Support NeoGAF

[FieryBalrog]

So people still think Wii Sports/Resort was some cheap cash-in shovelware title?

There are shovelware games with more depth than Wii Sports.

To be fair I don't mind it as a party novelty, but that's really the extent of what it offers to me.

 

[DICKS AHOY]

Donkey Kong Country Returns is a mediocre piece of crap that is crushed by the shadow of its vastly superior predecessor; Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong-Quest. It even fails at meeting the visual bar set by a SNES game.

DKC2 is tied with Yoshi's Island as my favorite SNES game, but this is just plain fanboyism.

I agree that a proper argument can be made DKC2 has a more comppelling setting, characters, amotsphere and soundtrack than to Returns (the latter of which is almost undeniable to me; Retro fucked up the soundtrack big time IMO), yet besides a few things like the dire lack of animal buddies which even Jungle Beat had tons of (admittedly they were bizarre looking replacements of old buddies and got promptly swept under the rug), Retro significantly polished the core gameplay of the series and took out some of the more mindless fluff like extra trinkets to find and constantly having to use a save point.

I also find it weird NSMBWii seems to draw mixed-responses here. I absoloutely hated NSMBDS and thought it was a sterile, souless cash-in yet despite being relatively similar loved NSMBWii and would've had zero complaints beyond a 'meh' soundtrack if it was renamed Super Mario Bros. 5. That Super Guide, and maybe to a lesser extent the bubbles other players can go into in multiplayer as Technomancer said really gave them an excuse to have some really great level design without worrying if it'd be too hard for players to get through.

So yeah, I'd say Mario Bros. didn't need to evolve in the first place since SMB3 and World and all DK needed was a little bit of polish. Though weird Jungle Beat didn't get brought up, but I'm guessing he just meant exclusively the DKC games.

 

[Emitan]

My only complaint against NSMBWii is it's physics are way too floaty. Everything else is great.

EDIT: Just loaded the game up and realized you can't throw upwards. WHAT THE FUCK. NEVER MIND. THIS GAME IS SHIT

 

[Mortrialus]

DKC2 is tied with Yoshi's Island as my favorite SNES game, but this is just plain fanboyism.

I agree that a proper argument can be made DKC2 has a more comppelling setting, characters, amotsphere and soundtrack than to Returns (the latter of which is almost undeniable to me; Retro fucked up the soundtrack big time IMO), yet besides a few things like the dire lack of animal buddies which even Jungle Beat had tons of (admittedly they were bizarre looking replacements of old buddies and got promptly swept under the rug), Retro significantly polished the core gameplay of the series and took out some of the more mindless fluff like extra trinkets to find and constantly having to use a save point.

So wait, I'm a fan boy except for the fact that I actually did make my argument that the characters, atmosphere, soundtrack and setting and controls are all drastically inferior in DKCR and I posted it in this thread. It strikes me as bizarre how you could even suggest the game's game play is more polished. Have you even played returns? The sloppy, shoe horned unwanted, unneeded motion controls kills that argument. That simple, fatal misstep makes Donkey Kong Country's controls inferior to every other Donkey Kong Country game by a large margin.

 

[Box of Bunnies]

The motion controls weren't even.that big a deal for me, despite their mandatory use being unnecessary. The big problem for me was the excessive use of jet barrel and mine cart stages.

 

[boiled goose]

while online leaderboards would be awesome for platformers and online multi would also welcome for games like nsmbwii, those are not gameplay innovations but rather simply features... :/

pretty worthless article. no insight whatsoever.

 

[DICKS AHOY]

So wait, I'm a fan boy except for the fact that I actually did make my argument that the characters, atmosphere, soundtrack and setting and controls are all drastically inferior in DKCR and I posted it in this thread. It strikes me as bizarre how you could even suggest the game's game play is more polished. Have you even played returns? The sloppy, shoe horned unwanted, unneeded motion controls kills that argument. That simple, fatal misstep makes Donkey Kong Country's controls inferior to every other Donkey Kong Country game by a large margin.

Sorry, didn't see you'd linked to another post with a proper argument after your initial few "Yeah so what" comments.

I'm not going to pretend that the motion controls didn't devide people and the original controls from the game wouldn't of been superior, but to suggest they completely cripple the game just strikes me as you not being willing to put some time into getting used to them. A simple flick to roll while moving was hardly that traumatic and several people have already posted speed runs of Returns that show just how insanely thought through most if not all of DKCR is, even if the motion controls weren't initially ideal. I've already said that I prefer DKC2's aesthetics and soundtrack, but that doesn't automatically make Return's horrible either.

You make a good point about DKC2 having greater variety with its enemies though in that not all of them revolve around simply jumping on them (shooting canonballs, throwing boomerang hooks and the Cat O' 9 Tails hrowing you into the nettles in bramble blast come to mind), DKCR's minecart stages starting to wear on you near the end of the game and the rocket barrel stages were completely alienated from the rest of the DKC-style.

Despite agreeing with these points however I still (only by a bit mind you) prefer Returns and I calling it a 'mediocre piece of crap' without giving any context as to where you stand on both it and DKC2 is practically asking for a flame war to happen.

 

[Dr.Hadji]

My only complaint against NSMBWii is it's physics are way too floaty. Everything else is great.

I did this entire 10 part series comparing nearly all of the 2D Mario platformers called the Measure of Mario.

On that first post is a video comparing the mechanics of the different games. Looks like the "floaty" timing of NSMBWii is about the same as Bros 3 and World.

 

[The Xtortionist]

My only complaint against NSMBWii is it's physics are way too floaty.

I'd say the movement isn't snappy enough. Feels like every fucking level is on ice.

 

[Emitan]

I did this entire 10 part series comparing nearly all of the 2D Mario platformers called the Measure of Mario.

On that first post is a video comparing the mechanics of the different games. Looks like the "floaty" timing of NSMBWii is about the same as Bros 3 and World.

Mario slides around a lot more in NSMBWii. Quick turns and crouching to lose momentum are noticeably less tight than SMW.

 

[TheExplodingHead]

Have you guy's played DKC2 lately? It's one of my favorites of all-time, and in regard to the "corner of time" nostalgia thing DKCR doesn't beat it. But in terms of controls (minus waggle) and pure level design/layers DKCR is the clear winner in 2011. The controls (hit boxes, timing, and feel included) in DKC2 are complete crap in comparison, and I say that lovingly. The level design in DKC2 is much more of a "theme park" type of design vs. Returns which is much more of a hardcore timing, rhythm, memorization. In that respect both are very different and at my current gaming tastes I learn towards Returns' style.

I agree though on the music, why Retro didn't include remixes of the best OST is beyond me. And they wasted Yamamoto's skills on remixes of DKC1 tracks and limited new tracks...lame. And I'll also agree on the enemy variety, which could and should have been better/more memorable. But the placement of the enemies, and their use within the level design destroys DKC2, imo.

So yeah, bring on DKCR2 Retro, and read this thread!

 

[watershed]

Mario slides around a lot more in NSMBWii. Quick turns and crouching to lose momentum are noticeably less tight than SMW.

True, its almost like Nintendo designed this game to create chaos, especially with multiplayer thrown into the mix.

 

[freddy]

Probably no one will read this reply. Here goes, anyway. OP cherry picked his quotes to rile up GAF.

Do yourself a favour and read the article. There are some pretty good suggestions there for new platformers if you are at all interested.

Pretty sure that's exactly what IGN does these days. Post articles intended to rile people up and then send someone to whine on Neogaf saying the article is decent if you just have a deeper look. Maybe they should change their MO since pissing off Nintendo fans has seen their subscriber base plummet and their own forums die. Just a thought.

 

[oneils]

Pretty sure that's exactly what IGN does these days. Post articles intended to rile people up and then send someone to whine on Neogaf saying the article is decent if you just have a deeper look. Maybe they should change their MO since pissing off Nintendo fans has seen their subscriber base plummet and their own forums die. Just a thought.

Lol! Look, I don't really care one way or another. Sure the article is a mess, and its gimmicky. "Hey look everyone! Nintendo is old, BLAH!" "Now learn about some new 2D platformers" (the 2D part is what makes the article a mess. DK and SMB probably haven't been 2D on nintendo home consoles since the snes, so of course the author's point is correct on some level. However, they both evolved to 3D for the N64, GC, and Wii and left 2D behind).

I agree, its a terrible way to write an article. Almost as if its written for kids. But, I had never even heard of Alien Hominid until today. So i give it points for that.

 

[Dr.Hadji]

Mario slides around a lot more in NSMBWii. Quick turns and crouching to lose momentum are noticeably less tight than SMW.

True, its almost like Nintendo designed this game to create chaos, especially with multiplayer thrown into the mix.

SMW is has the quickest turns of them all. Then SM2. Then the rest are similar with NSMBWii being the longest.

SMW and NSMBWii both have slow walking speeds. While in NSMBWii it takes the longest to get up to top running speed from standing (I think).

Still most of the differences are slight. I like the slower horizontal movement speed in NSMBWii especially because of multiplayer. To keep players from bumping into each other more, they move a bit slower and collide with physical bodies. NSMBWii is also the game with the largest view so there's plenty of space vertically and horizontally to explore. Being a bit more committed to one's momentum keeps players from making too many spastic changes in directions.

 

[StevieP]

There are shovelware games with more depth than Wii Sports.

Deca Sports and Carnival Games have a lot more depth of content than Wii Sports and Kinect Sports, too. What kind of metric is that as the measure of a good game?

 

[Lord_Byron28]

Have you guy's played DKC2 lately? It's one of my favorites of all-time, and in regard to the "corner of time" nostalgia thing DKCR doesn't beat it. But in terms of controls (minus waggle) and pure level design/layers DKCR is the clear winner in 2011. The controls (hit boxes, timing, and feel included) in DKC2 are complete crap in comparison, and I say that lovingly. The level design in DKC2 is much more of a "theme park" type of design vs. Returns which is much more of a hardcore timing, rhythm, memorization. In that respect both are very different and at my current gaming tastes I learn towards Returns' style.

I agree though on the music, why Retro didn't include remixes of the best OST is beyond me. And they wasted Yamamoto's skills on remixes of DKC1 tracks and limited new tracks...lame. And I'll also agree on the enemy variety, which could and should have been better/more memorable. But the placement of the enemies, and their use within the level design destroys DKC2, imo.

So yeah, bring on DKCR2 Retro, and read this thread!

I've got to agree with this post 100%. I played DKC2 off of Wii VC last year because of how much praise I saw it get here and then shortly after I received DKCR as a christmas gift. DKC2 there were some parts I enjoyed like the vertical levels and all the multiple/secret pathways but overall I had an awful experience with it. The hit detection was crappy, roll and run being mapped to the same button was a terrible decision that lead to numerous deaths, mediocre boss battles outside of one or two, level design at times was really sloppy and it frequently asked me to make leaps of faith into the abyss(which often enough lead to cheap deaths).

I was dreading the experience but since I had already received DKCR as a gift I decided to give it a shot. There were some things that annoyed me such as iffy hit detection(nothing as bad as DKC2 but there was one certain enemy that I thought the hit detection was messed up on), once or twice in the game they asked me to make leaps of faith in the abyss, a little unneccesarily difficult(Rocket and minecart levels I'm looking at you), DK slips around a bit too much and outside of one or two, most of the boss battles weren't all that great. However, DKCR for me was a very enjoyable experience and probably one of my favorite 2D platformer experiences this gen. It's probably solely down to the sheer brilliance of level design and atmosphere/art.

I'll be there day one for DKCR2 and hopefully with the sequel Retro adds more vertical levels, takes out motion control, adds more Rambi and I think Enguarde could solve the problem about water levels, made the mine/rocket levels less difficult, add Dixie, and tone down on difficulty(at least eliminate the cheap deaths) and it'd be perfect to me.

I said this before in another thread but if Retro did nothing else but level design and art for a 2D Mario it would probably the best one ever. With the Metroid Prime series and DKCR they've showed to me that while there are usually some annoying relatively minor flaws they are masters at level design(MP and MP2 also had spectacular bosses but MP3 and DKCR has had rather average boss fights which makes me sadly believe the person or people who created the amazing boss fights in MP and MP2 left the company).

 

[Game Guru]

I think IGN wants Sonic the Hedgehog. Proof that evolution does not mean better.

You know. I would think that Sonic's latter games versus Mario's latter games would be proof that evolution is indeed better. You don't see Mario mucking around with mechs, treasure hunting, fishing, team dynamics, and werehogs in his platformers. You usually know what you are in for when you pick up a game with Mario's mug on it.