Miyamoto: Portal a triumph, Mario Galaxy 'conservative' in ways

Miyamoto is a Spy, the Sentry is a symbol of hardcore gamers and the Sapper is Wii Music.

I think I read somewhere that Kojima was really wanting to play HL2, but he can't as he gets motion sick.

I agree. If developers cannot see or admit to the mistakes or missteps in their products, what would drive them to create more? There is always something that can be improved upon or tweaked in some way or another. It is the game-makers that are blind to their own screw-ups that pump out sequels more bland and unoriginal than the game it proceeded.

Opinions are funny things..

How is that 8.8 accurate to the point that's being made?
That isn't what he said. He gave it an 8.8 because it was too Zelda-like.

I thought TP was a very good game. 8.8 is a very appropriate score.

Problem is just the fanboys who think games below 9/10 are crap...

it probably would have faired better had it come out earlier just for the cube instead of being retrofit for wii part way through the making

The problem is not that an 8.8 is low by itself, but that gamespot reviews of big big budget games, no matter how flawed they were were getting much higher scores for no good reason. The Zelda score had very little to do with the rest of their scoring.

Zelda is great, but I've seen it before: 8.8
Okami is a very good zelda clone: 9.0
Halo 3 is great, but we've seen it before: 9.5

Lack of originality takes about a point away from Nintendo games. For everyone else, it didn't matter.

What Mol3x said is what happened to Sega.

Just looking at Twilight Princess, you could tell that something was missing...namely color of any sort other than brown. The graphics in the game were horrendous, considering that it was a last development cycle Gamecube game that got ported to the Wii.

Other than that, I think the gameplay mechanics were completely solid, the relationship with Midna revolutionized the genre (and absolved Navi of her annoyance-related sins), and the story was (for all of it's "samey"-ness) good. If anything, it suffered from being a bit long (too many stupid fetch quests as the wolf) and from weird character actions (like the girl giving you an item to call your horse...at the very end of the game where it's useless).

If they can reach a happy middle-ground between Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, I think they'll be back in Ocarina of Time territory in terms of "greatest game ever"ness. I hope Miyamoto (and Nintendo as a whole) continues to realize that Zelda is a "hardcore" title, and that we expect them to take its development seriously. That means no needless remote wagging, no wagging mini-games, etc. We shall see.

I just pictured Miyamoto playing and going "Wooooooooooooop!" while rewinding.

Or Bubsy the bobcat.

"Man, that game's like Mario in the future!"
----Soulja Boy

Damn you, Tez! Now I can't stop giggling!
...
It's a very masculine, badass giggle.

The mushroom is a lie.

I think we'd all kill for a game that had good ol' Mario-style platforming with the ability to create warp pipes that transferred Mario's momentum when he dives into one. Imagine wall-jumping up a long shaft, making a pipe on a sideways wall at the top of the shaft, ground-pounding down to the bottom, making a pipe where Mario's about to land, and using the two pipes to launch Mario over a firey pit!

...I need new pants.

heh heh, you said, "long shaft"...

agreed: fishing for 10 hours straight to get the damn large scale in ocarina of time

grr

Ah, the poster we love to hate hating things hatefully. I love seeing the new and interesting ways you find to show your dislike of the Nintendo Wii.

It's a translation.

Well, if you have a single aspect, or a minor feature, of a game that is unique, then it is a little unique, if the entire game is built on a completely unique idea, then it would be VERY unique.

Indeed, it is true that when referring to individual characteristics unique must be either a true or false value, but since a game has many characteristics which comprise it as a whole, I see no issues with the use of VERY. If it helps you sleep at night, imagine that VERY refers to how many unique elements of gameplay that the game has, rather than the amount of uniqueness.

What the heck is with people and miyamoto making "mistakes" I totally enjoyed both Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess.
In Zelda only thing that felt incomplete to me was the lack of difficulty for second or third runs through and the inability to choose whether you played right or left handed.
The other thing was the multitude of one shot puzzle ideas: Only having the magnets in a single level, only using the Top in about 3 areas, only using the fishing rod about 3 times throughout the entire game. Having absolutely no reason to use the slingshot once you get the bow, yet still carrying it around.
Still, Story, Mood, Characters, Controls are ALL far superior to what OoT ever managed, and is STILL one of the best use of the Wiimote and Nunchuk controls I've seen to date.

The only issue with Mario Galaxy was the lack of freedom compared to Mario 64, and that's really only a relative thing, cause in Mario 64 you often had like 4 of the 6 different Stars you could get in any level. It didn't matter which star you specified that you intended to go after, you just had to get inventive. With Mario Galaxy, you pretty much could only go after 1 star besides the one you specified.
There was also less leeway to simply play around, since bouncing off the stage meant instant death most of the time.
Actually, I STILL think Mario Galaxy has the BEST multiplayer that a game has ever offered, cause you can play it with ANYBODY, and it's almost impossible for them to be a hindrance, there are no places where they are essential, but there are still numerous places they can be extremely helpful, plus they can come into the game or leave at ANY time they want.

I just can't let it off with all these people claiming that Miyamoto is admitting to "mistakes" he's made. They're still solid games. They just haven't completely redefined their genre like what the N64 did(even though I still think that TP Wii controls have already redefined the Zelda series) and it's stupid to expect anything like that from these games.

I do agree that Portal is a totally awesome game. I still have hopes that Valve will eventually release it for Wiiware, or maybe even on Disc as "The Orange Square" which would have the complete version of Portal with all the extra download content, as well as Team Fortress 2 using the Valve Online multiplayer. (instead of games^3 = cubed = box, they would have games^2 = square, so orange square instead of orange box)

hole, meet shovel.

Luigi's Mansion was kind of awesome.

And no, that wasn't sarcasm.

That's because Luigi himself is kind of awesome. Or maybe I just like sidekick characters?

Hell yeah Zelda:TP had something missing! Hyrule was HUGE, but all I could do really was collect bugs, fish and maybe a raft ride? Dungeon treasures that were pretty much used for their own dungeon and nothing else? The only good thing about TP was the design for Link. But Galaxy was awesome.

Zelda TP had what no other Zelda ever had, a character in Minda you could actually care about on some level. Every other Zelda game is riddled with useless do nothing characters with no story or heart. And about the TP world being barren of things to do is not a new thing to the Zelda experience. See every other Zelda game for that.

I wholeheartedly disagree with you (and agree with Miyamoto) on the issue of Galaxy. I was actually somewhat disappointed with Galaxy; as far as how much fun I had with it, I would put it on par with Mario Sunshine. It was a wonderful game and I enjoyed immensely it for what it offered, but I think "conservative" is a good way to describe its failings (if they can even be considered "failings").

As a disclaimer: clearly, this is a subjective concern, and likely results from the fact that I have ridiculously high standards for a Mario game, and I'm sure Miyamoto's standards are higher than any individual gamer's could be, which is a good thing to know. He doesn't exactly elaborate on what he means by "conservative," but I can see where he is going with that comment.

In my initial opinion, Galaxy was too easy, too linear, and the new mechanics, while interesting, were just not played with enough - it just barely touched the surface of what it could have done. To be specific, I would have liked more sections that played with gravity, more enemy types that played upon new dynamics, more chances to freeze waterfalls and wall-jump up them (!), more devilish secrets, and overall more unreasonably challenging platforming sections.

I think alot of those concerns can fall under the heading of "conservative." The great ideas were presented in little snippits, while the most basic of mechanics (spinning and pickin up little stars with the wiimote) I think were overplayed. Together with the difficulty (I just didn't feel like the game wanted to destroy me quite as much as Mario 64 did) and linearity, this points toward a development philosophy that had been reigned in a little bit to appeal to a broad audience.

If you say "worthy successor to Mario 64", in my mind, that has to be Mario jumping right out of the end of Mario 64, 120 stars in hand and flying off into space, picking up at the same level of difficulty, opennness, and complexity that were present in Mario 64. Galaxy seemed to scale back just a little bit, taking a less risky route and opting to let people just play around with the mechanics. That is wonderful, but, if I am catching Miyamoto's drift, it also makes the game a little less satisfying for him and for some gamers... and for Miyamoto himself, who probably has ten times as many ideas in his head as Nintendo was actually able to implement in the game.

*sighs* I'm not reading that.

@ acefondu

I cared a lot about Error.

I AM ERROR

@ Mr. Khan:

While I agree with your SMG opinion, and so do I with tWW was awesome and had more substance than TP, I like TP more in the visuals department. tWW was awesome, but the character design wasn't very appealing to me (big arms, small legs, flat faces?). The BIG problem with TP was the "meh-I-have-seen-this-before" game elements (and the story at some point), but the game was solid, no doubt about that, and the characters and art design was one of my favorites.

P.S. Now a TP design with some tWW cel-shaded mix... mmm ;)

@acefondu

My point was that the world was pretty huge, right? And what could you do with huge world? Almost less than you could in previous Zelda games! Barren Hyrule as far as the eye can see...

They did really nail some of the dungeons. The Temple of Time and the Snow dungeon (the one with the yetis) especially come to mind, in terms of having large-scale puzzles.

Valve is valve, and they're definitely up there, but Nintendo EAD is in a league of their own, quite frankly. No single studio has contributed more to gaming as we know it, or continues to do so