Playing the game part way through is generally enough to judge it, actually. Unless it changes a LOT later in (which is generally somewhat bad design IMO), you'll still have gotten a feel for it and know if it's very good or not (unless you only beat the first level/area or something). And you don't need to play all the games in a series to judge a single one.
Seems like, yeah. Kinda funny that Nintendo flipped around and did the hardcore gaming thing all of a sudden just as Sony and Microsoft started doing the motion controls. :xd: I'm not sure how long this trend will continue, as it might just be for this batch of games. We'll see.