Pfft...
So I was reading some articles about Super Mario Galaxy and how it's set on beating Ocarina of Time for "best game ever" and I see lots of people commenting about how they like OoT better, and then some nut job comes along and goes on a diatribe about how "SMG and OoT are so completely vastly 100% polar opposites that you can't compare one to the other, and people are dumb when they try."
Oh really? Let's form an example here.
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Which is better? I say Oblivion. Am I allowed to say it's better? Apparently, yes, I am, because they're both the same genre. I like both, but Oblivion is my favorite out of the two and I think it's clearly the best, and I'm allowed to compare the two because they're both RPGs.
Example two.
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Megaman 5
Which is better? I say Oblivion. Am I allowed to say it's better? No, I'm not, because Megaman is a sidescroller and Oblivion is an RPG. Aka, they're "so completely vastly 100% polar opposites that you can't compare one to the other, and people are dumb when they try." I am supposedly not allowed to compare the two because they're not the same type of game.
Example three!
Side Scrolling Platformer
Role Playing Game
Which is better? I say RPG. Am I allowed to say it's better? This is where the stupidity comes into play because, see, they're both games. I'm comparing a game type to a game type. Just like I'm comparing an RPG to an RPG, and yet, at the same time, I'm comparing a Sidescroller to an RPG. Am I not allowed to say which one I think is better because they're not the same?
Example four!
Eating
Gaming
Which is better? I say... Eating. Am I allowed to say it's better? Here, again, is where the stupidity comes into play because, see, they're both "things to fill my time". Am I allowed to compare a "thing to fill my time" with a "thing to fill my time"? Just like I'm allowed to compare an RPG to an RPG? Or am I not allowed to compare them, because they're "eating" and "gaming". If I'm not allowed to compare them, why am I allowed to compare "Morrowind" with "Oblivion"? They're two different titles! But they are the same genre, so I'm allowed to.
Example five!
Living
Dying
Which is better? I say... Living. Am I allowed to say it's better? They're both "states of being", so to speak, but they're vastly different things. Is it the proverbial "Sidescroller vs RPG" or is it "state of being vs state of being"?
How about this. We can say what we like and everyone else can shut up and stop trying to rationalize away the fact that not everyone thinks the same way about everyone else! Case in point:
I prefer living over dying and eating over gaming. RPGs over sidescrollers and Oblivion over Morrowind. If I had a choice between Megaman and Oblivion, I would pick Oblivion, because I think it's better than Megaman on so many levels. That's because I also think that RPGs are better than sidescrollers. But if I had a choice between eating and playing Oblivion, I would say that eating is better than Oblivion, because I prefer eating over playing a game.
In other words?
I like Ocarina of Time over Super Mario 64. Incomparable? No. I'll show you why! Because in the grand scheme of things, you can go up one "flight" and have a list of game types. OoT is... whatever Zelda games are. For simplicity's sake, we'll just call it RPG and we'll call SM64 an adventure game. On this level of things to compare, it goes like this: RPG over Adventure over Sidescroller. I like RPGs. RPGs rank higher than Adventure games. I think Zelda is better than Mario. Are they different? Of course. Apples and oranges? Yes.
But guess what? I prefer oranges over apples. Windows over Linux! Sleeping over eating. Babylon 5 over Monk. Okami Soundtrack over Dragonforce. Chronicles of Narnia over Fahrenheit 451. Get the picture yet?