Yes, but again, something being popular doesn't mean it's actually good. I could point you to plenty of shitty media that people love and think is legitimately amazing. You're saying that popularity doesnt equal quality, and your logic behind it is that a bunch of people thought it was good, so it must be good.
I'm not saying the people who love it are lying, I'm saying they're either seeing it through rose tinted glasses or straight up just enjoying something that is not very well made. Both of which people do all of the time.
And overall I disagree with your idea that quality is determined by consensus.
I didn't say popular means it's good. Transformers and Adam Sandler movies are popular but most people know they're watching junk.
You
really don't see how ridiculous and self-absorbed you're being by saying or implying that someone is wrong, has poor taste, is being blindly nostalgic, but
you know what you're talking about in regards to this thing as if you have greater wisdom or insight? Like... who are
you?
3D platformers were huge and a choice genre in the PS1/N64 era. Banjo came out and it had, for its time, an enormous hub world, huge seamless stages, phenomenal console graphics, fantastic music, tight controls, challenging platforming, great bossfights (especially that final boss), replayability, and a ton of secrets. It checked off every box and not in a rudimentary way like many other middle of the line platformers coming out then. These are facts. If you don't care for that, fine, whatever. But if you had no strong disdain for platformers, chances are you came to the same conclusions. So...
Where do the rose tinted glasses come into play here? They don't; if you liked something back then and you were mature and fully cognizant of what you were experiencing, that's not misremembering something as better than what it was (not all of us were 5 years old when we were playing N64 and then later reminiscing through foggy memories). I said myself Banjo is kind of boring now, but it was easily worthy of being named alongside Mario 64 as one of that console generation's best games.
Again, how do we know if a game was generally great at all? Because a bunch of people -- on the consumer side, the professional reviewer side and the industry side leading to praise and mimicry-- played it said it was good. And they significantly outnumber the ones who disliked it to an extent where it can reasonably be concluded that the majority did think the game was quite good. That's it. It's not that complicated and there's no other way to determine it. It just comes down to people.
Your argument on why Banjo is bad boils down to you personally thinking it was shit and that trumps history. You somehow (rather arrogantly) have much better tastes than everyone else.... you alone know the
REAL reasons people got tricked into liking Banjo or deluded themselves into thinking it was any good... therefore you must be right and they all must be wrong. That sums up your statements. Fact you can't see how incredibly silly you're being is perplexing.