woopah said:
the thing is he isnt a fanboy.
he writes very well and he has clearly put a lot of time and effort into this. As a student myself this is what a lot of the knowledgeable student gamers think. My own university paper had an article on the eurogamer London Expo. It was written by the editor of the gaming section and was entirly about PS3 and 360. The only mention of anything else was when he remarked how no one was playing avatar on the wii and that he would 'rather gouge outhis eyes with a rusty spoon' than play the game |
It sounds to me like he might be genuinely unhappy with Nintendo at the moment and makes a good fist of explaining this disappointment but I still fail to see how it's Nintendo's fault that he had pie in the sky expectations of the Wii from the beginning. People talk about being let down by Nintendo not giving them 1:1 control from the beginning but I watched all the same promotional stuff for the Wii from the start and never remember being promised that level of control. I do remember when I was much younger reading about PS1 and N64 promises regarding 3D graphics and being disappointed with the reality. With the benefit of highsight I can see that the fault was not Sony or Nintendo's, rather my own unrealistic expectations regarding what was technologically possible at the time.
I agree that he isn't a fanboy but he is rather proficient at selecting facts to suit the point he is trying to make. He speaks about lack of creativity and recycling of old IPs, yet fails to realise that creativity is not simply a new coat of paint and can in fact often be made more palatable when found in a familiar guise. For someone who claims to be a long term gamer he certainly doesn't seem to get one of Nintendo's core philosophies which as i see it is to give people new, fun, innovative and creative experiences in a familiar package. Metroid Other M clearly isn't resting on it's gameplay laurels and from what we have heard, neither is Zelda Wii. Furthermore, if Nintendo hadn't made a sequel to Galaxy, one of the most highly rated games of all time and a game that also happened to have rather stellar sales, they would have been accused of not catering to their core fanbase who were clearly hanging out for such an announcement.
He also refers to "another shed load of Wii-Music type games", which I honestly have no idea what he is referring to and then he goes on and makes the rather grievous error of repeatedly blaming third parties for their poor efforts on the Wii. How is that Nintendo's fault? Nintendo tried once to enforce strict standards on third party developers and we all know how that ended and if their is one thing Nintendo can't afford to do at the moment it's to alienate these developers further.
Finally I would like to bring up the issue of motion controls where he suggests that Wii's most critically acclaimed games are those for which the preferred control method remains a classic gamepad. Take one look at the most critically evaluated games on the Wii and you find a mix of games that are played with a traditional controller and those that make excellent, although sometimes subtle use of the Wii controller. Miyamoto has said that it was never his intention and it's not his desire to have motion controls shoehorned into titles and would prefer it was only used when appropriate. Thus it seems fitting that the best games on the system are a mix of those using traditional and motion controls.
After having read through the article a couple of times I have to say I'm still not really sure what this guy's conclusion is. Don't get your hopes up you might be disappointed? Once again, it's not really Nintendo's fault. In the end I'm left with the feeling that although this guy isn't necessarily a gaming fanboy, he might just be a Star Wars fanboy who's just miffed that he hasn't gotten his lightsaber game yet.
