Topic: Mario Kart 8 Review

[pokepal148]

Omg I forgot to put the image

[Jonnyboy117]

Qbert, our two reviews of this game were posted at the same time as dozens of others. We have no way of knowing or predicting the Metacritic average. To suggest that our site's scores are intentional outliers is ignorant of the actual review process, which is independent, personal, and honest.

[Caterkiller]

Was it IGN's Mario Kart Double Dash review that gave it like a 7.9 or something? I remember that causing the internet to slip it's ship.

[Qbert Farnsworth]

Qbert, our two reviews of this game were posted at the same time as dozens of others. We have no way of knowing or predicting the Metacritic average. To suggest that our site's scores are intentional outliers is ignorant of the actual review process, which is independent, personal, and honest.

That's fine. As a Nintendo site, you surely know the ballpark of what a game is going to receive based on their track record. Most reviews of a 3D Mario game will be 90-95 out of 100. A 2D, side-scrolling Mario game will be 80-90. Zelda will be 90-100. Mario Kart will be 85-90. Smash will be 90-95. Barring some huge glaring flaws which will be noted when video game websites get hands-on previews, we know the scores will be in these areas.

What I'm saying is that worst case scenario, you knew Mario Kart would be no lower than an 85 average (some scores would be higher, some lower). If they game was underwhelming to you, you could have gone with the 80 out of 100 (or 8/10 on your scale), but that gets lost in the shuffle with the other less-than-impressed scores. Nobody who doesn't currently read the site comes to read the review with an 80. But a 75, that's a full 10 points lower than the worst-case scenario Metacritic score. That shouts "Hey look, we review Nintendo, but refuse to be seen as Nintendo fanboys." That gets more attention than an 80, more attention gets more page views, more page views equals more ad revenue.

I also believe it's foolish to dock Nintendo for merely meeting the bar which they themselves raised. They more or less invented the genre. Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 are two spectacular kart racing games. Others Mario Karts have reached those levels, others have failed. It's no different than New Super Mario Bros games. By all accounts, Sega would kill for Sonic games that good. Sony would kill for Little Big Planet to be that good. If they created games that good with Sonic or Sack Boy, they would be lauded. But because it's Mario,  because it's up against Super Mario 3 and Super Mario World, the reviews are just ho-hum. That's what this review feels like. If Sonic, Little Big Planet Racing, or Mod Nation made a kart racer this good (by almost all other accounts), the reviews would be "Mario Kart has met its match." Instead, you dock points for a Mario Kart game being a Mario Kart game.

[NWR_insanolord]

We don't factor Metacritic into our reviews. We don't base our reviews at all on what other reviewers do or have been perceived to do. Our reviews are the opinions of the reviewer with as little outside influence as is possible.

If you don't like what we write, might I suggest reading a different site?

[Qbert Farnsworth]

We don't factor Metacritic into our reviews. We don't base our reviews at all on what other reviewers do or have been perceived to do. Our reviews are the opinions of the reviewer with as little outside influence as is possible.

If you don't like what we write, might I suggest reading a different site?

Talk about some thin skin. I wasn't aware that discourse was discouraged.

You gave your opinions on the game. I gave my opinions on your opinions including the impression that it seemed a little click-bate-ish. I find it unlikely that you are unaware of what competing game sites might say of the game. You have a website with "Nintendo" in the title. Surely you are aware of how well previous Nintendo titles were received by video game journalists.

No non-Wii U owner is looking to a website with Nintendo in its name in order to make an objective decision on whether or not to purchase a Wii U and Mario Kart 8. Surely you know that by offering what is perceived as a low-ball 7.5 score, all you are doing is trying to catch the eye of Nintendo fans to come to your Nintendo fan site (or so it seems). I generally like the work NWR does, so the perception of a click-bate score bothers me more than the score itself which is ultimately irrelevant since I was buying this game anyway (because what else am I going to play).

[Oblivion]

So, Qbert, what you are saying that since NWR is a Nintendo fansite, Mario Kart 8 and other staple series cannot have low scores? I'm curious, what exactly is "click-bait" about the review? You can't see a score without clicking on the review already and nothing about the blurb makes it seem like click-bait.


To me, it sounds like you're a Nintendo fanboy who is a little peeved that a Nintendo fansite didn't share your opinion. I think a fansite is good for being more critical than the popular press; they seem to know Nintendo and get sick of the **** Nintendo does far more than the IGN reviewer that plays one Nintendo game a year.

[Oblivion]

So, Qbert, what you are saying that since NWR is a Nintendo fansite, Mario Kart 8 and other staple series cannot have low scores? I'm curious, what exactly is "click-bait" about the review? You can't see a score without clicking on the review already and nothing about the blurb makes it seem like click-bait.

To me, it sounds like you're a Nintendo fanboy who is a little peeved that a Nintendo fansite didn't share your opinion. I think a fansite is good for being more critical than the popular press; they seem to know Nintendo and get sick of the **** Nintendo does far more than the IGN reviewer that plays one Nintendo game a year.

[Evan_B]

Aren't reviews supposed to cover every aspect, even if it's the reviewer's opinion on these aspects? One could argue that your 'second opinion' article could be used for this, but the other review covers the same ground- I would prefer it if a second opinion was an alternate viewpoint or at least tried to cover different content, but two reviews of similar content and the exact same score released so closely together could be another reason for the backlash.

Anyway, I'm not trying to feed the fire or anything, merely offering some thoughts

[NWR_insanolord]

We don't factor Metacritic into our reviews. We don't base our reviews at all on what other reviewers do or have been perceived to do. Our reviews are the opinions of the reviewer with as little outside influence as is possible.

If you don't like what we write, might I suggest reading a different site?

Talk about some thin skin. I wasn't aware that discourse was discouraged.

You gave your opinions on the game. I gave my opinions on your opinions including the impression that it seemed a little click-bate-ish. I find it unlikely that you are unaware of what competing game sites might say of the game. You have a website with "Nintendo" in the title. Surely you are aware of how well previous Nintendo titles were received by video game journalists.

No non-Wii U owner is looking to a website with Nintendo in its name in order to make an objective decision on whether or not to purchase a Wii U and Mario Kart 8. Surely you know that by offering what is perceived as a low-ball 7.5 score, all you are doing is trying to catch the eye of Nintendo fans to come to your Nintendo fan site (or so it seems). I generally like the work NWR does, so the perception of a click-bate score bothers me more than the score itself which is ultimately irrelevant since I was buying this game anyway (because what else am I going to play).

Did you not read the post you quoted? None of those things are relevant in our review process. Even if Neal or Daan had seen other reviews before writing theirs, they wouldn't factor into it. This isn't a big picture thing here, we review games as they are, and try to leave Metacritic bullshit outside of it, as any reviewer worth his salt should do.

[Evan_B]

Sorry, that post was directed towards Neal's comment earlier. Didn't realize it would be stormed by a few other posts.

If anything, this pair of reviews summarizes exactly what any non-Nintendo gamer has faced in the past generation of consoles- any online-multiplayer game having a lackluster single-player campaign because that's just how developers direct their time in regards to multiplayer titles. You can always brig up Sonic Transformed as an example of a goodsingle player campaign but truthfully there's a ton wrong with that game otherwise so it would still end up with the same mediocre score as MK8. That point aside, Nintendo fans are starting to get irked with what they perceive as Nintendo "getting away with" releasing a game that is not as innovative as previous titles. I'm not going to comment on that but I will say this- it's not something that has creeped up on the industry. Any developer knows that they need to cut back on content to release a game as soon as possible to maintain an aggressive  presence in the market, but Nintendo is known for saving their est ideas for subsequent releases and that they're banking hardcore on MK8 boosting some sales for them. The only difference this time is that there's nothing innovative "enough" to warrant MK8's existence- rather than being a quintessential experience it's more of the same. This is a viewpoint I understand, but I can look past because I love Mario Kart and I think that it's a franchise that delivers satisfyingly.

And that's all I'll say about that. Some may say "more of the same" but I think that's bull because it's clearly not, at a fundamental level.

[Qbert Farnsworth]

NWR insanolord, don't you think you're being disingenuous regarding Metacritic. Even if you don't check it out, your review gets used on it, and no part of me believes that you didn't think your score would be lower than the average, hence why I called it click bate.
If the Metacritic process is bullshit (it is), why allow your score to be included? Why not change the reviewing system to something like Kotaku's "Should I play this? Yes or No?" You did a review and a second opinion piece on it. Why not do a Siskel and Ebert "Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down" system with two reviewers? If you give a game a 7.5, they can convert that into a 75 on their system rather easily. If you give them only two thumbs up, two thumbs down, or one up, one down to work with, they can't convert that to their system because then a 0, 50, or 100 does not come close to accurately reflecting a review. If you don't give yourself a chance to be seen as an outlier, then you don't create the opportunity for clowns like me to perceive your outlier score as click bate.

That's just my two cents. (I generally enjoy your site).

[Jonnyboy117]

Sorry, I should have been more through in my previous post. Not only do we not know how other people will review the game, we also don't care. It may be interesting to read other opinions afterward, but our reviewers take care to not be influenced by other reviewers or what we might speculate they will think. Don't you want an honest take on the game?

Here's the good news -- you don't want us to write click-bait nor intentionally pull down Metacritic, and I'm telling you that we don't do either of those things. It's a shame if you don't believe that.

[Qbert Farnsworth]

So, Qbert, what you are saying that since NWR is a Nintendo fansite, Mario Kart 8 and other staple series cannot have low scores? I'm curious, what exactly is "click-bait" about the review? You can't see a score without clicking on the review already and nothing about the blurb makes it seem like click-bait.


To me, it sounds like you're a Nintendo fanboy who is a little peeved that a Nintendo fansite didn't share your opinion. I think a fansite is good for being more critical than the popular press; they seem to know Nintendo and get sick of the **** Nintendo does far more than the IGN reviewer that plays one Nintendo game a year.

I didn't say they can't have low scores. In my other posts, I said that one could estimate the range of scores for this game without reading a review. It becomes click bate because aggregate sites like Metacritic use the NWR score.

If you estimate that Mario Kart will score at least an 85, then you can guess that a 75 would be much lower than the average and it stands out more than say an 80. In truth, the Metacritic score is 88. The NWR review docked it for the same offenses as other reviews, but then docked it extra for not innovating enough. The Mario Kart bar was raised so high. It seems pretty hard to expect another Mario Kart game to raise that bar higher, and it seems asinine to dock points for failing to do so. If the controls were bad, framerates were choppy, if the game was laggy, if the game was unbalanced to the point of being unplayable go ahead and dock points. That doesn't seem to be the case. It seems to be a case of a good series producing another good game, but the new game merely maintained the previous level of quality rather than being transcendent.

[Ian Sane]

It's a racing game, and your Diddy Kong "appease the hub world elephant kart adventure games" are the exception. The fact that Mario Kart lives on while Diddy Kart has not shows that the Grand Prix cup formula is what kart genre fans want.

I think DKR's formula didn't survive mostly because Rare was sold by Nintendo before they got a chance to make a sequel.  Donkey Kong Racing was one of the titles they had announced when they were sold.  The Mario Kart series, however, obviously could continue on so it did.  I don't think the market had any real input on the direction of Kart racers.  Nintendo briefly offered two options and then shitcanned one of them.  The market never truly had any choice of what direction they preferred.

What I liked about DKR wasn't specifically the hub world but just that the approach to the game was obviously to try out new concepts in the kart racing genre.  They wanted to see where the concept could go.  Mario Kart games did that as well early on when it was effectively creating the entire kart genre, but don't do it as much anymore.  That's what a want.  I want Nintendo to see where they can take kart racing and they obviously don't really want to do that.  Mario Kart 8 exists entirely so that there is Mario Kart product on the Wii U.  Some people don't care as long as they get new tracks and the game is fun.  But if you do care then a 7.5 makes a lot of sense.

[NWR_insanolord]

It's only clickbait if the reviewer scores a game as such specifically to produce that kind of result, and I think I know Neal and Daan well enough to know that's not the kind of thing they'd do. It's a lower score than most others because they had more of a problem with the content of the game than most other reviewers, which will happen with literally every game. Sometimes it's us, sometimes it's a different site, but there's usually always someone who scores a game outside the norm.

We don't have any kind of malicious intent here, we just express our opinions and try to explain them as best we can. This isn't the first time people have come into TalkBack and complained about a review score, and I'd wager it won't be the last. That's the way this business goes.

[Khushrenada]

Why is any reviewer supposed to be estimating what the metacritic score is going to be in the first place?

What you're saying is this: A person gets a game, plays it, and feels so-so about it. It has some strong points and some weak points. The reviewer than decides on his score for the game based on his experience. But now he has to try and figure out what all other reviews for it will be like. So, even though he felt so-so on it, he should assume his opinion is wrong and that everyone else playing the game is going to like it a lot and rate the game very higher than he feels about it? How does that work?

I've watched a movie with my friends that I thought was terrible and when I started complaining about it, I found out they all liked it. They'd agree with some of my points but it worked for them they said. It boggles my mind how they could like it despite very clear reasons and examples of stupidity. Now, if we were to write reviews of the movie, my score would be much lower than theirs. However, according to you, I should recognize that other people will rate it higher and I need to adjust my score to be a bit higher otherwise I'm being disingenious and not following the crowd for the sake of trying to display "independent" thought. And heaven help me if I bring down the Metacritic score! Moreover, if I had seen the movie on my own and not with my friends, I'd have assumed that everyone felt like me and would be ranking the movie the same way. How am I supposed to figure out they liked it? Knowing they liked it, however, doesn't change how I felt about the movie or what I think are legitamate complaints against it and I feel like there are other people who would feel the same as me so I'm going to write a review and score it based on my own experience with it. If people disagree with it, so be it, but it's just my honest assessment of it.

The problem with most people complaining in this thread is that they seem to have seen the score and automatically assumed it was done on purpose to incite more web traffic. Despite not frequenting this site or looking back at the reviewers past history of positive reviews, they are somehow able to read their thoughts and know this was exactly what they were thinking and that they actually did like the game and are trying to con everyone.

Moreover, if you actually want to base your opinions on Metacritic and for it to be useful, then you should be encouraging people to score games on how they actually feel on playing it regardless of other people's impressions and reviews. Then by having a large amount of honest reviews, you'll have a more accurate score. Wanting people to adjust how they score games based on how others might score it and that it could affect the Metacritic average only ensures that the Metacritic numbers become useless as they don't reflect the truth of any reviewer.

Moreover, if upon playing the game, you want to disagree with the review by citing actual examples and real impressions of the game from having played it, then go ahead. There's nothing wrong with that kind of discussion. It's what people always liked about Siskel and Ebert when they disagreed with each other and argued about a movie citing points about it. But all the people complaining because the score isn't the same as other people's score is just pointless since that is not a legitimate complaint nor do they have the same expertise as the reviewer from not having played the game to be able to accurately judge and critique it or the review.

[lolmonade]

The score is a 7.5....not a 5 or below.  I could see why there might be some blowback if the game was actually rated poorly, but it's not, it's rated as a good game with some issues that hold it back from being considered great by the reviewer.
 
Shoot....NWR isn't even the only sub-80 score on metacrtic anymore.

Doesn't it make possible sense that review for a Nintendo site and most likely have played every single Mariokart game might be a bit more fatigued at the iterative nature of the franchise since Double Dash?
 
Finally, lol at all the internet crusaders coming to the resuce of Mariokart's metacritic score.  I assure you, you're the only ones that care about the game's metacritic rating, and are making such a fuss over something that has literally no significance.

[lolmonade]

I've watched a movie with my friends that I thought was terrible and when I started complaining about it, I found out they all liked it. They'd agree with some of my points but it worked for them they said. It boggles my mind how they could like it despite very clear reasons and examples of stupidity. Now, if we were to write reviews of the movie, my score would be much lower than theirs. However, according to you, I should recognize that other people will rate it higher and I need to adjust my score to be a bit higher otherwise I'm being disingenious and not following the crowd for the sake of trying to display "independent" thought. And heaven help me if I bring down the Metacritic score! Moreover, if I had seen the movie on my own and not with my friends, I'd have assumed that everyone felt like me and would be ranking the movie the same way. How am I supposed to figure out they liked it? Knowing they liked it, however, doesn't change how I felt about the movie or what I think are legitamate complaints against it and I feel like there are other people who would feel the same as me so I'm going to write a review and score it based on my own experience with it. If people disagree with it, so be it, but it's just my honest assessment of it.

What movie are you referring to?  I'm asking both because I'm genuinely curiuos AND it'll spawn more interesting discussion than the bickering over a review score.

[Qbert Farnsworth]

Khushrenada, your movie analogy is apples to oranges. You disagreeing with your friends has no potential conflict of interest because you are not getting advertising revenue based on page views. Also, Mario Kart must maintain certain elements to be a Kart racing game with Mario characters. There are certain aspects of Mario Kart that you know it's going to be rated on: graphics, game play balance, controls, online options, etc. There needs to be racing, there needs to be weapons (per the brand's formula). We have a frame of reference. The reviewers docked it points for not being something it's not. They wanted to see it do something like a story mode like Diddy Kong Racing. That's not Mario Kart, so it seems unfair to penalize it for asking Mario Kart to not be Mario Kart. Had Smash Bros Brawl not included Subspace Emissary, would it have lost points?

Movies on the other hand can stand on their own. For example, Gravity was well-reviewed and I thought it was terrible. I thought it was terrible because the characters were cardboard cliches (Clooney is one mission away from retirement, Bulluck has to learn to let go of the past, etc.), the science was bad, and overall, it was a little too corny for my taste. I didn't think Gravity was bad because there weren't enough lightsaber fights which worked well in other space movies.

[pokepal148]

I didn't say they can't have low scores. In my other posts, I said that one could estimate the range of scores for this game without reading a review.

one could also just play the game, write a review, and be like "what do you know, I guess I didn't enjoy this game as much as everyone else did, oh well.

It becomes click bate because aggregate sites like Metacritic use the NWR score.

If you estimate that Mario Kart will score at least an 85, then you can guess that a 75 would be much lower than the average and it stands out more than say an 80.  In truth, the Metacritic score is 88.

so what, you think this is some intentional attempt to bring down the metacritic score and attract clicks? If that were the case why not give it a 6.5, or go all the way and give it a 1.

And for the record from what we know of the roster that alone is enough to take off a full point for.

The NWR review docked it for the same offenses as other reviews, but then docked it extra for not innovating enough. The Mario Kart bar was raised so high. It seems pretty hard to expect another Mario Kart game to raise that bar higher, and it seems asinine to dock points for failing to do so.

Name a mario kart game with a good single player mode.

Mario Kart DS brought us the last major revamp to the Mario Kart formula. Since then there seems to be a cycle of features being lost such as:
Wii: +12 racers -no free for all battle mode, -less robust (and now defunct) mission mode,

7: +coins return +glider(sonic did flying karts better) and underwater(number of people who CARE= 0)
-no single player V.S. mode (grr...) -no mission mode -back to 8 racers

8: +that antigrav thing +single player VS. mode +some stupid replay thing +2p gp(that's probably local only)
-no items held behind you (WHY!!!!!) -actual battle arenas -oh mission mode... where are you, (honey look I'm sorry you maybe maybe feel I don't appreciate you but I can make it up to- honey no don't do this to me.

If the controls were bad, framerates were choppy, if the game was laggy, if the game was unbalanced to the point of being unplayable go ahead and dock points. That doesn't seem to be the case. It seems to be a case of a good series producing another good game, but the new game merely maintained the previous level of quality rather than being transcendent.

Which raises the question of why you would get this one
Except the series has failed to address any of the concerns raised with it's single player and seems to remove just as many features as it adds with each entry. people have the same complaint about Zelda but those games at least try to feel like fresh, new experiences. Mario Kart doesn't even make any effort to hide how iterative it is,

Had Smash Bros Brawl not included Subspace Emissary, would it have lost points?

it probably would have gained points given how poorly thought out that mode was

[NWR_insanolord]

If a game's not that fun when you're playing by yourself that's exactly the kind of thing I want to see in a review. How much of a barrier to enjoyment that is will depend on the play style of the individual, and will thus affect the scores from different reviewers to different degrees. I really don't see what's so hard to understand about that. It's a difference of opinion, not some vast conspiracy.

[Qbert Farnsworth]

pokepal, I didn't say the low score was to bring down Metacritic. I said, here's the expected window of scores. NWR is an outlier. Outliers are often done as clickbate. I saw the review, disagreed with the methods used to dock points down to what I consider clickbate level. My issue is more the integrity of the review than the score. If the game played like crap, or if it played at a level just much lower than what we've come to expect, then fine. Take away points as needed. Instead, points were taken away for not including things that didn't need to be included and for Mario Kart TV (a bell and/or whistle at most) not being anything special.

[LinksFury777]

This is like IGN's MK Double Dash 7.9 review all over again.


Obviously, none of us plebeians have played the game yet, but the gaming press has.  So, you have make sure you read the text of the review, not just the score.  My problem with the review is that outside of Battle Mode, Neal pretty much criticizes Mario Kart for being.......Mario Kart.  And that's it.  Zero-gravity is very briefly mentioned and then not talked about at all which, from the Mario Kart Nintendo Direct, is supposed to add more to the game since you get boosts when you ram another racer while in zero-gravity mode.  Neal doesn't even mention this at all.  The problem with the review isn't the score, it's the lack of detail as to why an installment in a very highly regarded series like Mario Kart is given such a mediocre score.  He had to know that a 7.5 score on the most impressive looking Wii U game thus far was going to be controversial.  Just saying it's more of the same isn't enough.

[UncleBob]

There's a world of difference between disagreeing with someone's opinion and calling someone's opinion wrong.  Some people don't seem to understand that.