(This is mostly directed at NSMB2 and a bit of SM3DL)
Alright. *breath*
First off, the level design is pretty bad. The levels are extremely boring, with the only "gimmicks" being either used before (autoscrolling) or incredibly tedious/boring (going off-screen in a place makes the camera pan upwards revealing secret location, touching a certain tile reveals stuff) and Star Coins and other secrets either hidden by the ridiculous gimmicks or either being put in stupidly difficult positions (prime example being the one Star Medal in one of the beach levels in SM3DL, where you have to abuse the Boomerang Suit to get it).
The bosses are getting incredibly repetitive as well. I'm getting tired of the "stomp, run, stomp, run, stomp, dead" pattern which is oh so overused with Boom-Boom/Pom-Pom, the Koopalings, and Bowser Jr. You see, NSMB (original) had great bosses because it was a mix of veteran bosses (Petey Piranha, Bowser, Mega Goomba in a way) and brand-spanking-new powered up versions of the common mooks we see so often (Mummipokey, Cheepskate, Lakithunder, Mole Tank). The other two NSMB games have the Koopalings, Bowser Jr, and Bowser. The one problem with Bowser is that in recent games it's been fucking easy SMB1 style" first form, and then all of the sudden, "fake plot twist bowser turns giant run for your life" second form. Nintendo's become guilty of this since NSMBWii.
The powerup selection is a bad offender. This bad habit of "introduce new powerup (Boomerang Suit, Gold Flower) and bring back old one (Tanooki Suit, Super Leaf) to make veterans happy" is making me want to vomit all over Nintendo's headquarters. This trick isn't working. Either introduce a whole new cast of creative powerups (like NSMBWii) or bring back a barrel full of old ones and fan favorites like the Cape Feather and Kuribo's Shoe.
The problem is that younger kids can't tell if the game's quality, for other than Virtual Console and eBay they have no access to older, more creative games, and even if they did get their hands on them they most likely would criticize them for being "old" and "the graphics aren't good" because everyone fucking cares if the graphics are HD. The graphics (and gore level, apparently) shouldn't control what games you play. This problem is giving Nintendo little incentive, which is why we've been getting so many vanilla games lately.
