I personally welcome all feedback, positive or negative. We put RFN out there for public consumption so naturally people are going to have opinions good and bad, and have topics/features/hosts/guests they like and don't like. Even non-constructive trolling usually has a grain of truth to it.
Right. Although I wonder how much of the distaste some of the people here are expressing rather rudely at some of us individually is just confirmation bias. One of us says one thing one person doesn't like and all of a sudden, that person is an asshole forever. Maybe try to be more impartial as a listener?
I record the podcast, I edit it, and I listen to it afterwards. James has a fairly different personnality from mine, and yet I honestly don't understand how he could get under your skins like that. Yes, bring up Ubisoft, Sega, Sonic or Metroid and you might hear from him, but it's usually one line in a two hour podcast. And in a lot of cases, like when we're discussing "Metroidvania" games during New Business, he's not saying anything at all. So I dunno. Sure, we can all try to not rely on the same jokes over and over again, in order to be a more entertaining, better podcast. But sometimes running jokes work, too, as long as they don't take over the show. I think we're doing fine.
Taking the opportunity to defend myself: in the last 20 episodes, I spoke about 7 2D platformers. Cloudberry Kingdom, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, Wario Land 3, Chariot, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, Xeodrifter, DK King of Swing. Of those, I'm not sure which ones I'd consider "generic", as they all have something unique going on. And while I know we all like to joke that I love platformers unconditionally, I also know that I was critical of all of these.
That's seven games since November. If that's too much for you: tough. This is a Nintendo podcast. You're gonna have to hear about some 2D platformers.
We record weekly, so there is some pressure to have something new to discuss every week. 2D platformers are usually short, easy to get into, plentiful on the eShop, often have couch co-op, and I like playing them so yeah, I'm gonna talk about them critically. I record this show for myself, and for people who actually like Nintendo games, after all. If others don't care for it, then I'm probably doing something right.