Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is fantastic, and everybody knows it.
There’s less of a consensus on its “Smart-Steering” option, an accessibility feature that some argue against because it’s an accessibility feature.
Bonus Content: Life Haxz with Jim Sterling
(Footage captured by Laura Kate Dale from letsplayvideogames.com)
I do appreciate the fact that nintendo focuses on accessibility like this. They are a shit company and I fucking hate them, but I can’t deny that they do this stuff better than most others. People complaining about the steering aid and all that are taking mario cart way too seriously. Nintendo games aren’t competitive, they are just made to be “fun for the whole family” and it needs to allow people of all ages and people with disabilities to take part in the fun.
Nintendo may be one of the worst companies out there, but at least they seem to give a damn at times.
Jim says something bad about Nintendo – ‘Kill him, he is a piece of shit’
Jim says something good about Nintendo – ‘Fuck Jim and his SJW bullashit’
Jim’s points about Mario difficulty actually goes back to the good ol days on PC where cheat codes existed. Or even game genie in the console games. There’s always been a market for this stuff and its just a shame that game companies have moved away from it.
I’m PRO-OPTIONS. I feel the lack of options in single player games is one of the great failures in gaming these past several generations. So few games take the FIFA, Civilization, or Don’t Starve approach to gaming accessibility. Imagine having the New Game+ features of a game like Tales of Symphonia unlocked for FREE on your FIRST ever playthrough? I would LOVE to play RPG’s with the option for 2x XP or 10x XP especially if those games expect you to grind.
i love the smart steering it lets me enjoy the game with family members that don’t play games and gives them a chance to have fun and i hope that games continue to add things like this so that everyone can enjoy a game also thank god for Jim
My wife never really played video games until the past few years. I, on the other hand have played video games my entire life and now work as an art director making them myself. So it’s easy to say that video games have become pretty important in my house. Two years ago I bought my wife a 3ds and Animal Crossing and this sparked a newfound love of games in her. She has since moved on to playing the new Yoshi games and some Kirby games etc.
She is by no means good at video games, she is quite obviously still learning the inherent video game language many of us started learning on the NES when we were children. So these optional modes of play for her have actually helped her to find a love for video games that she never understood before. If these modes didn’t exist she would have just put many of these games down and never touched them again. These features have allowed her an entry point to modern video games that, as an adult she never would have taken otherwise.
Now she has a much better understanding of what I do for a job, and we can have pointed discussions about games and subjects that we never were able to before. So for me, having another thing to relate with my wife, and more recently my oldest daughter, over is incredible. These features have literally brought my house closer together so… it’s cool that people begrudge that.
I don’t know why people are so against easy modes. Sports games like Madden and MLB the Show have had beginner modes for years and you don’t see the hardcore players complain. The difficulty setting are so customizable you could adjust things like pitch speed and referee AI to to make the either as casual-friendly or hardcore simulation as you like. I actually wish more games could be like that.
One Nintendo thing I never hear complaints about is the EXP Share in Pokemon. It’s on by default and it lets you absolutely dominate all the NPCs in the game. It lets kids play the game and have fun but if you’re like me you turn it off for a little bit of a challenge
People get their knickers in a twist because some people can have something that in no way affects them? Might want to rethink their priorities.
Let’s hope these whining kids never have children. They’d see them fall over whilst trying to walk and say “hah, you got to get gud at walking like me, scrub!” – of course they have to have kids first ….
Speaking of physical accessibility issues and video games…..
I really want to play Dark Souls but I have dyspraxia… any tips or mods that might help?
With Easy Mode and Smart Steering, I do not mind at all in nearly every game. The only games I think they should not be on, are games that one of their primary selling points is difficulty. That is very few game series, but does include Dark Souls. So, I support Easy Modes on 99.9% of games.
It always me laugh when people complain about Jim being an “sjw” is so hilarious because like ……………… are you new here?
The fact that people become elitist over any game let alone Mario Kart is hilarious.
me, turning on subtitles on a movie so i can understand what people are saying better
Hardcore film* fan: what the FUCK are you doing YOU FILTHY CASUAL, YOU ARE CHEATING THE MOVIE
Last time I checked, games are, first and foremost, suppose to be FUN. If it takes an easy mode for someone to get enjoyment out of game, then so be it.
Why does no one ever seem to think about how people with disabilities play video games? Or do they just think that differently abled people don’t deserve to play video games?
I love easy modes. They’re good.
I remember reading an article about how “people who play games for fun are killing the medium” or some other BS.
It upsets me, because that’s the only reason I play games. I love being able to be a psychopath in DayZ, I love being able to down a couple baddies with a sniper rifle a kilometre away in Arma, I love being able to build a terrible house in Terraria, I love making factories in Factorio, I love driving at around at 700Km/h in Grip, I love flame rushing a base in Red Alert.
I do this because I think it’s fun.
It’s fun.
I play games for fun, because they’re fun.
I think they’re fun.
I have never disagreed so much with Jim on something other than his politics. You played through Dark Souls 3 Jim, you should understand why some people are bothered by the idea of a free pass. Having a mode that accommodates for those who are unable to perform tasks is fine.
What isn’t fine is the incentive of not progressing as a player.
Dark souls gets compared to life, in that life is suffering and man lives to quell that suffering. When victorious you grow, when you fail, you grow, and this balance teaches the player discipline. And removing that also removes any inclination to grow, how is this a good thing?
My first RPG was Shining Force 2, and I was way too young to understand its nuisances. After spending time with it, I acclimated to speaking the language of the game, and despite never finishing it. I can still find happiness in the fact that I tried.
Easy Modes have an inherit issue, the burden is on the player to remove their handicap when they are ready to grow. For example when parents throw their kid on a bicycle with training wheels, it’s typically with the intention of removing them later. Most “casuals” won’t take the training wheels off, they won’t suffer and they won’t grow. And a game dev can’t make you want to take easy mode off because that’s akin to stopping your kid from creating chaos in the supermarket.
There’s great satisfaction in playing games, and greater satisfaction in playing games that test you. My Persona 5 run wouldn’t have been as memorable if it hadn’t been on hard. Learning a character in For Honor 1v1s wouldn’t have felt as good if I’d been given an auto combo. And Dark souls wouldn’t be close to as an rewarding experience if I didn’t loss souls on death (which would be the only credible way of making a DS easy mode).
Devs should make games suiting whatever tier of player they want to accommodate (And Nintendo does well accommodating all). And they should do it without jeopardizing what could be a great satisfying learning experience. Because people are already getting too damn soft, so in my opinion the last thing we need is making things easier for everyone who doesn’t want to get off the training wheels.
Hell Breath of the wild doesn’t even have an easy mode… and it is arguably the hardest Zelda to date (In terms of figuring things out, as it’s also the most mechanically complex). Oh boy I wonder why there’s no easy mode… Perhaps maybe it’s because breath of the wild is the perfect framework to allow players to learn, adapt, and grow.. Think about it.
My comment may sound anti-fun, but “fun” is subjective, and my kind of fun is having my balls pelted, overcoming the pain and eventually beating it. Because that’s life.
Even just the journey of writing this comment was one in which I suffered the inability to find the right words. And I overcame that to some degree as I now have an ending. A shit ending…
Thank GOD for MOTHER FUCKING…. Jim Sterling.