consumer should be listening carefully as to why the reviewer gave the game the said score in the first place. That is the reason why review video last 5-10 minutes before awarding the final score, in which time the reviewer explains what is good and bad with the game.

In the case of the gamespot and gt reviews, both the reviewers stated that BW2 use the same tried and tested formula from the previous iteration and if you liked that then you are likely to enjoy this as well, but the game does very little to advance the formula forward, and there is too much in terms of assets, gameplay, storyline, etc that was copied off the previous game. So it gets the low review score. A good consumer who didn't play the previous game would take this statement and go back to their review of the original BW and see what exactly they said about that game which the sequels copy from. If then the consumer likes what the first game has to offer, then they should buy the sequel as the sequel contains most of the material from the first game and more.

Plus I don't understand the arguement with the Fifa game you made about some people not having Fifa 12 and so they can't get 13. I don't see why this is a problem. When BW came out originally it cost something like £35 where I live, but now BW2 costs the same. But if I wanted to buy the original BW it would probably cost me about £15-20 to buy now since the price has obviously dropped. So if they did release an expansion, newer consumers could buy the original game for the lower price and buy the expansion pack for pretty much the same price as the full game.



 

The Pokemon Black and White 2 case is a bit different. This is not a brand new game, this is the second iteration of Pokemon Black and White. While Nintendo has evolved and has made it a lot more than a third version, it is still the same game.
Same engine, same world, same Pokemon. This is the same Pokemon generation. It is between the third version and between the real new generation.

When Pokemon Black and White came out, it was universally acclaimed as the ultimate version of Pokemon and the game was so superior compary to the previous one that it got very good ratings. For me it is simply the best game on the DS, easily.

I did not play New Super Mario Bros 2, but judging by what has been said and wrote by Nintendo, players and reviewers, it is not an ambitious game. Not a mainline Mario. It was ordered quickly to boost 3DS sales witht he new model. It was not developped by the main team, which is currently working on New Super Mario Bros Wii U, which is the main game and will be far superior to NSMB2.

When I see the horrors that RE6 have become and FF lost istelf in endless cutscenes, we can only grant Nintendo fullthanks for keeping the quality of their series intact.