Once again, another puzzle game with a fascinating and original mechanic cripples itself with a naff story. Viewfinder is frequently surprising and has some pretty decent puzzling, but good lord the story is beyond mediocre. It wouldn't be so bad if it would just shut the hell up for a minute rather than constantly battering you with meaningless audio logs and incessant companions. Apparently, a pleasant English woman talking at you all the time isn't enough, you also need a pleasant Scottish cat to tell you how clever the puzzles are.

Even I feel that that was probably too harsh. But to be honest I'm so tired of playing these puzzle games that have such an interesting idea but instead waste time on nothing stories rather than building on the concept with more levels. Viewfinder is only about three hours long if you're experienced with this kind of game, so it doesn't have the room to cram in a saccharine and confusing yarn that could have been pulled from any other middling Portal-like. Just as Superliminal, Turing Test and Light Matter before it, Viewfinder ultimately fails its genius central mechanic.

There is plenty to be praised here though, don't get me wrong. The photo placing and manipulation is an idea that is as technically impressive and innovative as the Portals in Portal were back in 2007. The levels are fairly well paced too, but I found the levels I truly enjoyed were the optional puzzles, which were a lot trickier than the main content. Ideally more of these would have been fantastic. Portal can rest on its laurels in terms of optional content because Valve knows they have a willing fanbase who will churn out content an unimaginable rate, but indie puzzle games like Viewfinder don't have the luxury of mod tools, so need to come with more content. As it stands, I can't say that even half of the puzzling potential has been extracted out of Viewfinder's concept.

My opening tone is less an indication of anger and more frustration. I'm disappointed that such a great idea feels somewhat squandered, but perhaps I should be analysing what is here rather than what could be. And what is in Viewfinder is largely pretty good. Tune out the story and don't bother with the collectables and you'll find a fun, occasionally challenging puzzler that frustrates as often as it delights.

The meat of what makes Viewfinder good is in its technology; how the people who made this managed to pull off these optical illusions so well without a hint of stuttering or long loading times is astounding. The problem with that is this makes the rest of the game fall into a sort of tech-demo feel, where all the puzzles are a bit too easy and the story is so barely there that it hardly matters.

If you have any skill with puzzle games, it'll take you at maximum maybe 3 to 4 hours to complete, maybe more when it throws the more abstract ones at you and you get stuck like I did. That's not to say the puzzles aren't good, but for $25, you would really expect more from something like this.

This shit is so disappointing man I remember when pokemon remakes would add new content that was added in the later gens and improve on the older versions. This is the laziest shit I've ever seen from gamefreak/nintendo/whoever they outsourced this bs to. The fact that it's more expensive than the original games and that they have less content than fucking platinum is so crazy to me. Platinum, a game that came out like 12 years before this one has more content than this game and is a better version of sinnoh, my god. The fact that they paywall you from arceus by making you buy another game is insane too. The original versions have a more charming art style too lmao

I'd give this 0.5 stars but I do think diamond by itself was a decent game so I gave it a star for that, but all that hype and the fact it's more expensive for ultimately no returns is fucking crazy. I worry for what they're gonna do to the gen5 remakes. Gamefreak/ilca the worst to ever do it man

This has to be one of the worst remakes for a game ever.
It shipped as a horribly buggy mess without a title screen, finished music, online, cutscenes, or a postgame. It forces an update on the person that just paid $60 for it (the originals on DS were $40) half the size of the game so they wouldnt have to pay to ship cartridges with more storage which also means it will be impossible for someone to buy this game complete when Nintendo stops supporting the Switch's online services.
The art style is in my opinion lazy and uninteresting excused by it being a "faithful remake" despite it not being faithful to the original underground, contests, or game's fucking balancing. BDSP is soooo """"faithful"""" to the point that they just copied over Diamond and Pearl's code to use as a base, but also somehow managed to introduce even more glitches into it too. Also i guess just fuck every single thing Platinum did to make Sinnoh an actually good region because all they include from Platinum is the new Pokemon, but only in the new areas of the underground. They spit in the face of one of my most beloved Pokemon games, taking out any of it's many improvements to the story, characters, post game, and balancing for the sake of faithfulness to the versions of Sinnoh that nobody prefers.
This game is what happens when you barely pay an outsourcing studio to make a whole Pokemon level remake in only 19 months. A complete waste of time for both the developers and players. It hurts me to think that this game sold over 14 million copies, worst case scenario they'll do they same fucking song and dance for Black and White because they know it sells.

I'm still so hurt by this remake. I don't truly dislike any Pokemon entry, rather there are just some I favor over others, but this here really upset me. It is purely a nostalgia cash grab. I played this as soon as it released back in 2021 and being a fan of Gen 4 and Sinnoh in general I was hoping the remakes would follow its predecessors and incorporate the current Gen's mechanics and dex. Instead we were given a lackluster "faithful" remake that truly misses the spark that the original entry had. The 3d models are souless, the following partner pokemon were a nice inclusion yet janky, the list goes on. I own my original version of Pokemon Pearl and I know the criticisms the community has towards base Gen 4 games but I am serious when I say they have so much more soul. Surely they don't mess up the Gen 5 remakes, right?