God of War (2018) is a solid game wrapped up in an unbelievable amount of 8th generation nonsense. There's a relatively compelling emotional narrative here, alongside serviceable combat and some pretty good looking vistas. Unfortunately, it's just dragged down by so much needless filler and so many boring puzzles.

The central narrative is what compelled me to keep playing. Kratos and Atreus make for an interesting pair, and the father-son issues grow and change in interesting ways throughout the game's 20ish hours. It's never really all that shocking, but watching Kratos' icy exterior slowly defrost is fun regardless. The side characters are a mixed bag. Sindri and Brok are mostly annoying, Waititi-esque comedians that left me wishing they would shut up, but Mimir is a welcome addition that really helps break up the silence between Kratos and Atreus. Freya is a little all over the place but her presence is at least warranted and she serves a good purpose. Since netiher Thor nor Odin are actually in this game, Baldur is pretty much the main villain and he does not live up to that title.

Combat is frustrating. This game's difficulty balance is all over the place in the worst of ways. Regular enemies are complete fodder, but bosses have like 2.5x the amount of health they feel like should have and do exponentially more damage. The game's reliance on the over-the-shoulder camera for the cinematic views results in some of the clunkiest camerawork in combat I've seen recently. Compare this to Resident Evil 4, which I just played, and the difference is night and day. In RE4, the camera's perspective is baked into the game design, not the cinematic design. This means that enemy encounters are built in such a way that managing your blind spot while shooting is key part of how the game plays. In God of War, it feels like the opposite, and like the combat designers had to work around the issue instead of integrating it. As a result, you get some extremely irritating enemy placements in your blindspot, and the bright red indicator for an approaching enemy or projectile is lazy and ugly. Bosses, particularly the atrocious Dark Elf Lords, will routinely fall out of combos and runic attacks, and generally just get to do whatever they want, pushing you around and using invincible flying projectiles.

What I mentioned in the intro is the game's biggest failing. What I'm calling "8 generation bullshit" refers to the endless use of levers to raise gates, freezing gears to stop things moving or to move them, waiting on slow elevators, climbing up marked rock faces, and having to get stupid metroidvania upgrades to open places. Furthermore, it heavily features a completely useless gear and stats system, ala Assassin's Creed Odyssey. There's even COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS levels! The XP and money you get are pretty much required, as the game's open world is so narrow as to be essentially linear. If that's the case, why do I even have to craft armor and get weapon upgrades? It's not like there's any large portions of the game where you can miss tons of XP, so the need to "build" your Kratos is completely unnecessary. I reached 100% on the skill chart at like 80% of the way through the game with no side content completed, so why do I have to gather thousands of bits of XP anyway? Why does loot drop on the ground? These decisions are utterly baffling to me as they do nothing but get in the way of the emotional narrative being told. I've seen this game compared to Uncharted 4 several times as a not dissimilar emotional reboot / ending to earlier campier iterations. I feel like the comparison does not act in God of War's favor, as Uncharted 4 completely eschews the numerical, gamey nonsense in order to make its narrative as immersive as possible. Drake doesn't have to level up his weapons perks to fight, and the game is all the better for it.

In that same vein, the pacing is just too slow. I actually quite like how this game's main quest is actually just an errand of sorts, waylaid by the plot, but it just takes way too long to actually happen. Toss in the endless and extremely boring puzzle rooms where you have to do 1 thing with either the axe or chains in 3 different ways, interspersed with combat encounters, and it just adds up to too much. I think there are entire setpieces you could easily cut from this without missing anything. Even the setpieces I did like felt like they went on way too long, like the flying ship or Tyr's vault.

The good stuff: It's quite pretty, especially with the PS5 update option. The cinematic camera, while pretty dumb in combat, does give the game a nice flair that puts Kratos in the center of the action and grounds all the setpieces. The dragon boss is the peak of the game. It's inventive and silly and absurdly over the top, which is a welcome change from fighting recycled elemental trolls that all die the same way. Mimir's a very good addition to the crew. The stuff with Jormungandr is probably the only time it feels like it actually manages to achieve a sense of scale, and I quite like those segments. The leviathan axe itself is a fantastic weapon, and throwing it and having it come back pretty much never gets old - a great use of a kinetic ability that the player is rewarded for constantly using. The first trip to Thamur's corpse to find the shard of the hammer is probably my favorite in the game, and it's the only time where it felt to me like the level design was anything interesting. The final section of the game is pretty strong (even if the boss is recycled), and the final cutscene is nice.

I did end up playing through the whole thing and bought a copy of Ragnarok, so take my criticisms with a grain of salt. It's enjoyable popcorn material that feels uninventive in its use of the played-out systems that defined the PS4 era. If you can get past that, you'll enjoy it. I wavered a bit between a 3 and a 3.5 but the final hours had so much of the "go here, pull this lever, fight this combat encounter, now do it again on the other side" that I had to lower it. Looking forward to Ragnarok regardless.

What exactly makes a game feel substantial? What makes a game 'high-quality' or 'worthwhile'? Typically, I'm pretty generous with my opinions towards games as my tolerance for certain bullshit tends to land fairly high. Jank in gaming has become a topic concerning gaming for a while as the medium's tactile and performance based systems lend to experiences that are more wonky than just the usual camp of plots and movies or the experimentation/freeform in music genres. Recently it feels as though there's been a bit of an upsurge in the enjoyment of such jank in gaming, the bizarre occurrences of constant glitches and bugs, inconsistent performance, low budget modelling/animations and sluggish gamefeel. Truth be told I do quite enjoy a lot of games with these elements: the No More Heroes games are clunky as hell, Earthbound stands among snes zeniths of the rpg with its vomit color palette and dopey vibes, Super Mario Sunshine is barely Mario game to be honest, the list goes on. Jank is a hard thing to exactly qualify and put into any form of cogent matter. People will always have their own strides and beats to go by, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So what's up with Pokemon, anyway? What has happened with the current state of the series and the bar for quality, exactly? The literal biggest media property in the world and it looks, feels and runs worse than so many other game's I've played this year that aren't even the typical AAA affair. The usual discussion has already been passed around half to death though, most of us know. Graphics look bad -> game runs bad -> buggy as hell -> dev team was split between this and PLA -> game needed more time, etc. All of this is true and more perplexing considering the Game Informer interview that was done explaining that the games and teams really don't have as pressing a deadline as one would ponder, given the amount of times people bring up TPC or Nintendo perhaps wanting to push out games on a yearly basis. The Pokemon Paradox is one I've been tackling on and off over the course of my life as a long time pokemon fan and its one that I don't know how best to tackle given the bizarre nature of the team behind the game and the nature of Pokemon as a series in general. I would absolutely murder several people to obtain some form of design doc for one whole generation of Pokemon just to understand the philosophy of why somethings are set, designed, paced, presented and measured in the way that they are. Perhaps it's not nearly as complex as I think it is but sometimes I think as far back as Gen 2 where several mediocre pokemon get bogged down by having a 'Slow' exp yield, on par with legendaries, despite them not having similar stats or builds (Lanturn???). All in all the series, even at it's height has always had problems and goofs that I can't particularly ignore. Black and White, it's sequels included, also contains its fair share of nitpicks and dips despite them being some of my favorite games of all time. The issue starts to become apparent when these small dips and perplexing choices are compounded by overarching, glaring flaws that have been stretched out pretty much since the games went 3D. A long list of the games 'dumbing down', running poorly, over-polishing, over-reliance on nostalgia, linear objectives and lack of engaging cast have been tossed about since Gen 5 ended (and some will argue started with Gen V, e.g. its linearity). The paradox is that despite these complaints people keep buying these games because they're brainless they're...actually I really don't know. Truth be told I actually skipped out on Gen 8, which I continue to not regret as we progress further from that game's release. What was admittedly an omission of purchasing the game out of spite and stubbornness against GF's lack of growth soon turned into me actually opening up my eyes and just realizing the game just looked really boring and dry, even looking back I'm not sure I really missed out on anything other than having a good reference as to what changed from said games to these current ones (Sidenote: on top of that I was also mentally prepping for the eventual 'sister' game for gen 8- so much for that I guess). That's when I became increasingly confused by people who came back after beating it stating 'it's got problems', as though it didn't seem apparent several weeks beforehand. I was befuddled by people that would continue to complain and bitch about the series all the while continuing to purchase the games, despite how lackluster or dire much of them looked. I skipped out on BDSP as well, only to jump back in with PLA. Despite my own criticisms regarding PLA I could at least remain content having purchased after beating it as at the time it did seem like a new direction for the series and many were praising it's new form, unfortunately it just didn't resonate with me by the end. So then the timeline arrives at Scarlet and Violet to show off what bold directions the series takes with regard to the open world renaissance- for what seems like the third time. A lot of stuff is pretty much riding on this game's release; despite Gen 8's wild area the game still remained fairly linear in its plot progression and PLA's open world left a lot to be desired. Now is the time that Pokemon tackles a truly open world experience.

Honestly, I can't really believe it. Legitimately as I'm typing out my thoughts not just on the game but series up to this point I'm kinda struck perplexed as I can't say I was let down. In fact the best way I can describe my feeling is that my engagement with the game inversely relates to PLA as I felt myself trudging through the first few hours of the game, left thinking "this is it? this is what the open world of pokemon is?" only to end up realizing how glad I am it really is just that, and to focus on just the plot, which ended up being great! To slow down a bit, I believe I mentioned in my PLA review or perhaps in passing with friends but I'm incredibly sick of open worlds by this point. The massive scale, constant barrage of stuff is very much appreciated but I can only handle like, two a year at this point. Even then there's so much I haven't gotten back to like Witcher 3, Death Stranding, any Elder Scrolls that I'm really starving for something way smaller in scale. This is perhaps a bit of cope but unironically thank god I was able to beat this game in like a week's time it's been so long since I was just able to do that, plus there's post game stuff that actually seems really neat this time around!

Anyway, for a more precise rundown on the state of ScVi, I'll start with this: I really did hate that first day or so. The first day was purely just going to the main town getting the three sidequests, getting Miraidon unlocked and beating the first gym. While pushing that Olive was funny I was extremely whelmed by the complete lack of anything on the overworld other than Pokemon. There's items, TMs, gimmeghoul coins(she gimmeghoul til i coin, as my roommate/his gf says) and other shiny pick-ups but like, I was waiting for some other kind of pick up like the Spiritomb spirits or some other objective on the map to tickle my sense of exploration. Admittedly this is about where the explorative aspect of the game ends, there really isn't that much to distract you aside from pokemon and trainers. I was left thinking about how excellently SMTV transitioned into an open world with its litany of collectables and currencies to entice players, as well as the richness of the Ghost of Tsushima with its numerous side missions that can range in rewards like equips and power ups for Jin, which don't parallel well with pokemon obv, or customizations option which I think would have been kinda neat all things considered. I rarely go into any of the boutiques in these games -I just happened upon the 'Daft Punk' gold helmet and ran with that the rest of the game- but I would have liked if customizables were just scattered or rewarded throughout the openworld, maybe for doing side tasks or filling out certain pokemon's dex entries. They had something similar in SuMo where you would get a monetary reward but I wish there was more of a personal request to seek out certain pokemon on certain routes. This is especially the case as I feel as though it's really hard to really know where pokemon are this time around. There's certainly a lot more pokemon this time around and I know a good chunk of where some are but I was kinda pressed throughout the early game hoping I didn't pass a location not realizing it had a pokemon I wanted to catch. One of the benefits earlier pokemon had in its routes was that the litany of trainers in a route could potentially hint at nearby pokemon by including said pokemon on their teams. Here, trainer's are much more thinly spread through a route and have so few pokemon that it's a bit harder to tell what shows up where. Additionally, the map's 'radar' for nearby pokemon is incredibly confusing. I can't tell if Pokemon's pop in/out range is just that picky or if the radar just shows you potential spawns in the nearby area but I remember running around the east coast just trying to find Toedscool for a while despite it being on the radar. By the first weekend of the game's release I had done about two badges, a titan pokemon and was just outside the first Team Star camp with Mela. I wasn't too sure where the hell the game was going at this point and I was hoping anything would spark interest soon.

So that Team Star stuff was actually pretty neat. The actually auto battling through Team Star is kinda whatever but the battle was cool enough and then a flashback happens and I'm kinda stunned. Story? We're getting like a planned story? After this I did the second titan pokemon and Arven reveals his motivation behind wanting to find the Herba Mystica and...character arcs? As stupid as this might sound yeah it's kinda insane when a pokemon game decides to take the bold step of having character and plot events that actually seem thought out. In this particular case we see Team Star forming a year and a half prior, revealing smalls bits over time about the efforts/reasoning behind the creation of Team Star in the first place. With Arven, at first it's vague as to why he wants to collect the Herba Mystica and I was really worried it was gonna remain hands off as to what his motive is until the end but thankfully after the second Titan he reveals his Mabosstiff is ailing and that perhaps the power of the herbs can restore some feeling to his pokemon. Also you unlock movement options for Miraidon through doing this when I learned that the game dodged losing a point. I was honestly really scared riding around at first, I felt like I was gaslit into thinking Miraidon could boost around and fly and swim, but I didn't know where the hell those features where so I was just stuck bumbling around at 20mph as even my roommate was asking "Is that how fast he goes??". Thankfully not, I wish the dash was unlocked from the start but getting your first Titan pokemon done doesnt take too long anyway. Traversal with Miraidon is incredibly strange though, it's absolutely gonna be a speedrunners dream to path out what all can be done with the features it unlocks, learning how to swim, fly and eventually just scale vertical cliffs. By this point the game really does start to open up and I decide to put my foot down and just beeline to every Gym, Titan Pokemon and Team Yell base, and there really isn't anything to distract or impede your progress in that regard. On the one end this makes the plot feel kinda all over the place, and understandably so, it kinda comes with the territory, but also it just leaves a certain freedom to do whatever in however order you want. There's also no scaling of bosses in this regard and I've come to the conclusion that I think that works really well. At any point that I want to restart this game I'm immediately interested in checking out things in a different, stranger order. To that end I do wish there were more trainers littered about, it does feel a bit lighter than I would have liked. It feels like there's less opportunities to fight due to the constraints of battling spaces in this game, purely being out in the field or in given boss encounters. There's not really any building like the battle office in Black/White where it feels like a mini dungeon almost, but it helps as an optional level boost before the third gym. Speaking of, I do wish there was a lot more building interiors in this game, there's a lot of neat cities and towns to explore but there's like a handful of interiors actually present throughout other than the Gym centers, the Academy, one restaurant, the League and your house. Even with as small as that is, I do think interior spaces add quite a bit to a game's exploration. This is how weird it is to talk about Pokemon and specifically ScVi. I'm talking about goddamn houses and interiors not being in the game, and earlier in my playthrough I would have held it at much greater value but after having beaten the game, I don't know to be honest. This whole game should have been the moment that I crack and put my foot down against the clear lack of time and polish abundant throughout the game.

But I kept playing, and to be honestly that does go a long way considering there's a bunch of other stuff on my plate. On top of that, I was slightly surprised by how enjoyable the game became over time. No longer did it feel like I was tolerating the series' mishaps, so long as I stayed on course to the objectives and concentrated on only my team like prior games, I could just get this game done and find enjoyment in just a fine, quick pokemon romp. I would perhaps say that I enjoyed how the plot handled Team Star as an anti-villain, how solid Arven is as a foil and how Nemona and Gym Challenges are just okay. Perhaps I would mention the music being good and the new pokemon being quite a great selection this time around, with neat abilities and typings abound. A pleasantly swift and okay experience compared to PLA and seemingly much more interesting than the two I passed on. Then the last day of my playthrough, my final team consists of:
Skeledirge, Tinkaton, Toedscruel, Dudunsparce, Kingambit, and Cetitan.
For this playthrough and typically most new pokemon games I like to make a habit of choosing pokemon that are new or have some new form by the end of the game, unfortunately it occurred to me way too late in the game that my team composition skills aren't up to snuff as ground and fighting types often gave me kinda of a run for my money. Additionally, my habit to skip over trainers late in the game might have caught up to me as I beat the remaining map objectives and fought the final battles for each of the game's three sidequests. Not all of these are hard per se, but when underleveled a bit I admittedly lost to two of the main character fights (Quaquaval be damned). I wouldn't call ScVi hard, far from it given the amount of exp items that are given throughout but I did appreciate getting my ass kicked for trying to be coy during certain fights, it did seem like some fights were better geared to handle multiple kinds of threats so it wasn't completely braindead like Gen 6. I do wish more trainers near the end of the game utilized items though, that has been sorely missed.

Finally once all the routes are finished, one last task remains: tackling the 'Area Zero' zone that had been brought up time and time again throughout the player's journey. If there's one thing I can say about the plot, I really wish there were some way to splice in more moments like this last 5% of the game because this is what's holding such a tight grip in my mind currently. An idea started wracking through my brain for a while, but I think its safe to say this last chunk of the game might be up there with Gen V's ending both in terms of just doing something completely different but also just in quality character building, and thank god for that. It'll be a while before I say it's better per se but compared to some of the other game's endings it's a far better conclusion to the usual pokemon format, veering way more into pure Sci-Fi RPG territory and concluding with an excellent final boss.

The current state of the series would have feeling a bit dour about the whole situation, Pokemon was once my favorite series in gaming but its been in a rocky state recently, and for a while it felt like it was drifting further away from what I was hoping the games would be. PLA wasn't going to be the final nail in the coffin but it nearly shut the doors on the franchise for me as it quickly turned into a boring slog of a catching simulator with little else to engage with beyond mediocre plot progression and a few clunky action bosses. Scarlet and Violet might have actually been the final nail in the coffin, and for the first few days it nearly felt hammered in. Those first few hours felt the roughest for sure, not even just performance-wise but just in terms of what I was wanting to do or engage with. But I stuck around and saw the game for what it was worth and was eventually floored by what might be my favorite entry since Gen 5 or at least Gen 7. Prior to my venture into Paldea I was hopeful for but hesitant to find a overworld abound with sidequests and distractions and huge maps to scale and a massive 40-60 hour trek through the map. What I got was half that length and something I was actually missing from the series for a while in worthwhile characters and plot, something I really wasn't expecting considering. Continuing to compare this to PLA (sorry it really is my only point of reference for pokemon in the past 5 years), part of that game's problem in engaging with its new character is how redundant each 'story beat' became as it rarely gave me a real reason to care about anyone in the cast or even try to remember any of their names. I thought the game needed voice acting to recapture my attention but no it also needed better writers because I feel the characterization and overall dialogue is a lot better handled, I actually remember their names and motivations! The games still need some kind of voice acting though, please its 2022. Stop having minor characters with singing/performing cutscenes but no voice acting it just looks embarassing. Of course, an ending doesn't make up for the entirety of a game, one that is a bit lacking in many areas, and flawed in others. Yet, I can't remember the last time I was following a pokemon game and was this pleased by where it ended up. I already hated Pokemon Go by the time LGPE came out so I wasn't too engaged with what it tried to do, most what I hear about SwSh sounds more like a braindead disaster, BDSP look like blatant carbon copies of obsolete Gen 4 titles, Pokemon hasn't really felt gripping in a long time. Here, I can finally say that I'm not only fine with the direction that pokemon's taking but I'm really optimistic as to what comes next. I think even with the immense amount of backlash that's popped up with regards to performance, I don't think it'll be left as a slight on the team's record, but instead I hope that it acts as a wake up call for the teams at Game Freak that the next project gets the extra amount of effort into smoothing a LOT of rough edges before launch. Otherwise it's a marked improvement on a lot of fronts compared to prior games in the series, and in my case stuff that I've actually been missing from Pokemon. Despite it's jank, Scarlet and Violet revives an energy to pokemon I haven't felt in a long time.