Why Jim Sterling's Mario Kart 7 review is bullshit.

[Bara_no_Hime]

http://www.destructoid.com/review-mario-kart-7-216484.phtml

A 5/10 isn't bad - it's average. If a game is average, it should get a 5/10.

Jim has ranted about inflated scores (he did a video about it recently) - how people complain about 8/10 scores, when that's means a game is significantly above average.

 

[Winthrop]

Why are we giving some out of shape stoner (judging form his eyes) any more credence than someone on these forums? Why is this guy's opinion important?

Because he's got stuff...on the internet! And having stuff on the internet that lots of people look at makes what you say really important. (I'm super cereal about this guise) Plus he's getting paid to do this. I bet that means his opinion is super duper, ultra def-con 5 important!

OT: It's a mario kart game, it's in the same vein of infinite sequels that Nintendo likes to churn out so people have something to play when they've got four people together. I'd call a 5 out of 10 pretty fair. Though I have to say my favorite version of mario kart was this arcade version I found at a Daven & Buster's once. It's just not the same when you can't laugh maniacally and smash a big red button with your fist to obliterate someone with a blue shell.

Do you mean the one with all the pacman characters? I though I was the only person in the world who had played that haha. I agree though it was great.

OT: Every now and again I see a post just like this (happened with the Witcher 2 too), and every time I wonder why someone cares so much about reviews. If you were personally involved in the design of the game, it will matter to you because it is your creation, I get that having programmed some silly little games in my spare time. But I'm willing to bet that you aren't involved. And if you aren't, why take it so seriously?

I know Movie Bob says that reviews should be taken as a guide and an opinion, not a fact. I think more people need to realize this. Because it is an opinion, taking it as fact will just anger you. On a side note, if you can handle a review as an opinion it is often interesting to finish a game or watch a movie and then read a review to compare thoughts and get a different perspective.

 

[LordRoyal]

So what's your take on Call of Duty?

EDIT: Guess I'd better add a bit more substance to this. Releasing the same game with minor tweaks is not good. I like Call of Duty. In fact, I like it a lot. I've defended it on this site at times. But that's getting really hard to do when even I'm hard pressed to spend any money on the newest one when MW1, MW2, WAW, and BlOps are all sitting in my drawer, all played to death (mostly single player, fuck the haters)

No matter how much you like Mario Kart, adding a few new levels and a handful of other features that do almost nothing to change the game is not good. It doesn't make for a good game, it breeds mediocrity. You might think it's fun, and that's fine. Buy it and love it. I thought Mario Kart Gamecube and DS were both fun and played the hell out them, blue shells be damned. And were I to have a 3DS at the moment, I'd get Mario Kart 7, mostly because I'd be having a hard time finding other things for it (rimshot!). Still, the series has long since stagnated, and needs a few low review scores so Nintendo will up their ante and make something new next time instead of releasing a map pack and a reskin.

I can't agree with this statement more.

At least with Zelda Nintendo tries changing it up a little every so often, and Mario just gets bigger every time it comes out. Mario Cart needs to up it's ante

 

[fKd]

yup, pathetic thread is pathetic. in the real world people have different views. as with the previous person i will also say get over it. i'd give it a 2/10, nintendo need new material.

 

[Humza Ahmad]

I was shocked at a 5/10 but, its their website their review.

 

[DarkRyter]

He's entitled to his own opinion.

And we're obliged to not care.

 

[Mute52]

Do not fix what isn't broken, the Mario Kart formula has always been a great one, and there isn't much to add or change without messing up what is great about it.

I feel like a lot of people give Nintendo a hard time for 'rehashing' their games by giving them sequels that don't deviate far from the rest of the titles in the series. But if they got the formula right the first time (Mario, zelda etc), why should they have to change it (a large amount)?

I'm not saying i dislike innovation in a game series, but there's always that line where if you go too far and change the game too much people will just bash it for simply using the series name despite not being similar to the rest of the games. While if it stays similar, people bash it for being a simple redo of the last game.

I think Nintendo has done a good job so far with this, Mario Kart 7 has enough new things in it to keep it fresh and exciting, but it's still Mario Kart. Why do you expect something other than Mario Kart from a Mario Kart title? It's something that all video game sequels deal with.

 

[Dfskelleton]

All I could hear from the OP was "WHAAAAAAAAT!!!??? SOMEONE WITH A DIFFERENT OPINNION THAN ME!!!??? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"
So what if Jim Sterling didn't like it? Does his opinnion of a game do anything to you? You still enjoy the game, and if someone else didn't, who cares? I never cared for Mario Kart in the first place. Am I a hypocrite?

As for the "Innovation" argument, I could say something, but since Doom II is one of my favorite games, and all it really did was add a new weapon (albeit an awesome one), 32 new maps, 11 new enemies, new textures, and new music, I don't have too much of a right to argue. I guess it just depends on what is changed. If someone showed you screenshots from the two games and gave no indication which was from which, if you can't figure out which is which, then that's when something is wrong.

 

[pppppppppppppppppp]

Opinions, everyone has one.

I personally hate games that barely add anything between titles, it's a sign of laziness and doesn't warrant a purchase. There's a reason level packs cost less than the full game. Same applies for games like COD or Dynasty Warriors or whatever.

Not to wank off about Skyrim again, but they spent five years on that game and it shows. Everything from Oblivion was improved on immensely, and they weren't afraid to change things up (like the asinine leveling system).

On the other hand, it's not like there's already a Mario Kart on the 3DS. If all you want is a Mario Kart to play on your new system, then by all means buy it, you shouldn't let a review stop you.

 

[Vykrel]

not to sound like a CoD hater, but if he gave Mario Kart a 5 for not changing anything, then he has no reason to give MW3 a 9.5

 

[ChildofGallifrey]

Somebody missed the "Hate Out of Ten" Jimquisition, methinks.

Game reviewers are so prone to giving a score of 7-8 to mediocre games that, on the typical scale of 1-10 with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best, the score of 7 or 8 has become industry standard for 'mediocre'. In general a score of 5 should be considered average, with anything below that designating a low-quality title. 6-9 are varying degrees of 'good', with 10 being 'as close to perfect as it can be'.

Therefore on Jim's scale, and what should be every rating scale, 5 does not mean bad. It just means, in this case, that there isn't much new on offer, or it isn't presented well. The review of Uncharted 3 that gave it an 8 (and set off an absolute nerdrage shitstorm) was saying that it was an extremely good, but not perfect title, but since 8's are so common nowadays people thought that it was a negative review of UC3. A rating of 10 has become so ubiquitous that the actual quality that the rating used to imply has been lost.

 

[Baneat]

not to sound like a CoD hater, but if he gave Mario Kart a 5 for not changing anything, then he has no reason to give MW3 a 9.5

This. I'd be fine if he also gave CoD something like this score, since he wants to mark down for lack of innovation. For a new player, MK7 is probably still just as good as the other ones. On its own, CoD is a pretty good game, I'd give it an 8/10. But I've played almost the exact same game before, 3 times, so I enjoyed it like an average game, a 5/10 (This is roughly Jim's scale of game-rating).

It makes an important point for reviewing as a whole, though. Should you mark your games based on its standalone features, regardless of predecessors or competition, or should you also take into account the lack of innovation or new elements in the game when considering it?

Jim kind of seems to have switched his choice here. Or maybe he just doesn't like MK games that much, but then he could just say that instead of including the point that it's like the older games and that'd be fine.

 

[Lucian The Lugia]

Do you guys not remember his "Hate out of 10" video, in which he criticized how people take offense to an 8 on their oh-so-precious game? He clearly said that a 5/10 wasn't in his eyes a "bad" rating, but rather an "average."

He's not calling MK7 bad, but more "average." Sort of like one of Yahtzee's analogies, MK7 might not have been made to "set off sparks" but it "could've lit one measly firework."

 

[Furioso]

MW3 has done the same game twice, Mario Kart has done it KIND OF A LOT MORE THAN THAT, come on people, you act like he stepped out of your computer screen and shot you in the face, get over yourselves, if you don't like his review then ignore it

 

[Kopikatsu]

not to sound like a CoD hater, but if he gave Mario Kart a 5 for not changing anything, then he has no reason to give MW3 a 9.5

This. I'd be fine if he also gave CoD something like this score, since he wants to mark down for lack of innovation. For a new player, MK7 is probably still just as good as the other ones. On its own, CoD is a pretty good game, I'd give it an 8/10. But I've played almost the exact same game before, 3 times, so I enjoyed it like an average game, a 5/10 (This is roughly Jim's scale of game-rating).

It makes an important point for reviewing as a whole, though. Should you mark your games based on its standalone features, regardless of predecessors or competition, or should you also take into account the lack of innovation or new elements in the game when considering it?

Jim kind of seems to have switched his choice here. Or maybe he just doesn't like MK games that much, but then he could just say that instead of including the point that it's like the older games and that'd be fine.

Jim didn't complain about the lack of innovation in his review.

Also, I've actually tried to find Jim's review of MW3 on Destructoid, but the only thing I could find was a review by a different person, and it was given a 6.5

 

[Jennacide]

The leap to 3D in the N64/Playstation era seems to have bred a generation of spoiled gamers that are incapable of having fun with the same thing more than once. I genuinely pity you for being unable to enjoy a new game if it doesn't provide something new.

And I laugh at you for being so tolerant of formulaic bullshit.

Though, I laugh more at your assumption that the fifth generation of gaming has anything to do with it. Nintendo has been doing it since the second generation, when they fucking STARTED. The difference is, back then it was tolerated because it was harder to notice, and there were still leaps and bounds being made in gameplay or graphical prowess. I do like that you assume I'm still so young that it was the generation that shaped me, but alas, I was around for the FIRST generation of games. I grew up with an Atari 2600. It's not being spoiled, it's having standards. Something that has been apparently lost by Nintendo fanboys.

 

[Furioso]

Why do people call the rubber-band AI and blue shells in Mario Kart "flaws?"

Mario Kart is designed so that everyone has a chance to win, regardless of skill. Skill will get you to win much more often out of many races, but those elements are put in there to make sure that other players will win at least one race. Playing a game with someone 100 times more skilled than you is never any fun, and Nintendo knows that.

That just leaves it up to random chance, you might as well flip a coin, why bother playing the game if nothing I do matters in the end, playing a game with someone 100 times better than you is indeed no fun, but playing one where nothing you do matters in the slightest is 1000 times worse than that, even if you use as much skill as possible in the game, you throw your bananas forward and nail people, use green shells effectively, drift competently, it's still going to be a massive pile of bullshit to lose to a blue shell an inch from the finish line, you thought you were going to win? Nope because the player in the back of the pack clicked the fire button

 

[Mikeyfell]

I can see your points, I sort of hated Jim's "Citizen Kane of gaming" episode. It was the only one that didn't seem to be backed up with anything solid, or at all.
It was more of a "Hey look at me" or a "U mad bro?" episode.

Questioning a review score based on hypocrisy is a better justification than claims that the reviewer is bias. Far better in the same sense that not wiping your bum for a month is far better than eating children. But why are you even getting worked up over a bad review in the first place? If you don't agree with a particular reviewer's opinion then you shouldn't take their reviews as recommendations.

Do any of you people even know what reviews are for? Reviews don't state the quality of a game they state the quality of the experience the reviewer had with the game. They're tools, the bigger percent of a reviewers work you agree with the more likely a review from them will be helpful. Why do any of you treat a review like it's fact, or that bad reviews somehow make games you like worse?

A review out of context is worthless. An average of reviews could speak to general consensus in a way that could be helpful, but if you're willing to say the only "Valid" scores are the ones you agree with do you know what you are? You're a word that's too rude to use on these forums.