I don't really understand all the scores. I've played through the game all the way and I'm seriously one of the biggest Mario fans there is. I gave it an 8.5 but I can still see a 9. But all those 10s? Man, its like those reviewers played a different game than me. I can live with different opinions, so it doesn't bother me, but I can't really see why people would give it a 10. It's a great, great game. But it used a lot of ideas from the Galaxy-games and the NSMB-games and most new ideas come from item use instead of pure level design. The multiplayer is pretty chaotic and during the game I often felt like I played this before. This maybe has to do with a lot of the astetics that are re-used from the NSMB- and 3D Land-games. Of course, now in HD, which looks wonderful, but still.
I never thought I would score a Mario-platformer lower than average. I've never been that guy, not with Mario-games. Very curious in learning what some of you die-hard Mario fans will think once you've played through the game!
Having not played it myself, I can't agree or disagree, but I'll say something that's been kicking around in my head for a few years.
I think one of the many, many reasons we form different opinions on games (aside from different standards, priorities, execution experiences, expectations, etc.) is context.
Let me be totally clear: I am not saying you are wrong and others are right or vise-versa. But I think the mood we're in when we play a game, what we played before, what our lives are like at the time, all that can change what we think. Like, I have a friend that
hates a restaurant that I love and we both ate there for the first time together. He was in a bad mood when we first went, I was in a good mood, so I enjoyed the food, he didn't, even though he normally likes that stuff.
It could have preparation or atmosphere or service or whatever. My guess is it was his mood.
The gaming example I always use is Nier. Around the time I played that game, I had just gotten off an action-game kick where all I really wanted to play were DMC-like brawlers. Don't know why, that's just all that tickled my fancy at the time. If I had played Nier while I was still in that kick, I would have hated that game a lot, because I would have emphasized the parts that weren't very good and de-emphasized the parts I ended up loving. Maybe as a whole that game isn't actually very good on an objective level, but because I was in the right headspace for it, I ended up loving it.
I think a lot of why some people really like or dislike games is a combination of factors, but ever-changing priorities of what's important and what's fun has a lot to do with it, too.