Don't Like Zelda? You're a Self-Centered Moron.

Don’t Like Zelda? You’re a Self-Centered Moron.

Submitted by James Munn on November 24, 2006 – 1:24 pm8 Comments

You heard me, or rather, you heard Aaron Roberts of Nintendojo. The attacks on Gamespot regarding an 8.8 score for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has been well publicized. I’ve really never paid any attention and have avoided all comments on the topic, I’d like to think we try and keep this space clear of that whenever possible. Game reviews are nothing more than one person’s opinion and the difference between a 9 and an 8.8 are pretty damn slim. Since when is 8.8 not great…or since when does it really mean anything at all?

When I stumble upon Aaron Roberts’ rant about how anyone who doesn’t like Twilight Princess is a “self-centered moron,” and that “these pretentious lackwits are not only incorrect, I think that they’re trying to ruin the Wii launch for the rest of us.” I really wish he was joking. It’s a pretty obsurd write-up and if he was somehow trying to be funny…Aaron never conveyed that really well at all.

While this kind of editorial is the far extreme of fanboy, I have seen a huge influx of Nintendo fanboy lately. It seems they somehow believed (believed Nintendo) that the Wii would be perfect. Every system has it’s problems, I think some Nintendo fans got a little hypnotized by the all the arm waving.

Nintendojo

Cruds

I love Nintendo (and a lot of other game studios) but come on, those people are crazy. Defending Nintendo to any cost, attacking someone just because he did not rate a game the way they like it. Have these people nothing better to do with there time and energy like…. I don’t know…..playing Nintendo? Besides since when do people that do pay attention to those ratings, I always thought it served as page filling.
Subnet6

8.8 is a pretty damn good rating first of all.

Second, who cares what the rating is if you like it and you buy it?

I could understand a little bit if the rating was a 5 or a 6 because then you might have a fear that people would avoid the game and it would hurt the developer (in this case nintendo) but seriously, are there people out there who ONLY buy games that get a 9 or higher? I doubt it.

Either you like zelda and will buy this game, hate zelda and would never buy this game (shudders at the thought) or you are a normal gamer looking for something good and may or may not give it a try.

This rating is totally meaningless. Personally, I’m impressed it has gotten so many high 9s. Thats damn good in my book. I’ve put about 4 hours into it so far and it seems pretty good but not so good that I would be pissed if someone didn’t give it a 10.

This many blow peoples mind, but so far, (and I’m not very far) I liked wind waker better…….

(glances around to make sure nothing gets thrown at him)

But seriously, I DO like the implimentation of the controls. I was worried they would be gimmicky, but it honestly feels right.

And by “right”, I mean about “9″.
Richard

I have always thought the Sony fans were the most pathetic but some of these nintendo people are getting nuts about Zelda.

I got a chance to play and its a great Zelda game but it does absolutley nothing new with the Zelda world but it does do Zelda right and in my opinion that is worth about a 8.9 or 9.2 9 (the keyword here is opinion, which is what all reviews are)

What kind of nut complains about a 8.8 score!!!!!!
11440

It continually amazes me that Nintendo is able to inspire such religious fanaticism in its fans. It seems to me that insecurity about Nintendo’s relevance is at the root of the militarism and defensiveness exhibited by Nintendo cultists. They see the ranks of the nonbelievers swell, and they seethe. The terrible truth that they privately acknowledge but dare not speak is that Nintendo has floundered for two consecutive console generations, and this generation will be its third strike if the Great Wii Hope goes unfulfilled.

Allow me to preempt the inevitable accusation of bias against me. Obviously I am biased against Nintendo. But it is not a necessary corollary of that bias that I am a member of the Sony or Microsoft camps. I have no loyalty whatever towards either brand. In diminishing Nintendo I am not trying to aggrandize either of its competitors in the console market. My only motivation is disbelief at the irony that Nintendo is so frequently praised for its innovation, when on the contrary its track record shows an intractable traditionalism. While the rest of the industry has evolved towards greater complexity and higher concepts, both of which have enriched the experience of gaming, Nintendo’s philosophy of simplistic game development remains firmly entrenched in the 1980s.
John H.

I’ve thought a bit about this lately….

I think that there is something to the idea that Nintendo is something different in the gaming world than other companies. This is not precisely true (there are other companies that sometimes make interesting titles), but it is true in the general case. I think that there is a continuum of Nintendo fan, from those who recognize this (good) to those who are fans because they just picked them to back, or like their characters, or out of nostalgia (generally, bad).

I have remarked elsewhere about a certain Nintendo game (Odama) having gotten scores a bit lower than seemed fair, not because it was lacking in quality but because the reviewer didn’t understand it. That has become a regular feature of review scores of Nintendo’s output: I’ve greatly enjoyed a number of these games yet they tend to get merely fair review scores (which, by the inflated measure of these reviews, means 7s), yet new Maddens often get 9s, and on one memorable occaision, a 10. This has been leading to a tendency to discount review scores more and more.

Whether the new Zelda deserves better than an 8.8 I cannot say for sure, but it is a fact that it has had the power to interest me still when my appreciation for most other games has vanished. To each his own and all that, but I could see how one who feels that way could be disheartened to see less interesting games get higher scores.

To the question of “What score SHOULD a game receive?”, there are multiple answers:

- The most obvious one is, it depends on how much the reviewer personally likes the game. Pragmatically it can be difficult to apply when a site assigns only one guy to cover a game — a reviewer with a beef or a blind spot can cause an embarrassing situation. (And everyone has these blind spots — they cannot be wholly escaped.)
- Another answer is, how much will Joe Average Gamer like it? This is coming more and more to the forefront, which will tend to inflate scores for popular genres like FPSes. It also means higher scores for sports games. There is an entire breed of gamer out there that only plays sports games, and unfortunately they are so numerous that they drag both the development industry and the gaming press in its direction.
- Answer three is for the review to take on the person of an enlightened critic of gaming, and judge based on knowledge of the past, an eye for a game’s craftmanship, an appreciation for nuance. In short, from the vantage of a gaming snob. I actually have a certain fondness for this, but readers who use review scores to determine what to buy might be confused by what amounts to a fairly subjective, even abstract measurement of quality.

The surface reason many Nintendo fans seem livid over Gamespot’s score for Zelda is easy to diagnose: Zelda games have long been banner-holders for adventure gaming, Ocarina of Time got 10s most everywhere and is still unequaled today, and many consider Twilight Princess an improvement for OoT in almost every way. But the deeper reason is actually a conflict between the answers I gave above.

Or at least, that’s how it seems to me at 5 in the morning after a night without sleep.
paul

what’s the difference between this guy arguing that anyone that didn’t think zelda was a 10 was a moron and this web sites defense of giving gears of war a perfect 10?
Chris

Who is this Aaron Roberts?
thomas_h

“”By: paul at November 25, 2006 09:23 AM

what’s the difference between this guy arguing that anyone that didn’t think zelda was a 10 was a moron and this web sites defense of giving gears of war a perfect 10?”"

Paul, the difference is that this site / the writers here does’nt call anyone who does’nt think GoW is worth 10/10 a moron, and a self centered idiot or whatever it was.