Oh, come on, Outlaw. Ever since when I have liked overrated games, eh?
I don't understand why the hell people think "overrated" games or games that are liked by a bunch of people are bad. There are some exceptions to the rule (re: the bargain bin Wii games), but popular games like Halo or even Brawl (yes, I said Brawl; even though I don't like the game competitively does not mean it doesn't deserve some credit) are not so much "good" as they are
solid. Is it the fact that you want to go against the grain? Or do you insist on comparing it to some archaic classic that is pretty much irrelevant now? Just what is it?
Finalark knows that I dislike the Twilight series. He had a blog on it a little while ago and I posted my opinion in there. It was poorly written and it possessed all really tried themes that bored the hell out of me. I gave her a couple of praising comments, however. She (Stephanie Meier) does have some talent in writing fiction ("The Host," another book that she's written, is actually quite good. I enjoyed it, at least) and she appealed to a broad audience (mostly teenagers and thirty-year old women). The latter of the two comments I mentioned is the most important: She is making millions upon millions of dollars for her work, much like your bigshots like JK Rowling and Stephen King are. Money may or may not be your God when you write, but I want my work to be appreciated by SOMEBODY and that appreciation in part comes from monetary compensation (aka the people buying your book). Hell, that's even the driving concept behind video games too---more units bought, more reinforcement of their work.
(Although getting jeered by Stephen King is pretty bad. That's right, Stephen King out and out said that she was a terrible writer in an interview. If I were in her shoes, my toes would be curling from the comment and I would probably be thinking about ways I could "get better." lol)
What I'm trying to say that there's some good in nearly everything. The reason why Banjo Kazooie was loved so much was because it was a solid platforming game. If you set aside the kiddie conventions and the lackluster graphics (etc, etc), it was worthy of being second fiddle to something like Super Mario 64 (note the key words second fiddle; Super Mario 64 is one of the definitive platformers imo).
All of the things I'm about to say, really, are what other people have been trying to say. I liked the controls, personally, and I liked how you could combine certain abilities to form an even cooler attack against enemies or way to get around the screen. Like someone else mentioned, the difficulty curve was good. The game started out pretty easy but later on it started to get a little more challenging---which was good. Plus the puzzles teased your head just enough not to frustrate you. I could go on, really, but I'm just adding on to the semantic pile.
Acknowledgment of a game's ups would be nice for a change, y'know?
Smooth Criminal
