I'm one of those people who really disliked LBP as a game in general. Mainly because of controls and physics. Levels can be amazingly designed and everything but if it doesn't feel right, it just doesn't feel right.

Also just got New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

LBP got extremely high ratings for graphics, presentation and innovation. Remember that.

I would rate dkc higher than nsmbw too.

My problem with LBP was less the floaty physics and more the "background-foreground-beforeforeground" scheme. I felt it was unnecessary, and it detracted from my experience.

Even if those flaws didn't exist though, NSMBWii is one of the best Mario games, which means it's one of the best games ever.

So it got high scores for being great at a lot of things? What is your point?

Can't wait to play Mario myself.

gameplay too, it just Mario has better gameplay, but overall LBP is one tight package. One of the best most well done game this Generation. Mario is Mario, but please do not dare bring this game down.

Well, since you asked and since it's relevant to this comparison....

No. No they aren't.

The three most important things? Generally they're goign to vary from game ot game to game to game, and vary wildly between genres outside of that, with larger trends denying scrutiny. But there is one thing which you are not including, which may be the greatest and most splendorous of them all:

Refinement.

Gameplay falls under refinement, not innovation: do not get these two things confused. In Portal, the use of a portal gun was innovative, but the implementation of it that made the game truly immortal was refinement. The same is true of New Super Mario Bros. Wii: it takes mechanics we are all familiar with and files them to a razor's edge so sharp that they could split the fibers of your cornea without pain, without awareness, to let the laser of corrective eye surgery repair the gland which allows one to perceive fun. Refinement is the coming together of nebulous ideas, of taking "concepts" and making them into something fantastic.

Graphics, presentation, innovation - each of these things can be worthless in a given project, and if you like I could name a few. It would not take long, I suppose. But no great game - not one, not in the long history of the medium - has been truly great without the quality of refinement, the sublime coming together of disparate qualities which seem otherwise unimportant.

Graphics, presentation, and innovation do not come near to it.

I disagree - I would say refinement was the most important thing for LBP too, particularly in he implementation of cooperative multiplayer. It was sublime chaos, in its own way.

Its graphics and the mode of presentation and the idea of UGC in a platformer, of course, were very good, but LBP was primarily great because it was a four-player co-op platformer.

I'll take LBP.

Infinite replayability thanks to the user-created content. Some of the online levels are just staggering...