I find it interesting how the tables have turned however. Critically, Wind Waker HD is much more successful than Twilight Princess HD. So I guess that card cannot be used anymore.
WWHD has a Metascore of 90
TPHD currently has a Metascore of 85
You can't exclusively use re-releases as a judge of the core quality of the game, let alone use them as comparisons that trump all when you're contrasting it to another. That kind of logic is flawed when we consider a variety of factors on top of past precedents.
Let's use an example outside of Nintendo, but still on the Wii U:
Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition on the Wii U. You cannot argue that
Batman Arkham City wasn't one of the best games of the last generation, and its metacritic score reflects that. It was a fantastic game through and through, and there weren't that many glaring problems with it. But when the Armored Edition came around, its score plummeted by 10 on metacritic to a more average 85. By your logic, this must mean that
Arkham City got 10 points worse over that one year (because it is the "definite" edition with all of the DLC and new features), and now is worse than its preceding game,
Arkham Asylum, which has an 91 on metacritic. In reality, the game scored less because it wasn't new enough or an upgrade in visuals enough for reviewers to justify its price tag. (Which sounds oddly familiar........)
This completely ignores all of the various factors that one has to consider. WW's overly simplistic art-style was designed almost to where it didn't need to be judged by current standards, because it wasn't playing by current standards. This made it incredibly simple to update it to an HD format - and buyers are looking at graphical updates the most whenever they're judging a re-release of a game titled the "HD edition". This is so critical, because Nintendo refuses to drop the price of the game to a reasonable level. The player has to still pay an outrageous amount of money for these Nintendo HD games when the competition is offering the same for $40.00 or less.
This is especially true with the climate in which WW and TP were released initially. They were both Gamecube games - this isn't a scenario where one can claim that the initial reviews were so far off that somehow the standards of modern gaming have radically changed to suit one or the other. The only truly drastic difference between the two in the core factors is the graphical style, (3D Zelda is the same genre throughout) which is coincidentally the biggest factor that contributes to if I'm going to shell out $50 dollars for this 10 year old game.
Also, keep in mind the factor that many of TP's new features are locked behind amiibo, Nintendo's newest "innovation". When I have to pay $50 dollars for a 10 year old game, and I'm not even guaranteed all of the new features, how am I going to feel about that? WWHD had no amiibo, and thus no content locked behind it. It's an entirely different can of worms that contributes to if TPHD is really worth buying or not.
What am I trying to say with all of this? Metacritic averages are not the be-all end-all when we're comparing "remakes", especially "HD remakes".
