Josh, on 31 October 2011 - 05:22 PM, said:
Regarding the low review scores... look, the way Kirby's Return to Dreamland has been received has really taught me something about the modern mainstream game reviewers. The vast majority of them praised the gameplay and nostalgia, but compared the game very unfavorably to, of all things, Kirby's Epic Yarn. They said that RtD was lacking in originality compared to the Kirby spinoff games like Mass Attack and whatnot, implying that it's just not enough for a game to be a good platformer nowadays.
Action platformers -- Sonic games -- are my favorite genre to this day. But among the reviewers (and, I'd assume, a large subset of the younger gaming crowd), it's seen as outdated and old just by the virtue of its genre. And most of those reviewers, especially here in America, might not be nearly as nostalgic for Sonic as they are for Mario (whose NSMB games have gotten really favorable scores in spite of being retro throwbacks). So while I'd like to see it getting 9s, and for me personally it'll probably be UnendingOrgasm/10, that its getting mostly 8s is a great indication of how awesome it is.
That is a really good point, actually. Now that you bring it up, I always seem to get a hot-head over older-style games getting reviewed unfavorably compared to the big hits, even though we're all aware of reviewer bias.
You're absolutely right, it would be great if Kirby RtD and Sonic Generations got 9s and 10s across the board, but they are doing well considering how little they do to change their formulas, aside from some spit and shine and touched up controls. (Ironic, considering one of the most popular genres in gaming at the moment seems to haven't changed a bit since 1999, but whatever.)
Now, comparing a new game to and older one in the series and rating it lower because it's too similar/dissimilar is another monster altogether. Games should be rated purely on how entertaining they are, not because "This game in the series differs too little from the previous entry, ARGH MINUS 20 POINTS" or "The previous game and this game had completely different goals, but blah blah docking some points."