Miscellaneous Hot Takes

[OnePotWonder]

I was thinking about the Mario Odyssey post earlier. The points there are understandable except for it being the single most overrated game ever which sounded like a bit of hyperbole on paper. It makes sense with the reasons given in the post, but it got me trying to think of a game that I'd call more overrated. I quickly came to the conclusion "oh wait I don't play any video games." I still think Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Mega Man 2 are my answers of the ones I've played. Mega Man 2 I have less to say about and doesn't feel like as hot of a take since a solid chunk of the Mega Man community has moved to something like 11, 9, or 6 being the best so I'll just talk about MK8D.

Base gameplay of Mario Kart 8 consists of literally just hold forward, hit a turn, drift (or don't if you don't know how), then continue holding forward. That might sound like an oversimplification of racing as a whole but compare this to previous Mario Karts that had little things to optimize as you went along. Mario Kart DS and 7 had their own forms of snaking, as did Mario Kart Wii unless you had a bike in which case there are several of these things, and even base Mario Kart 8 still had firehopping. MK8D by comparison has absolutely none of this.

In 150cc you can release your drift into some tighter corners with offroad to cut them a bit faster but this has never felt great to do and there are very few spots like this that you would be able to pick up on without explicitly going out of your way to look for them. Like...this game should not force me to dig through internet stuff to find out how to optimize a mechanic that feels awful to learn in order to find more appreciation in a game I find awful to play to begin with. The thing with the other stuff was that you can do them anywhere and messing them up means you don't go any slower than had you not tried them to begin with. There is no incentive not to try and learn them.

The new anti-gravity mechanic is lame and adds basically nothing to the game outside of serving to make the maps for each course a bit funny lookin. Can't really say much there, but I can tell you that the game removes anything interesting you could do with gliders and doesn't do anything to fix how horrible underwater sections feel. Pretty clearly all just meant to be marketing gimmicks that they gave little to no care to.

The new items that weren't in 7 mostly suck. They feel awful to use and even worse to play against. The Fire and Boomerang Flowers all just exist to compound the issue of the middle spots feeling horrible to be in by adding even worse unreactable nonsense to deal with, the Piranha Plant locks you into it way too long for how weak the effect feels to use, and the Boo often feels explicitly worse than the other items you could get in the places you usually get it in. The Super Horn isn't bad though. I like the idea of a quick, burst radius kinda deal and I like how situational it is for actually blocking the Blue Shell as opposed to needing to be burned on a Red Shell or something.

Speaking of both of those things, the sheer amount of Red Shells. If you're playing the game in first then it becomes obnoxious. All you end up doing is cycling through items to get a Coin as your first item in case of a Boo, a defense item as your second one, and then...waiting. That's it. Using either of those two items is way too risky because of the abundance of Red Shells. No using any of the items you get in more interesting or thoughtful ways.

When you do get to use items from first though...why on earth would you give 1st place access to Bob-ombs?? Dropping a bomb backwards is the single most difficult-to-avoid setup in previous Mario Kart games and is also the most punishing because of how long you take to recover from Bob-omb damage. It was already a problem that being in first can be way too oppressive with how much chaos there is in the middle spots. Maybe this is a buff to compensate for Red Shells being a nerf? Then in that case, why would you choose to both buff and nerf first place at the same time in the most obnoxious way possible on both ends?

I'm not sure how I feel about the whole "distance from first place" thing they have for items. I've seen several games where the person in dead last just gets bullied like crazy because other people are getting Stars and Golden Mushrooms in 6th place for some reason, but this is also the game where sandbagging is at its strongest. That much is probably because of the game having double items which in itself I don't entirely mind. There is, or at least was before they patched it, an interesting dynamic where you want the double item box in a set, but you think the player in front of you might want it, so you'll need to react on the fly and change your direction to hit a box you think the guy in front of you won't. But then they made the item boxes respawn like instantly so even that's gone. Whoops.

Some of you may say that I'm looking at this game too deeply as if it's a competitive and that it's just a party game that you goof off with friends with. I do not enjoy any Mario Kart game as a competitive experience. Maybe some of them are better than others if you sink a ton of time into them but I genuinely would not know which. Every single thing I just listed save maybe the last point serves to make the game less enjoyable even as a more casual game. I have picked up Mario Kart DS or Wii on my own time just because the mechanics are fun to screw around with but only begrudgingly pick up MK8D when other friends are already playing because it's the only option they want to play.

The game's graphics, music, and visuals to each track are all pretty good for the most part, but those things have not been bad for any previous Mario Kart game other than Wii or DS's graphics being subpar. The visual stuff definitely isn't the reason so many people prefer this game to previous ones though because a lot of the DLC tracks look very strange. Not bad, but definitely of a much lower quality than the base game's tracks. This was a big thing people got up in arms over on the internet before so I'll just say the artstyles are not consistent between the base game and DLC and the texturing and stuff is way worse in the DLC. Either way I'm entirely willing to put up with a game having decent or even bad graphics for its time if the rest of it makes up for it.

Which, to that point, 96 tracks. That's a lot. It's not like it matters though. You're not going to honestly sit down and tell me that you ever felt like 32 tracks was too few in any previous Mario Kart game. Nobody is going to sit with their friends through 32 Mario Kart tracks, play one repeat and tell everyone "dang we already did this one this is boring." It's technically better to have more but it's never going to mean anything.

The big, genuine merits I see in this game are 200cc and the custom item rules. 200cc genuinely fixes how most tracks feel too empty and lack little things to optimize because the game's just going so much faster that you don't have time to think. It's actually a lot harder to have good racing lines because of how much harder it is to not go flying off of the track. Doing tricks becomes something you need to carefully think about the risk of as opposed to the admittedly nice thing it was before that just existed for the sake of game feel. Custom item rules I don't have much to say about but adding more customization and allowing for more wacky scenarios will always be a flat-out plus for a game like this. It's a bit unfortunate that not all groups of friends will want to play with either of these, especially in the former case, but I'm never going to complain about either of these being added.

A lot of people complain about the game being unbalanced compared previous Mario Kart games but to be brutally honest, I don't like that opinion. There will always be an "optimal" character or vehicle in every Mario Kart game. There's even one in MK8D that you'll see people spamming a lot if you go online! This has zero effect on the game in a more casual sense though. Even in something like Mario Kart Wii, I know of a local group that has several dozen people who play the game more casually. They like the Dolphin Dasher the most and there are several people who have successfully used Karts despite them being worse than Bikes at a serious level! Imagine if those people just picked Funky Kong and the Flame Runner and then went on Twitter to complain about how unbalanced the game is. That would be an embarrassing opinion to have if you were within that group.

That's all to say that I don't understand why MK8D game is so beloved in the first place. Maybe people see something in the gameplay that I don't but if that's the case I've never heard anything beyond the graphics and music being better. Maybe people just don't think about or care about the differences between this game and previous Mario Karts so the graphics and music end up being the only deciding factor they have.

It's all just a bit disappointing to me. The differences between each new Mario Kart game are starting to get ironed out in a way that's steering (pun!) the series into having really boring gameplay. A while ago everyone online was begging for a new Mario Kart 9 and I never understood that. It's just going to feel the exact same as MK8D but add some big pointless gimmick like so many modern games do, a few other items that don't do anything interesting, and it'll end up having all of the exact same strengths and weaknesses of MK8D. Maybe some things change, like the Coin item and Red Shell, but all of the bottom lines will be the same. There will be no reason to prefer it to MK8D which will sting because MK8D in itself is not even a good game. Just a painfully average one that makes me wish I was playing something else, but I'll put up with sometimes because it's what everyone else is playing.

This is by far and easily the deepest I've ever seen anyone dissect any Mario Kart game. That's probably the reason people tend to overlook the issues. The double items and the sheer number of available tracks to play on also carry the game's reputation a lot, since those mainstream features are what grab players' attention and keep a hold of it. While it is overrated, it's for understandable reasons.

I would call Odyssey more overrated because the main appeal is its open world, and said open world only cheapens the experience of playing the Mario game. You can't even beat the game by only playing through the main story quests; you always need to collect at least a few randomly scattered moons to reach the next area, and gathering those moons, for lack of a more deliberate term, sucks.

The whole "play the way you want" fad is a massive joke; I want a coherent game Nintendo, not a charcuterie board of gimmicks.
Odyssey feels like the Goo Tuber of the mainline 3D Mario series. Here's hoping the next 3D Mario is the Snipewriter.

 

[missingno]

Super Mario is not about exploring open world environments

I feel the need to pick this one apart, because I'd say that Super Mario is a series that has gone in so many different directions that I couldn't say there's anything in particular it is or isn't about. Super Mario is about everything and nothing, it's about whatever Miyamoto Tezuka, or Koizumi wanted to do this time around.

Odyssey isn't even an open world either, it's still split into distinct levels. Levels that are bigger than any previous game, sure, but that doesn't make it Skyrim or Breath of the Wild.

I would actually say Odyssey felt to me like the closest successor to Super Mario 64, closer than all the other 3D Marios. In that game many levels were meant to be exploration-driven with large* environments that can house many different objectives, and even when you pick one at the start most levels let you grab different stars out of order if you can find them. I can see Odyssey as an extension of this concept on hardware that can handle much bigger levels.

Sunshine kinda looks like 64 with larger levels, but the missions are much more scripted, and IIRC it was never possible to explore off the beaten path to do any mission other than the one selected. And then Galaxy was almost entirely on-rails, as were 3D Land/World. But Odyssey to me successfully recaptured the feeling of exploration I had when I first played 64 as a kid, in a way that all the other sequels didn't.

I don't say this to dunk on any** of the other games though. As I said, Super Mario is a series about everything and nothing. Some of the games chose to focus on rails, some of them chose to focus on exploration, both are valid. I remember at one point Nintendo posted something or other that categorized 64, Sunshine***, and Odyssey as exploration-driven games and Galaxy 1/2, 3D Land, and 3D World as rails-driven games.

*Large, of course, was constrained a bit by N64 hardware, and I'll bet even the decision to have players keep revisiting the same levels over and over was also borne out of limitations that kept them from fitting many different levels on the cart.
**Except Sunshine, I will dunk on Sunshine for the fact that Hover Nozzle completely undermines the platforming. The best parts of Sunshine were the levels that discarded the game's central gimmick, and that's kind of sad to me. This is perhaps a hot take for another day though.
***As I said, I kinda dunno how well Sunshine really fits here, but at the same time it doesn't fit neatly into the Galaxy/3DL/3DW bucket either. Whatever, it's Nintendo's categorization, not mine, so.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

Any rotation with mincemeat clams is a good rotation.
edit: oops i said no Splatoon hot takes. oh well
I'll go find the other thread

 

[OnePotWonder]

Super Mario 64 is also overrated.
Open worlds can be fine when they’re built into the core of the game, such as in the case of the recent direction the Legend of Zelda series has been taking. Taking Super Mario or any platformer for that matter and trying to turn it into a semi-open-world game always yields poor results, because platformers shine best in linear environments. There’s no point in putting challenges in the player’s path if they can just use the game’s advanced movement or other gimmicks to finagle around all of them in exactly the same way every time. I’d definitely argue Odyssey gives the player way too much freedom.

Linear games that offer set challenges in a set order are more fun than open explore-a-thons because the developers have more control over what exactly the player has to do to succeed. The only real choice the player should have is in the level select area, if the game has a level select area. That‘s what truly makes Galaxy and Octo Expansion the best games in their respective series; giving the player just the right amount of choice and freedom.

Any rotation with mincemeat clams is a good rotation.
edit: oops i said no Splatoon hot takes. oh well
I'll go find the other thread

Also, why? Why, of all maps, Mincemeat? I could understand Brinewater or even Sturgeon, but not Mincemeat.
Do please explain yourself I’m genuinely curious.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

Also, why? Why, of all maps, Mincemeat? I could understand Brinewater or even Sturgeon, but not Mincemeat.
Do please explain yourself I’m genuinely curious.

Because it's terrible, and I get to play chargers and get free shots on everyone
there's no cover, it's awesome

 

[OnePotWonder]

I too enjoy occasionally being a menace to society, so I get where you’re coming from.

 

[isaac4]

Linear games that offer set challenges in a set order are more fun than open explore-a-thons because the developers have more control over what exactly the player has to do to succeed. The only real choice the player should have is in the level select area, if the game has a level select area. That‘s what truly makes Galaxy and Octo Expansion the best games in their respective series; giving the player just the right amount of choice and freedom.

I wouldn't say linear games are inherently better than open-world or 3d sandbox games.
It all comes down to what a player is looking for and some genres do succeed in certain aspects better than others.
I personally prefer Super Mario Sunshine over 3d World and Galaxy because of the freedom the game gives to just move around and explore while also making Delfino Plaza feel connected to every other area in the game.
Movement is also very important to me so that's another reason why I prefer a game like Sunshine or Odyssey over Galaxy, even if those games don't reach the same heights in their platforming sections.

Odyssey feels like the Goo Tuber of the mainline 3D Mario series. Here's hoping the next 3D Mario is the Snipewriter.

This was an amazing line though.

 

[missingno]

Three years ago I wrote a 20 page essay about how the best-selling installment in my favorite series is not only the worst game in the series, it's actually the reason why the series is now dead today.

Got a lot of backlash for it at the time, but three years later every word of it was proven correct.

Had to keep this under wraps, but I can finally share this now that it's done. I was secretly working on a big big big video essay followup.

 

[solz]

Hot take: nintendo alarmo is Too expensive (did i spell it wrong?) also the grand fest shirts are fire

 

[Algae]

Hot take: nintendo alarmo is Too expensive (did i spell it wrong?) also the grand fest shirts are fire

Could work on the capitalization, but everything else is good

 

[isaac4]

The 2d classic Sonic titles are a lot more interesting and impressive than both SMB3 and SMW.
I'm specifically referring to the original trilogy of games on the Genesis such as Sonic 1, Sonic 2, and S3&K. I'm not including Sonic CD as I haven't completed a full playthrough of that game.

I was typing out a long explanation on my reasoning for this opinion but I've been taking an eternity on it so I'll only finish if anyone asks for me to elaborate.

 

[Grushi]

As iconic as she is, I don't want Samus to be the protagonist of Metroid 6, whenever that happens. Make her a side character, she's been the protagonist of more than 10 games at this point, and her story feels like it came to a close. You can't really make any personal stories with her anymore, everything we know about her has been resolved now, and introducing more backstory would just feel too convoluted.

Dread (wringer) teased some new potential mechanics, I'll leave it at this, which I am really freaking hyped for, but then Samus becomes even less of a blank protagonist. I don't know how that's gonna work, especially if you remove all her abilities again.

Speaking of which, a new character means new abilities. We've had mostly the same upgrades for a long time, so it'd be cool to shake things up.

And most importantly, I just want Metroid's story to introduce new reoccuring characters. I think it's the weakest aspect of it, no matter what you try doing, there's no characters to work with, just Samus. All the others are one offs. I get that Ridley was tiring but at least he was something. And Adam was horrendously written in Other M.

Also while I'm at it my insane Metroid fanfiction is that Adam should have been a genuinely likeable guy in other M, who actually tried protecting Samus from the galactic federation, survived, and now we get a cool Adam-led Metroid survival horror-ish game, with a much less capable protagonist. And boom, we got a second character to care about, and free drama in the story.
How's that for a hot take lmao

 

[Smash Arena]

If I had to give a hot take, I would say that using CDs is the best way to listen to music. Streaming an album feels ephemeral, where you often miss out on a lot of the artists' intention. You don't have the disc/case art and inserts, plus you always have the temptation to switch to a different album or artist.

Listening to music on CDs allows you to get the full experience the artist intended. You are more likely to listen to the whole album rather than switching discs, plus you get to see all sorts of creativity the artist put into the physical release. For example, Hang Ups by Goldfinger is themed around a rotary telephone, so the disc itself is designed to look like the rotary ring of an old phone.

Owning your music is nice too. Not only does it mean that you have it forever (unlike digital which can be removed at any time), but also you also gain a greater attachment to the album because it's your album.

 

[missingno]

I feel like really really upsetting some people today.

Smash's biggest problem is that it puts quantity over quality, and it shows. Balance is a joke, and it seems like there's a lack of focus as the series tries to do too many things at once. But the real nail in its coffin is how this approach has cultivated an audience that expects quantity forever, and Smash 6 is screwed for it.

"Everyone is here" sure sounds like a nice marketing hook, but it will turn out to be the series' worst mistake in the long run. Now that they've done it once, if they don't keep that going into Smash 6, 7, 8, audiences will riot now. But it's clearly unsustainable to carry forward.

The more development resources you have to put into remaking legacy content, the less resources you can put into making anything new. Or even just balancing and polishing what you have - consider that the number of matchups to balance scales quadratically with roster size. If you want a remotely balanced game, you have to cap it far lower than this.

There's a reason why no other fighting game does this. Other fighting games are not afraid to swap out more than half the roster every game in order to not only keep development manageable, but to keep each game feeling fresh. Smash feels utterly stagnant in comparison, almost like it's afraid to experiment at all.

And maybe Smash is justified in being afraid. Most casual fans would rather have more characters that aren't balanced than fewer characters that are. From a marketing perspective, quantity sells better than quality, and because the series has always sold itself as such it has attracted a base of customers that want exactly this.

Smash 6 needs to be a reboot, it's the only way forward, but it's also doomed to immense backlash for it. I expect Sakurai to hand the series off to someone else, and that poor sap will have to take the fall for every controversy. They may just have to let Smash 6 fail and hope Smash 7 recovers.

Spoiler

Now reread this post while thinking about Splatoon 4.

 

[isaac4]

I feel like really really upsetting some people today.

Smash's biggest problem is that it puts quantity over quality, and it shows. Balance is a joke, and it seems like there's a lack of focus as the series tries to do too many things at once. But the real nail in its coffin is how this approach has cultivated an audience that expects quantity forever, and Smash 6 is screwed for it.

"Everyone is here" sure sounds like a nice marketing hook, but it will turn out to be the series' worst mistake in the long run. Now that they've done it once, if they don't keep that going into Smash 6, 7, 8, audiences will riot now. But it's clearly unsustainable to carry forward.

The more development resources you have to put into remaking legacy content, the less resources you can put into making anything new. Or even just balancing and polishing what you have - consider that the number of matchups to balance scales quadratically with roster size. If you want a remotely balanced game, you have to cap it far lower than this.

There's a reason why no other fighting game does this. Other fighting games are not afraid to swap out more than half the roster every game in order to not only keep development manageable, but to keep each game feeling fresh. Smash feels utterly stagnant in comparison, almost like it's afraid to experiment at all.

And maybe Smash is justified in being afraid. Most casual fans would rather have more characters that aren't balanced than fewer characters that are. From a marketing perspective, quantity sells better than quality, and because the series has always sold itself as such it has attracted a base of customers that want exactly this.

Smash 6 needs to be a reboot, it's the only way forward, but it's also doomed to immense backlash for it. I expect Sakurai to hand the series off to someone else, and that poor sap will have to take the fall for every controversy. They may just have to let Smash 6 fail and hope Smash 7 recovers.

Spoiler

Now reread this post while thinking about Splatoon 4.

Definitely agree that Smash 6 is in a very rough position with having to follow up Smash Ult without feeling like a downgrade for most of the casual player base.
I don't think it'll be as bad as you say though. There's plenty of people who understand that the next game won't be able to recreate what Ultimate did but there will still definitely be a lot of disappointment, especially for any veteran fighters that don't end up returning again such as Pichu or Snake (I'm personally hoping that Mewtwo doesn't get cut).
I could also easily see them improving on the aspects that Ultimate failed on, specifically the single-player content and maybe an actual story mode this time.
A story mode with cutscenes would probably be the easiest way to convince casual players to try out the game despite the smaller roster.

 

[OnePotWonder]

I feel like really really upsetting some people today.

I am definitely familiar with that feeling.

Now reread this post while thinking about Splatoon 4.

I feel like Splatoon's design makes it a lot easier to support a diverse pool of options. Most prominently is the fact that weapons within the same class function almost identically to one another with only some major tweaks to differentiate them. Also each weapon is very simple compared to a Smash character. The most complexity you get in Splatoon is with rollers' two flicks plus a roll, or stringers' charge time, explosions, and vertical shots. Compare that to each smash character's dozen+ moves.

Not to say I don't think that the weapon pool is starting to get a bit bloated. We don't need any more shooters, Nintendo. If you must make another one, make it a semi-auto, at least. And we can only support so many new weapon types, too. I feel like we might see only one new weapon class in the next game, and then maybe a mutation of an existing class that only contains a few options, like Splatanas or Brushes, the way semi-autos are to shooters.

 

[Cephalobro]

There was never a need for the internet on phones. I'm serious about this one, it seems way too many people pay more attention to their phones than what's actually in front of them, not only is it annoying in many cases, but can also be dangerous in others. Text messages can wait as much time as they can, what can't wait is something that actually needs your attention at the current moment, and text messages sure as heck aren't that.