Topic: REVIEWS: New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis

[NWR_pap64]

Way back when the Wii was first shown at E3 2006 Red Steel, Twilight Princess and even Wii Sports impressions were all over the map. Fans either loved other or completely hated them. The opinion on controls varied greatly, with some saying that it worked great, others said that they were bad.

There was a different reason for this, though.  At E3 2006, Nintendo hadn't finalized the Remote sensitivity yet, making it hard to play some games well (which is really bad for these time-limited impressions).

That's what I said back then too; that people shouldn't judge the overall quality of the Wii based on early demos. But even then, the difference in impressions was astounding.

[MegaByte]

Well, it was Nintendo's fault for pushing "playing = believing" so hard.

[NWR_pap64]

Well, it was Nintendo's fault for pushing "playing = believing" so hard.

Not really, because even after Nintendo fixed all of the faults seen at E3 2006 people still seemed to have issues, many which were later proved wrong by gamers and other media outlets.

It all boiled down to the player and his/her ability to pick up on the gameplay.

[Kairon]

I don't think that the idea that playing = believing is wrong, per se. I just wonder sometimes whether people are actually "playing" the games to begin with.

[MegaByte]

Actually, I think the idea was spot on.  They just hadn't worked out all of the details yet.

[Mop it up]

That's why I prefer reviews from independent sites like this one. It isn't the reviewer's job to write reviews so the reviewer doesn't really have anything to benefit or "gain" from it, they write reviews because they are passionate about videogames and love to express their opinions; I can also trust them to be honest because of that. On top of that, since they don't have a strict deadline to follow or a huge stack of games to plow through, they can spend more time on a single game which will help better gauge its longevity or discover any problems which may not be apparent after just an hour or two of playtime. Of course, this means the review may not be published before the game is released, but does that really matter? I rarely buy games on their release dates, and it would seem to me that anyone who plans to buy a game on release wouldn't be swayed by reviews anyway, if they even read any.

[Stratos]

There are people who chomp at the bit to see a review from a preferred site before running out and instantly buying it if the score meets a minimum threshold.

NWR doesn't seem to be one of those sites. I, like you, don't buy games on launch day and I take a number of reviews and impressions into account and any demos if possible when making a purchase decision. I do place a higher weight on the actual content of the review versus the number breakdown. I like how NWR puts the number at the bottom unlike IGN where I have to cover my screen of shrink my browser size to block the number until the end.

I have grown very intrigued in the art of review composition over the past year and so I pay more attention to the words the Staff here writes about games. They put a lot of effort into these and I have grown to appreciate well written and well thought out reviews. This one answers questions I had concerning the game (especially the controls) and reviews that answer reader's questions and concerns are preferred to me.