At the top of a seemingly ordinary mountain in Pokemon Silver you find a familiar figure. A few dozen or so hours before, you shrugged off the finality of the Pokemon League and indulged your motivation to continue exploring a virtual world that seemed endless to you, crossing a small unassuming river to find yourself setting foot in a whole new continent with more Gyms to conquer and new Pokemon to discover. Shocked and ecstatic to find out you knew this new world like the back of your hand, you return to an older game affected by the passage of time and your previous presence in it. Having exhausted both Johto and Kanto, you proceed past the bounds of its world and up the summit of a seemingly ordinary mountain where you find a familiar figure. To anyone who lived through that experience during their childhood and stood in front of a mute Trainer Red that threw a lvl 81 Pikachu at them, you know that at that very moment that was as good as videogames were gonna get.

And in some sense, that has always been true to me. Despite losing interest in the franchise over the years, Pokemon occupies a special place in my heart as it was the first video game I truly surrendered myself to, at a time where the magic and enigma of video games weren't lost to me and the reward of exploration and experimentation weren't bogged down by hindering familiarity with game design, and while Pokemon is now bigger than it's ever been, it has never again been able to recapture the same mania of the late 90s I was fortunate to have witnessed. Excuse me while I step away from my unbiased persona for a sec to tell you that if you didn't play Pokemon in a pre-internet age, where secrets and rumours were exchanged word of mouth by snot nosed lying kids, doing battles and trades meant having to deal with the annoying neighbour rich bully that had the one link cable, and where the game extented past the screen into a shared cult of watching the tv show, collecting the trading cards and buying the toys, then the Pokemon experience is no longer accessible to you because you simply. weren't. there.

Anyways, Arceus is none of that. Understandably and rightfully so, it doesn't try to remake the unremakeable but instead demonstrates to be the most effort Game Freak has put into the series in 20+ years of stagnation, being the closest Pokemon has ever gotten to creating the fantasy sequel me and many others envisioned all those years ago while being transfixed by a Game Boy and a small cartridge. It sounds shallow on paper, but it's astounding how drastically being able to see the critters moving around in the distance in full 3D changes the entire series. Reducing the scope beyond the simplicity of Gen 1, Arceus removes the towns, gyms, trainer battles and traditional progression of the main series to focus exclusively on the core experience of "catching them all", and while that ends up being a bare bones gameplay loop, it sustains its appeal through free form BOTW like set of landscapes that present the Pokemon as wild dangerous beasts to be carefully observed and approached and that give brief glimpses of the kind of excitement for exploration encountered in those old games of yore.

Does Arceus get a pass, that its contemporaries wouldnt benefit from, just for being Pokemon? Yeah. Catching one Pokemon means you have essentially catched them all, as they all share the same behaviors, movements and animations while stumbling about their primitive AI, battles are included in a meandering compromise of broken and mindless combat with little strategy and bond between your team, and the lack of interaction between the Pokemon and the environments they inhabit relegate the few and far between moments of personality and characterization to the quests and cutscenes. But goddammit, I'm human too, and I would be lying if I said I didn't get a sense of eager satisfaction everytime I watched that pokeball jump around into a sucessful catch. It's not the dream Pokemon game we have learned to forget over the decades, it will probably take another 20+ years to get there. But it's an evolution, and that has to mean something in the case of Pokemon.

join the two biggest fucking idiots in the world as they somehow manage to botch each worst-case-scenario they land themselves in about ten times harder than the last. the liveleak logo never goes away on this ride

yeah yeah shaky cam artifacting hard to see motion sickness; whatever. once the initial shock wears off from the hilariously grim - and frankly very well executed - snuff/found footage aesthetic this is a damn fine albeit incredibly short tps with cool set pieces and satisfying gunplay

What a Pokémon sequel?! Pokémon doesn't do sequels, they do third versions!? young me said, what a novel concept what new content shall be In this!? young me, yet to learn that there Is actually quite a bit of new content all of It pretty fun, some gym leaders that I think to this day are the best of there type, and the sequel nature of this game you get to see some classic characters grow In interesting ways, though thought this game has the problem of "to many legendary syndrome" Pokémon games following will have also, now I must be honest, out of all the Pokémon games, this Is the one I've played the least, why you may ask? Because I lost my cartage and haven't bought a new one, whoops :3c but from what I played It was fun and had a good time with It and think It really breaks from the Pokémon "wait a year and they'll be a better version" trend Pokémon have had for awhile, though think this will cause a trend In Pokémon trying to recapture this effect In the future and... failing but well get to that when we get to that :3