Games

I say this as someone who actively criticizes Nintendo and refuses to buy their hardware after years of anti-consumer nonsense: Some of the Metroid Prime 4 discourse has gone completely off the rails.

There’s a difference between legitimate criticism and whatever this new wave of reactionary negativity is. And Prime 4 has become the perfect example of the latter.

Nintendo Fans/haters are in one of these 2

Toxic Positivity:

“You’re not allowed to criticize anything.”

Toxic Negativity:

“You’re not allowed to like anything.”

Both shut down actual conversation. Both punish nuance. Both lead to low-effort, shallow takes.

which THEN leads to something as harmless as A scene of soldier being excited to meet Samus, the most FAMOUS bounty hunter in-universe getting elevated to “METROID IS DEAD, RETRO IS INFECTED BY MARVEL WRITERS, CORPORATE NIGHTMARE.”

It’s no longer: “Here are genuine issues with Nintendo.” It’s turning into: “Everything Nintendo does is bad, automatically"

They’re doing reactionary negativity: Bad-faith takes (“NPC = Forspoken writing”), Terminal fandom paranoia (“20 studios worked on it, must be bad!!!!”), Culture war stuff (“Marvel cringe!!”), Doomposting

what used to be calling out anti consumer practices by Nintendo but now is just hating anything with Nintendo tag on it.

You can criticize Nintendo, You can call out bad decisions, You can be skeptical, You can still be excited for Prime 4, You can acknowledge a good thing when you see it.

and most importantly: you can chill the fuck out