The Critic's new 360 reviews

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Atarifever1
Posts: 3892
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

The Critic's new 360 reviews

Postby Atarifever1 » April 13th, 2006, 10:42 pm

[QUOTE=bluemonkey]

It's just because the games are older and they have already played them that is all.  Sonic Adventure DC was released what 3 years after the DC version?  It's still a better game just no longer cut it in their opinion.

[/QUOTE]

Yep, just look at these IGN scores:

Super Mario Advance: 8

Super Mario Advance 2: 9.3

Super Mario Advance 3: 9.4

Super Mario Advance 4: 9.5

 

Yep, they really tore into those remakes/ports.

 

Oh and look at this:

GTA: SA PS2: 9.3

GTA: SA Xbox: 9.5

 

Let's not forget how no critics were at all nice to Super Mario All Stars. 

 

And what about this:

RE4 released on the Gamecube and got a 9.6 on the GC.  9 Months later it releases on PS2 (older hardware) and gets a 9.3 (not too shabby). 

 

There's nothing about games being old that totally explains this (I mean the whole industry wet itself when Mario 1 hit the GBC and a colour update of the original GB Zelda did very well critically).  Sure, the game reviewers are genrally biased against "old school" games, but that doesn't explain why they'd complain about a well done port of a game from this generation.  GTA and RE4 don't seem to have suffered that fate.  The fact is that these games just really don't do it enough to impress.  Whenever I play one of the ported versions I get the feeling that when Sonic Adventure was originally being made Sonic team was saying "not enough, we need to give these gamers more if we're going to wow them with our new product".  Then I see them years later making the Gamecube port and saying, "okay that should be enough to keep the little [expletives] happy".   

In a market that's already flooded with sequels, the port of an old game could not be more in line with what I think is wrong with the industry.  Think about it, it's like a sequel- but without even a new story.  Yah!  Soon all systems could produce the exact same product and the system with the most slightly tweaked graphics can win.  It's stuff like this that kept me from buying Mario 64 DS and from buying an N-Gage anywhere in the first year of it's life. 

 

Maybe I'm a purist.  I mean, if they took Moby Dick and added 5 new chapters, would you think it was a better book?  If they gave the Mona Lisa a 3D hlogram where her smile turned into a frown if you looked at it a certain way would you all be extolling its virtues?  The game was fine the way it was on the system it was intended for, not as the game equivalent of a DVD with *gasp* multiple endings that are less good than the original ending.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm visiting my parents and my father just gave me a record player he was going to throw out and I have to listen to some records in their original needle read glory.  

(Seriously, I just got a turntable, how cool is that )  


Jeff

The Critic's new 360 reviews

Postby Jeff » April 14th, 2006, 5:09 pm

[QUOTE=JustLikeHeaven]

I actually hate it when magazines and sites bash an older game ported to a newer system.  Yea its the usually the same game with spiffy graphics and a few extra bells n' whistles (if you're lucky), but if its a fun game it shouldn't matter.  Crazy Taxi was fantastic on the DC and I couldn't find any faults with the GC version other than it "didn't bring anything new to the table".  When these games are ported they are usually meant to target the audience that didn't originally get to play them.  Since the Dreamcast wasn't exactly the best selling system, several people missed out on some of the great titles found on the system.  For an early GC game you could do alot worse than a perfectly ported version of that game.  I have wasted so many hours of my life on Crazy Taxi that its not even funny!
[/QUOTE]

I agree with every single word of that. For ports of older games, it's usually better to go back and find reviews of the originals than to trust new reviews in magazines or the big websites like IGN or GameSpot. They don't give ports any respect, especially for games older than a year or so. For a game that got a 6.9 from IGN and 4.9  from GameSpot, I've played Crazy Taxi more than most of the other 20+ GameCube games I own.


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