I've had a lot of problems with Nintendo since the Wii came out. Both the 360 and the PS3 play HD games; they both have media capabilities; they both have easy to use online friend systems; the Wii does not. But, the thing that bothers me most about the Wii is Nintendo's incessant recycling of games and characters.

I know there are a lot of people out there who hate it when somebody says that it's time for a franchise or character to die, but Mario and Luigi have been around longer than most gamers. My problem with this is that, so far, the Wii's good games have been dominated by Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. This is cheating!

The games may be good, but think about the amount of concept time that is put into these games. I can't imagine that it's nearly as much as a new IP. Every time a new Mario game is released we know who the character's are and what they look like, not that they've been given any depth over the last twenty years. We know who the enemies are, not that they've been given any motive for two decades. We know what the levels will look like, not how they will be designed, but the color pallet, the backdrops of desert, hills, haunted castles, etc.

Nintendo games are repackaged with a new story (and I use that word loosely) and new levels and sold over and over again. Every time you play a Mario game, we know taht mushrooms and stars are good. Every time we play a Zelda game we know that we'll have a sword, boomerang, bow, and they'll be used to solve puzzles.

You can't suggest that Mario leave the mushroom kingdom behind and be thrust into an action game because that wouldn't be a "Mario" game, and that is exactly my point. The games have become one dimensional and predicatable. We couldn't take Zelda and make it a Mario style platformer.

What irks me the most is taht game critics continue to give these games good review scores. I can understand your average joe liking Mario because it's entertaining, but that doesn't make it good. I thought Transformers 2, with it's fighting robots and big explosions, was entertaining but that doesn't make it a good movie. It was filled with plot holes and bad jokes but had enough testosterone to keep my attention from wandering. As an average, run-of-the-mill idiot, I am enitled to being entertained by mindless robot violence and scantily clad robot women. MOVIE CRITICS CAN'T!!! And almost all of them slammed Transformers 2 for being ridiculous. WHY AREN'T GAME CRITICS SLAMMING NINENDO??? They must have figured out by now that Nintendo is reselling games.

When you become a professional critic of something you need to look out for the good of the thing that you are critiquing. You should be held to a higher standard than us normal entertainment junkies. Sure we'll think your stuck-up and that you've forgotten what video games are all about, but in the end, we'll respect you for safeguarding our video games; for being able to look at something that appears shiny and new and recognize that it's the same crap we've been feasting on for years, it's just been repackaged in gold pained tin foil!