It's not quite the Doom x Hatsune Miku crossover I was hoping for but its probably as close as we're gonna get...

Hey y'all. I didn't mean for it to be nearly a month before my next review but I guess here we are now. It's not that I haven't been playing stuff either, quite the opposite actually. I've been playing way too much as a matter of fact. So much so the thought of giving all these games a thoughtful Nancyfly review is dreadful. But more on that later

Metal Hellsinger is, well it's Metal Hellsinger. A rhythm based first person shooter. I know at this point thats not quite an original concept but it still feels niche enough to call it unique. I do hope this grows into a genre that can stand on its own and I'd like to see more games like this with a different setting/type of music even. That's kinda the thing about this game. It feels likes it is laying the groundwork to pave the path forward for others like it, but ends up not really feeling satisfactory on its own.

Let's just get this out of the way - not to be disrespectful to everyone who worked on it, but nobody cares about the story. It'll get you from level to level but its largely irrelevant. A pro to it though is that the artwork in the cutscenes is quite pretty. Also gotta hand it to Troy Baker for his voice acting as Paz. I know being all like "woah, the most prolific video game voice actor of our time did a good job!?" is a bit of an eye roll but he pulled his Joel voice out of the closet and cranked it up to Sam Elliott, it's great.

Now onto what the people really care about. The music is, to nobody's surprise, really great. I'm not actually much of a metal fan. I wouldn't listen to it on my own its just not really my vibe. In video games however it does get the blood pumping, and Hellsinger is no exception. The instrumentals are solid but its when you get enough fury for the vocals to kick in where the soundtrack really shines. As for the combat, it's pretty okay. You basically just shoot and move to the beat. There's some limited weapon variety, but for a short game on a budget it does the job. I found the explosive crossbow to be awfully unreliable and the sword never necessary but the others were all fun to use. I basically stuck with The Hounds - dual revolvers - the whole way through. Mostly because I'm partial to revolvers and spinny twirly reload animations. Plus when using their ultimate your character does the same animation where your guns float as Tracer in Overwatch which I thought was funny. What does drag this game down the most is the enemies and bosses. There are definitely a few different enemy types you'll face, but for demons they have pretty mediocre designs and very few of them actually require any significant gameplay changes on your part. You'll fight so many of them, and a good few of the combat arenas last way too long. The game as fun as it is wears thin at about the halfway point. The bosses are also pretty bad. Most of them are just the same monster but with different attacks. Now this makes sense within the story but even with new movesets it just makes all the fights kinda dull (particularly one where you have to constantly wait like 15 seconds for it to reveal itself). I was never excited for or anticipating the next boss battle because I knew itd just be the same lame creature over again. The final boss is actually really cool and I enjoyed that fight a lot. I feel like if more of the fights where on that level or at least more unique this game wouldn't feel nearly as underwhelming as it does.

In the end, Metal Hellsinger delivers on the fun gameplay and good music it promised. My score may be a bit harsh - but I guess I was just expecting it to be a lot more impressive than the final cut. For the studios first game it's a great start and I'm game for a sequel. But I might not remember this one in the morning. Thanks for reading <3

Lil Update: I got the platinum! Also decided to raise the score a little bit. the hounds and music are too good to warrant a 3/5 so as of now its a very low 3.5 :p. Also would like to mention the fact that this is 40 on ps5 but 25 everywhere else is pretty insulting and gross. Just get the ps4 version you wont notice a difference

Bonus! Profile Update!
I have been on a roll so far this year, I've already beaten over 25 games. These have been of pretty varying lengths with a lot of them being quite short. (Here's a list of every one I've done https://backloggd.com/u/Nancyfly/list/games-and-dlc-completed-in-2023/) and i've been going out of my way to play some pretty awful ones too. Most namely Duke Nukem Forever, Rogue Warrior and Life of Black Tiger. Beating so many games just makes reviewing not really viable. This one here has already taken nearly an hour of my time. There's also just the fact that some games I beat I really don't have much to say about. I want the reviews on my profile to be kept to a certain quality standard here on out and some games it's just hard to have enough new to write about I can feel proud of. Trust me, I've tried. There are still a couple games I beat recently that I plan to review - DmC, Gotham Knights (which i may have some controversial thoughts on) and Dark Pictures: The Devil In Me - and I'd like to get those out sooner or later. I also plan to do a full review of every 2023 game that comes out this year that I beat. But I just don't need the pressure of reviewing everything I do and I'm not gonna force myself to continue down that route. That's why I'm working on a new backloggd list where I will do a mini review - just sharing quick thoughts on the games that don't make the cut of a standard review for whatever reason. I hope to have that started by the time I post my next review (it's still quite a lot of writing with all the games I'm behind on lol) and I'll have it linked in my bio and at the end of every review. That way I'll have a way of remembering my thoughts on a game better in the future and anyone who'd like to see what I've been playing in-between big reviews can still get their much needed dose of Nancyfly.

If you read this far, I love you, you are loved. Happy early birthday. Have a good day. Don't forget to brush your teeth. See you next time.

Nancymeter - 68/100
Time Played - 5 hours 56 minutes
Trophy Completion - 100% (Platinum #235)
Game Completion #6 of February
Game Completion #27 of 2023

I'm 35 at time of writing this which means one can make some fairly reasonable assumptions about my video game history. Chief amongst them that I was the exact perfect age to become deeply obsessed with Pokemon when it was brand new.

And I absolutely did. This series had me hooked from the very, very beginning. Over the years I've assembled a living dex and I've bought both version of every single release and I've loved them all very, very much (I love Black/White and Black 2/White 2 the most very much though).

Anywho, this one was no different. I love the new formula, I love the world, I love them cute new friends, and I loved the story.

No notes, all vibes and love.

Astro's Playroom is the most unmistakably Nintendo thing Sony has ever put out. Had this been released during the seventh generation, diehard PlayStation fans would declare it an act of betrayal. But with hindsight behind us now, I can safely say that this is infinitely more interesting than many of the grey and brown cover shooters of the day. As a tech demo, it offers a reasonable amount of insight into what you should expect from the PlayStation 5 and its DualSense controller. But as a game, it's significantly more charming than its inherently corporate premise might suggest.

The first thing that stands out to me about Astro is that it's a thoroughly adorable game. It might have been the cinema I was raised on, but I find the idea of a friendly robot cute. The robots in Astro's Playroom somewhat resemble high-tech chibi versions of Atom from Real Steel, only I want to see them hug each other instead of duking it out. However, what steals the show here is the reverence for all things Sony. As the wise Woodaba points out in their review, it does questionably paper over the cracks in Sony's history as a gaming giant. But approached at the surface level, I'm certain ninety percent of the people who play this will approach it at, it's easy to ignore. Going over to NPCs recreating scenes from games and going "holy shit, I recognize that" is the geekiest I will ever get for a piece of plastic with somebody else's name on it. Although I'm not sure how many people will get all the references. Who here remembers Super Stardust HD? Okay, but do you remember Medieval Moves: Deadmund's Quest at all? You know, that PS Move game with only 201 user reviews on its Amazon store page and a whopping 18 on Metacritic. I bet you understood the reference to a PlayStation 3 game that [barely even has a Wikipedia article dedicated to it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Moves:_Deadmund's_Quest). As somebody who was looking through IGN's Upcoming Games page daily while Sony was still hawking the Move as a legitimate way to play games, I'm better than you. Or were they referencing MediEvil? Whatever, I don't know. All kicks and giggles aside, I think it's kind of remarkable that they went that deep with their references. As for how the game plays, I think it's a pretty decent platformer. While I alluded to it being Nintendo-like in tone, it definitely doesn't have the polish of something like Super Mario Odyssey. However, it's still incredibly rewarding and has a surprising amount of challenge on its bones. The levels have a decent amount of collectibles that build to near-tangible in-game portraits and mementos from PlayStations of the past. Everything from all three models of the PlayStation 3 to a VMU-like memory card for the original PlayStation is all here, rendered in loving detail. However, the true highlight of the show here are the gimmick stages. Each of the four levels is split into two platforming segments and two gimmick segments. The gimmick segments see you using your controller differently, from a climbing mini-game to one that swaps between bowling and pinball motifs with ease. There's plenty of variety on offer, and it never feels like the developers are starting to bite off more than they can chew.

This brings me to what those controller gimmicks feel like. This is a weird one to put in writing because nothing I say here will give you the full experience. You'll either come out of Astro's Playroom fascinated with what developers might do with their games in the future, or disappointed that you just spent hundreds of dollars on what is essentially a PlayStation 4 with better specs. I love controller gimmicks and always have, and it's no different here. There were moments when I was moving around on a surface, and the first thing that came to mind was, "egads! It's like I'm actually there!" Part of that is likely a placebo aided by visual and audio elements, but let me tell you, it's a damn fine sugar pill. The adaptive triggers are great, but it's the haptic feedback that gets the spotlight here. It's used to such an extent that, played without it, this would easily be a lesser game. It's both what makes me excited for the future of gaming on a PlayStation 5 and also worried.

Part of the reason I'm writing this review now and not two years ago is because of the egregious scalping this console has had to deal with in recent memory, yes. But also, I just didn't care. When my father bought us a PlayStation 3 for Christmas using in-store credit back in 2009, it felt like a revelation at the time. My experience with gaming was strictly Nintendo stuff, and occasionally the games my dad decided to play in front of us on his computer. Sure, if you tried to pop your CD copy of The Neverhood or Myst, the PlayStation would spit it right out. But LittleBigPlanet looked so cool at the time, and although I didn't give Ratchet and Clank Future any credit back then, my older brother sure did. But then, as the years passed, something drastic happened: we had been desensitized. At a certain point during my childhood, Castle Crashers and Scott Pilgrim VS The World: The Game were among the finest experiences I had with a game. But as I'm writing this, I have a practically unused copy of Scott Pilgrim for my Nintendo Switch on the shelf behind me. I bought it online and waited months for it just to relive those memories, and by the time it came to my house, I was left with the reality that I was the only one who was willing to do that. We got our PlayStation 4 around 2015 with a copies of Destiny, LittleBigPlanet 3, Tomb Raider, and Lego Batman 3. We hardly ever touched the thing. I beat Wolfenstein: The New Order on it for the first time, and watching my father struggle with the gym section in The Last of Us became a moment to remember. But, we hardly ever touched the thing. I bought a copy of Call of Duty: Cold War off of eBay a couple of months ago because I had seen a friend of mine play it, and it seemed like an interesting game. My father has never been a big fan of Call of Duty. He's always called it what it is: junk food. We eat junk food and sometimes see it in our movie theaters, but that kind of junk food doesn't lead to years of self-doubt over how negative your experiences of "having fun" online have been over the years. I was expecting him to boot up the PlayStation the next day, realize what I had done, and ask me about it. He never did.

When my father came to me and asked if he should buy a PlayStation 5 or start looking to get one, it was a question I treated with ambivalence. I didn't give a shit before, and although some of the headlines I had read about the DualSense controller looked tantalizing, I wasn't about to start. Having tried Astro's Playroom, I feel like my younger self messing around in LittleBigPlanet for the first time as we drove to our cousin's house in southern California. Going in expecting nothing, I've been given a shopping bag full of heavy cans to donate worth of curiosity. But I also feel like my younger self trying ZombiU for the first time, being amazed by how all of the gimmicks add to the experience, and then slowly being more cynical and disappointed as I realize that that's an exception to a silent rule. I was having a conversation with my dad about the Wii U while we were clearing a spot for the PS5 to rest on. To me, the Wii U failed because it was an underpowered piece of hardware with barely any third-party games on it, confusing marketing, and that if they used the core gimmick of the console in more games, it would have been better. What he told me was that that would have been a dumb idea. Developers would have been stuck within an ecosystem that they simply couldn't port their way out of. It's for this reason alone that the version of ZombiU that dropped the U in favor of accessibility loses a touch of its magic and becomes the bland experience that the gimmicks prevented it from being.

And here's where I tie all of this nonsense into my experience with Astro's Playroom. There's a section in this game where your controls are primarily on the controller's touchpad, and I have to wonder: who the hell is ever going to use it like that again? Instead of giving their controller a Select button, Sony opted to include a giant touch-sensitive bar on their eighth-generation consoles—which developers then opted to use as a Select button, anyway. After that, one must wonder how many games will use haptic feedback and adaptive triggers like this. There are some good examples of it now, and developers don't seem to be slacking in that regard. But let's say that they stop one day or that Astro's Playroom is the greatest it will ever be. What did you spend hundreds of dollars for again? Don't say "prettier graphics." I know many of you don't like 30 frames per second, don't lie to me.

Astro's Playroom is a fantastic tech demo and an even cuter game. But like all tech demos, don't let it fool you into thinking things will always be this great.

After working my ass off, getting lucky and buying that unloved and unwanted Horizon Forbidden West bundle even though I already owned the game digital - the coveted Playstation 5 is finally mine. Nearly 600 dollars tax and shipping included, but it was mine. I bought a few games to go with it like Ratchet & Clank or Demons Souls, but the game I was actually the most excited for was Astros Playroom. I had heard many great things about the dualsense and its capabilities and that this game was a surprisingly baller tech demo. Well, thats pretty true.

The PS5 as a console kinda sucks, If im being honest. The silence compared to the PS4 is worth praying over, but it just seems to be missing a lot of features already on PS4 and I've already had my fair share of annoyances with it. But of course I bought it for the games and those have been great so far. The one thing that has not been disappointing in anyway tho is the new controller. The dualsense is dope. The haptic feedback vibrations are not game changing but they are a nice addition but the adaptive triggers are cool as shit and I love them. Astros Playroom was made specifically to show off what the controller is capable of and it does that in strides. It may very well be the greatest tech demo of all time for probably the greatest new console gimmick of all time.

The game is more than just that though. Sure its short, but in that few hour runtime there is so much creativity and joy put into it and I felt it at every moment. It is a love letter to Playstation as a whole. By far my favorite part of the game was finding all the easter eggs and references to past exclusives and IPs. All the artifact collectibles are old consoles and accessories that you can interact with. Even the trophy list is filled with references, and Its probably one of the most fun platinums i've ever got. The game also shows off how great the trophy hint feature can be and made getting all the collectibles really enjoyable. Plus there are a large number of miscellaneous trophies and I loved just doing something thinking "I wonder if Id get a trophy for this" and it actually being the case.

I don't really have a reason for not giving this a full five stars. I want it to be longer but not because its not long enough, just because I enjoyed it so much. There is even a bonus time trials thing thats thankfully mini challenge levels instead of just repeating the main missions on a timer. You can compete on the leaderboards so thats pretty fun, and of course you can just interact with all the things youve collected on the way in the hub and vibe with the game. I think I'm just worried that this is game will take the haptics as far as they go. First party developers are gonna be implementing this a lot which is great, but I just hope plenty of third party developers are able to push the dualsense to its full potential too.

I don't think I'll uninstall this game, its just too joyful.

Trophy Completion - 100% (Platinum #220)
Time Played: 7 hours 23 minutes
Nancymeter - 93/100
Game Completion #121 of 2022
September Completion #11

Hey y'all, one last review to close off the year. And a new pfp too! Goat Simulator 3 isn't exactly what I had in mind for the last game I'd end up beating this year but after so many up and downs it feels fitting to end things with a funny 6/10 meme game.

In some ways Goat Simulator 3 is a definite step up from its predecessor. It looks better, the events and missions are much easier to find. There is a homebase where new stuff is added as you level up and complete the events. Where the first game feels a bit aimless, this one having an actual structure alone makes it much better and actually leads way to a surprisingly fun finale. There are still loads of hidden secrets and easter eggs to find so the huge crowd of hard boiled Goatcore folks won't have a reason to cry about it being too streamlined and casual (who are we kidding they're one of the most well known toxic fanbases anyways). All the new additions are good. It's fun to run around as some different animals - or otherwise - and the ragdoll physics are as fun as ever. The game is intentionally unpolished, but I rarely had bugs that didnt feel fully intended besides falling out of the map once or twice. My biggest complaint is that all the minigames are locked into co-op. I played this solo so I never got to try any. The fact there's no versions with AI or anything is a pretty big letdown.

The other downside to this game isn't really its fault. The variety of the DLCS in the first game is pretty inseparable to the package as a whole, and since this game just came out It doesn't feel entirely fair to have a final word on this yet. Assuming this game continues to get updated and expanded, I am looking forward to seeing if it can one day truly surpass the original. Or not? Really I'm just happy i got this for christmas I think owning a physical copy of this for PS5 is fuckin hilarious.

Happy New Year guys. I've promised a lot of reviews and I hope to continue to provide more as I continue my gaming adventures. I appreciate any and all of you that decide to stick with me. Re4... Spider Man 2..... man next year is gonna be great for gaming. Can't wait.

Thanks for reading <3

Nancymeter - 65/100
Time Played - 8 hours 9 minutes
Trophy Completion - 81% (33/39)
Game Completion #17 of December
Game Completion #162 of 2022

Platinum fans are the Jojos fans of games, and I say this with as much derision as possible. Really, what fandom would be complete without hoards of incessant blabbermouths, who appear out of nowhere to tell you how much you’re missing out? I am certain it is a vocal minority, but it’s hard not to notice. There is a certain brand of fan that wants to make it very clear to you at every chance they can that the thing they like is both wacky and good. It’s a brand of fan I greatly dislike.

But the more I meditate on all this, the less I am able to convince myself that any of this is a bad thing. Why is people being excited about a thing, even incessantly, a bad thing? Logically, I know that being annoying is, well, annoying, but I’m not sure that the annoyance is the only thing that’s annoying me. I dislike that brand of fan, but I worry it’s pettier than that. I think I might resent them simply for being so enthusiastic. Why should I resent someone for being passionate about something they enjoy?

Through the later years of high school, I basically only had one friend. I had switched schools, and most of my human contact disappeared with it. It was an extremely dark time. That one friend really liked fighting games, (part of my apprehension around fighters starts here, too) and in that vein, really liked Platinum games. He eventually felt obligated and did dive into Jojos, too. Once, I asked if he could lend me his copy of Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 for the Wii U. But he declined, saying, “I treasure them too much” or something of that ilk. That friendship ended quite ugly. They completely stopped talking to me one day. I would occasionally bump into them at college, but they didn’t seem to want to talk to me. One day they reached out to me, asked if I wanted to meet up for some food or something. I didn’t really know how to follow up. I sort of regret not doing anything about that.

Anyway, I started playing Bayonetta, and all I could think about were the annoying Platinum fans. I try to ignore them, but it just keeps nagging at me, this blight of contrarian twinges. I write a tweet.

Platinum game fans: yeah i love Platinum games, every game they make is great! oh except that one is bad, it sucked. oh and i heard that one was trash, i didn't even play it. oh and--

This post had been in my head for a long time, months actually, and I finally just let myself post it. And you know, it’s true, it’s a pretty good goof, but I also know it was fueled a bit by spite. I hate that about me. It was a good post, but I hate that. It got a hair of attention, including from known Platinum enjoyers, so at the very least some of them took it in good sport. But what I found was that, after I had finally let the sass out, I was able to enjoy Bayonetta a lot more.

Why? Is this small act of pettiness really enough to relieve the anxiety? Is that really a healthy relationship with discourse and art? Should I vent my spite for my own good? I try to avoid being sassy and rude online. I don’t try to target people for their taste, and I try not to dunk on anything. Everytime I do, I usually feel bad. I spend so much energy repressing it. I have no shortage of snark and spite inside me. But I bottle them up like pickles, let them lactoferment in my gyri. Does that make me seem all snooty and holier-than-thou? I dunno, I just feel like I ought not. The scruples are stuck in my teeth. Do I deserve to be a little snarky? I don’t know.

I would say its similar to my response to hype, which it is, and hype has ruined so many things for me, but this has its own dimension, too. For example, it even goes backwards. I had played Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance a long time ago, and I had enjoyed it. I had fun with it. But as time passed, and I was exposed to more and more of that certain breed of fan, I began to resent the game. How dumb is that? I liked the game, now I feel worse about it because other people I don’t like also liked it. Is that really healthy?

Some years ago, on a forum, we were discussing Astral Chain. This was before it was out, during an E3. I commented that I was weary about the theming of cops. But a Platinum fan dissuaded me. Surely, Platinum, the beloved studio, would not screw this up! I said I wasn’t optimistic, given their other games. Another Platinum fan, who from now on we will call “The Vigilante”, rode in. “Um, actually, you see, Platinum games are actually the most progressive and leftist. Actually, the trailer makes it look like the cops are the bad guys. And actually, it is your ignorance on display here.” I’m of course paraphrasing, editorializing, and reading into it. But the condescension was palpable. I recognized The Vigilante as a poster who tended to roll into threads, tell people they’re wrong and dumb, and then leave. Later on in that thread, someone shared an interview with the director who said “maybe people will come away from this game with a better perspective on the police.” But The Vigilante was gone, a shadow in the night, their duty to condescend fulfilled.

Now, Astral Chain has come out, and of course I was fucking right. The game was not some scalding critique of the cops. And all I’m really able to feel is a smug sense of satisfaction at The Vigilante being full of shit. Why are they even on my mind? The Vigilante is the same reason I couldn’t stomach to enjoy any of Utena, along with, well, trying to watch it in the presence of someone much similar to them. I was told with insistence that Utena is simply the best, and to not recognize it as such is, of course, my failing. It’s the best, most queer, most philosophical, and most best anime that there ever was. And that’s all I was ever able to think about the entire time. Trying to figure out where I’m wrong, or they are. Trying to figure out if they were right to cast judgement.

You know, I literally have to excuse myself from conversations about Jojos these days. I find myself increasingly exasperated every time it comes up. And of course it will always come up, Jojo fans love letting you know that they like Jojo, that it’s so wacky and good, and that you should really understand their references. But why should I fucking care? Seeing a thousand comments on prog rock videos will things to a person, I guess. But it’s probably more likely that it’s this… weird impulse I can’t shake, that I want to rid myself of but it just clings on me like a deertick. The sad thing is that I’d probably like Jojos if I had gotten to it before I met the fans. It seems extremely stupid and sort of bad, but I like things that are stupid and bad. But I have sworn off it to spite… I don’t know who. The incessant fans? My old friend? Maybe. I don’t know.

Have you noticed I haven’t said a word about Bayonetta? About the game this is ostensibly about? Probably. It’s because I cannot rid myself of the infection of spite.

As for the game, I mostly like Bayonetta. There’s not a lot to say in one way or the other that probably hasn’t been said. There’s almost no point in me saying anything, but whatever. I thought the combat loop was slick. I enjoyed hammering out flashy combos. I think Bayonetta is a fun character. I think she’s a bit much and very obviously one man’s fetish doll, but I’m also not above admiring her sass and her ass. I legitimately enjoy this game. I probably like it more than I’m letting on. Of course, there are things I don’t like, too. I don’t like its shitty motorcycle sections, or its shitty shmup section, either. I don’t like that it asks me to dodge attacks I can’t predict right out of a cutscene. I don’t like Luka. I don’t like its shitty quicktime events. And I dont like its awkward camera either. But all this is relatively small, right? I’ve loved games despite worse. And when I think about what I don’t like about Bayonetta (or Revengeance, for that matter), the first things that come in to my head are people like The Vigilante. Nothing to do with the game itself. Just things about discourse, people talking about how superior it is, about how the game is secretly feminist, how it’s secretly queer, how everyone says its simply the best combat in the universe, how Platinum fans are convinced these are some obscure niche kino, and… well, you get it.

These things aren’t that complicated. Sometimes the thing you like is not so transcendental. So much stuff has been pitched to me as the best, and I wish people would just tell me what it is without the effusive hyperbole. I don’t want hype, I don’t want to be told “you cannot predict what will happen” or that “you cannot oversell this”. You can, and you will. Maybe it’s my fault for taking people at their word, or my fault for getting so obsessive. I’m sure I’ve done the same. But fuck, man. Just let them be the things they are, whether they’re corny magical girl anime or sunshine pop or a wacky martial arts movie or a campy and horny hack’n’slash. Sometimes that’s all they are, and that is why they’re good. Platinum games are dumb action games, and that’s why they’re fun. It’s not complicated. I just wish people told me this stuff.

It’s so dumb. I know it’s dumb, but it just won’t go away. I felt judged, and I want to judge back. But I hate judging people. It makes me feel sick. So instead I just have this festering mass in my noggin, glowering down. I have so many examples of things like this in my life. Is this what people think about me when I talk about the things I love? Is that why I’m so afraid to do it? Is it because I can find so little in my life to enjoy enthusiastically that I feel envious? Or am I just being a snob? Am I really so petty? Am I so contrarian? Am I still upset about my old friend? Am I envious of the fans? Why do I have to obsess over what The Vigilante and other jerks think? Why do I let things be ruined by people I don’t respect? And why do I care so much about what they think about me?

There’s no moral to this. I just wish my brain wasn’t like this.

I'm done.

I'm done playing you Pokémon. I'm bored. You're boring me.

You know, I can forgive a technical mess. I think it's quite frankly absurd that this is the most broken major release of a video game since Cyberpunk 2077 and if this was any other franchise we'd be talking about it in the same breath as that game's disastrous launch. But at the same time, I'm the guy who likes Sonic 2006. I think it's perfectly fine to enjoy a game even despite its overwhelming issues. I think it's important you acknowledge those issues, which a large portion of the Pokémon fanbase refuses to, but it's entirely possible to see the good through the bad and find enjoyment in something so deeply flawed.

I'm much, MUCH less forgiving of a game that bores me, especially one that finally moved in the direction I had always hoped it would, only to massively drop the ball in the process. This game should have been a slam dunk in spite of Game Freak's incompetence, and that it isn't means I'm going to be immensely harsh in my review of it. I had to force myself to see this through to the end, something I once thought impossible for a franchise I truly loved. New Pokémon games were an event for me. Something I looked forward to years in advance. But now I'm struggling to finish them. This was that uninteresting to me. It speaks volumes.

So how did we get here, especially after the disaster that was Sword and Shield? Those games that had previously put me off the franchise forever? Well, there are three answers to this. The first is that I got this game for free. Let's just say my uncle who works at Nintendo hooked me up with a copy. I vowed they wouldn't get my money after Gen 8 unless they delivered something different and of quality and I'm glad to see I was right in that stance. I realize this ultimately amounts to nothing as Scarlet and Violet will undoubtedly be the best-selling games of the year. The Pokémon Company clearly realized long ago they didn't have to put real effort into these games when people just buy them anyway. Still, for my own peace of mind, I refused to purchase it.

Second of all, I have said I would at least be willing to give the franchise another chance if they drastically changed their approach to making these games, at least in terms of their design. Sword and Shield had many flaws but a major one was its inability to free itself from Pokémon's outdated handheld framework. Scarlet and Violet's switch to an open-world style certainly fits the criteria of a major change, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least a bit curious about how their take on that type of game ended up, especially as I do enjoy the junk food style of game that is the open world genre.

And third, perhaps the most simple of all to understand: "The Rubberneck Factor." This game is a trainwreck from a technical perspective, and social media has been flooded with all manner of hilarious bugs and glitches consistent with a Cyberpunk-level disaster as previously mentioned. It's like noticing a car burning on the side of the road: you can't help but want to stop and see for yourself, and I certainly found myself drawn to Generation 9 in that regard. I wanted to bear witness to just what the hell went wrong here.

However, let's put the technical bellyflop of this game aside. That part doesn't even interest me, and I'm actually a little sad I didn't encounter some of the more egregious bugs in my game. It was largely just the standard jank and lack of polish you'd already expect from the latest entry in Nintendo's Madden series. The yearly releases of this franchise certainly don't do it any favors, and I imagine a lot of this could and would have been cleaned up if Game Freak were given more time to develop their titles. However, the fact that people pounce on this as the perceived singular reason for the game's lack of quality misses the larger picture. The problems go much deeper, and I simply do not believe this studio is capable of making this type of game regardless of how long you give them.

So let's work from the beginning. Like every Pokémon game, you start in your own home, pick a starter Pokémon, and head off on a grand journey. However, Scarlet and Violet have a bit of a twist, where you're enrolled in a school at the start of the game, which works as the framing device for your adventure. It soon becomes apparent, though, that this is nothing more than window dressing, as the school itself serves little importance and clashes majorly with the open-world nature of the game. You're thrust out of your school almost immediately after arriving, and you're given few reasons to ever return. Why they felt the need to go this route, I have no idea, aside from perhaps a minor change of pace. But hey, at least it locks you into a school uniform for the entire game, restricting the ability to fully customize yourself that was present in the past several generations of Pokémon titles. Game Freak sure loves to take things away from players for absolutely no reason, don't they?

Also early in the game, you meet Nemona, your overly-excitable rival, who also has a slightly different twist: she's already a Champion level trainer. In theory, this gives you a concrete goal to strive towards, but in reality, I never once bought her as a Champion, and if they wanted to go the route of having someone stronger that you felt incentivized to chase, a more antagonistic rival would have been preferred. But, at this point, Game Freak seems to be adverse to ever going back to that archetype, so it's almost pointless to complain. I wish they would ditch the rival aspect of these narratives altogether if they're going to keep doing this, much as they did in Pokémon X & Y where your rivals were more of a friend group who all went through the same journey together as you did. I enjoyed that framing a lot better.

Before going to the Academy to officially start your adventure, you're thrust into an early taste of Generation 9's big shift in gameplay paradigm: the open world. There's a pretty large field to free roam about, crawling with dozens of Pokémon that you'll probably barely see until you step on them because seemingly half of all Pokémon in this game are so small they can be hard to distinguish from the environment. I have no idea why this was such an issue this time around, whereas it never cropped up in Scarlet and Violet's protoform design of the Wild Area in Sword and Shield, but it bothered me the whole way through the game. I also didn't care for how many Pokémon this game throws at you in this first area, as you're never really given enough time to bond with your initial catches before moving on to the next shiny thing that pops up in front of you.

After your very brief trip to school, you're presented with the three narrative quests that form the backbone of Scarlet and Violet's adventure: Victory Road, Starfall Street, and Path of Legends. Victory Road is your standard Pokémon fare, where you seek out eight Gym Leaders, earn their badges, and face the Elite Four on the road to becoming Champion. Along the way to earning those badges, you'll have to do Gym Tests before taking on the actual Leaders, and boy let you tell you, these are some of the worst excuses for "gameplay" you'll ever find. Do you love baby games like Hide and Seek? Simon Says? Where's Waldo? Game Freak has you covered! It's quite honestly embarrassing that the devs thought this was legitimate content, with the Olive Roll minigame taking the cake in terms of pure awfulness. It's like someone's first high school computer programming assignment. I can't believe they got rid of previous games' fun little gym puzzles for this garbage.

Starfall Street and Path of Legends both constitute part of the game's overall story and are required for the ending, but truthfully they feel more like long side quests. This isn't a bad thing, however, and I actually do wish these games leaned harder into their JRPG roots with more side content and character stories. Granted, the stories you follow in both of these (taking on the "villainous" Team Star and helping a fellow student track down Titan Pokémon) aren't particularly compelling, but at least they tried. Unfortunately, between these three quests, that's really all you're going to find in terms of content here, and leads to my biggest issue with these games and why I was so fundamentally bored with them: there's an open world, but there's nothing to do in it.

If you're going to make an open-world game, you REALLY need to nail the actual world aspect of that. It needs to feel like a living, breathing, flourishing environment that you want to become immersed within. Scarlet and Violet do not do this. I quickly found myself simply going from Point A to Point B in my quests because there was simply nothing else to do. There are a lot of Pokémon to be found, for sure, but at this point in the series' lifespan just catching these things isn't enough anymore, and that's literally all there is to do! The game doesn't even force you into trainer battles anymore. There's just a small handful of them in every area, so spread out that you rarely encounter them. There's nothing to see, there are no interesting landmarks to explore, and there are no dynamic events happening. You just go and catch the same Pokémon you've been catching for years, with a smattering of new ones, and that's only if you feel like it, as the game gives no real incentive for catching things anyway. Why would it, after all? This is no longer the "Gotta Catch Em All" franchise.

It's like they started from the baseline of "let's make an open world game" but didn't consider what goes into making an INTERESTING open world game. Instead, it just retrofits the old way of playing Pokémon on top of this new system, with the only major change being the ability to do things in any order, even though you'll still mostly stick to what you're capable of anyway, lest you be severely under-leveled or locked out of certain areas until you acquire new movement abilities. Open-world games kind of work on a hamster wheel, always giving you something to do, something to work towards, something shiny to collect as you make your way through the world, but there's no hamster wheel here. You fight the gyms, you defeat the evil team, you take down big Pokémon with health bars - all stuff that's been in previous games. In between, you're helplessly bored.

Perhaps some of this could have been mitigated with an interesting and diverse region to inhabit, but instead, you're stuck looking at the same five GameCube textured environments the whole way through. There's no sense in wondering what's around the corner because you know nothing will be there anyway. Towns and cities also suffer in this department, as they're purely cosmetic and feel more like fake towns used for nuclear testing purposes than actual lived-in human dwellings. You can't even go in buildings for fuck's sake, one of the most basic staples of an RPG. There are no exciting events, no weird back alleys to get lost in, and absolutely no one interesting to talk to. This is by far the most generic ass world of any game I've ever played. If you're expecting anything as whimsical as Fortree or Laverre City in this generation, you certainly won't find it.

A lot of people have claimed this is a Switch issue; that it's just not powerful enough to create big, detailed open worlds that perform at least reasonably well, but that's such horseshit. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 came out three months ago, guys. It's a perfect comparison to see just what Pokémon could be, but never will. Funnier still are those who claim screenshots of Pokémon that make it look bad are just cherry-picked out of context when you can literally stand in any place in Xenoblade, take a screenshot, and have it filled with some of the most breathtaking visuals you'll see in any game, let alone on the Switch. As a Nintendo fan, I get it, graphics aren't everything, but it's really hard to get immersed in a world with this little effort put into it.

I'm not saying Game Freak needs to make something like Xenoblade or that they need to measure up to the impossible standard that is Monolithsoft, but is it too much to ask for at least some degree of creativity? It's not there, and with this being their fourth major release on the platform now, I think it's safe to say we have a body of evidence that supports that. I used to think Game Freak made their games in a vacuum and that's why they feel so behind the times, but it's actually more like they exist on a planet 10 light years away from Earth, where information about video games a decade ago are only now just getting to them. How else do you explain that they put goddamn enemy base raids into a Pokémon title, the most boiler-plate open-world content you could possibly come up with? Enjoy letting the game play itself for you before fighting the same car five times in a row.

Don't even get me started on the Pokémon or character designs here, which are the absolute worst in a series that has traditionally had some outstanding ones over the years. This new batch of Pokémon feels particularly uninspired, and I wonder if they're genuinely running out of ideas. Hell, they finally added a dolphin Pokémon after all this time and then proceeded to make its evolution the worst atrocity ever committed in these games. Oh, but at least there's a le chonkin' pig Pokémon, another kooky crab Pokémon, and oh yeah, a flamingo Pokémon. They didn't even bother to stylize that one; it's just a flamingo. In what I can only describe as an act of malicious compliance, I proceeded to use this stupid thing throughout the entire game. At least it was useful.

Presentation-wise, it's just as bad, and it feels like there was actually negative effort put into this aspect of the game. Can we get some fucking voice acting already? It's 2022 for fuck's sake. I don't even care if it's bad voice acting, it's still better than what we have now. You can't keep putting musical acts performed by mimes in these games and expect me to get invested in this shit. It further underscores that no matter how far these games have come, no matter how much they try to sell you the illusion of doing something different, it's still just the same dated design philosophy it's always been. They couldn't even be bothered to design cool and unique rooms for each of the Elite Four; you just fight them in a big empty room on a basic battlefield. Way to hype up what should be the culmination of your journey, guys.

That said, I will give credit to one thing, which is the endgame story. Area Zero represents the one genuinely good idea Scarlet and Violet bring to the table, and how your story ultimately coalesces around it is legitimately interesting. It's the most I've ever felt like I was playing a true JRPG in a Pokémon setting since Colosseum, something Game Freak didn't even make. Unfortunately, it's too little too late by that point, and I also can't help but feel that despite how interesting it is, it would have been done even better in the hands of a more competent team. The entire game really should have revolved around this concept instead of surfacing it to you at the 11th hour.

There are also plenty of little things that I haven't covered but honestly don't even care enough to delve deep into, like the new Terastallization gimmick, which hey, if you want to talk about running out of ideas, here you go. I thought Dynamax Pokemon in Sword and Shield were a pretty lazy gimmick, but now make way for crystal hats that change your type. Real thrilling stuff here. There are some nice quality-of-life improvements, like the ability to press one button and instantly use potions to heal your Pokémon, but for some reason, you can't do the same for reviving them or cleansing status conditions, so it comes off as a completely half-baked implementation of what should be a better feature. I can't stand how your map rotates with you, so whenever you open it, you're completely disoriented from where you want to go. The music is awful and sounds like AI-generated approximations of what a Pokémon soundtrack usually sounds like. The new ancient and future variations of certain Pokémon are interesting ideas on paper, but in practice, they just look stupid, and why do these Pokémon have generic descriptions instead of real names? I hate it. I hate so much of this game.

The only saving grace of Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet is that this franchise can no longer hurt me anymore. I stopped caring after Sword and Shield ruined the veneer of what was my favorite series of all time, but in doing so exposed just how shallow and dated these games actually are now. Don't let anyone tell you great ideas are lurking under the game's serious technical problems; this is largely the exact same shit it's always been, and I'm bored with it. The open-world design, the one thing I always thought I wanted for this franchise, turned out to be the game's biggest anchor in terms of enjoyment. They couldn't have missed harder if they tried, and now that they've pulled the trigger on this new style of game and failed, there's really nothing left to be hopeful for. This was their one chance to finally bring this franchise into the present day and make something of it again.

But they didn't. They failed. Please let someone else have Pokémon, because Game Freak will never change, never grow, and never be capable of delivering anything but the most barebones experience possible. It's truly embarrassing at this point. You'd never know it was a game in the highest-grossing media franchise of all-time looking at it. But people keep eating this up, so I guess they're just giving the audience what they want. I guess I'm the crazy one to keep demanding something better for a franchise that deserves it.

Fuck you Ed Sheeran.