Despite more than a year passing since the last newPokemongame, the pressure to shake the formula up has been reapplied thanks toPalworld. Sure, it’s a little unfair as even though Palworld’s unofficial tagline is ‘Pokemon With Guns’, the games have almost nothing in common. Palworld is a survival game with no indication whatsoever that you should be trying to catch ‘em all and be the very best, like no one ever was.
There’s no knee-jerk reaction to Palworld going on behind the scenes atGame Freakthat will have Pokemon eating each other and putting an AK-47 in the hands of Mr. Mime, no matter how much I would love to see the latter. Whatever Pokemon is cooking right now will have been in the oven for a while, and it wasn’t Palworld that made me realize I’m not all that excited about what’s coming next. It was dusting offPokemon Snap.
My son loves playing pretty much anything on theNintendo Switch. However, since the only word he can read is his own name, he decides what to play next by pulling all the games off the shelf so he can see the covers. It was during one of his daily deshelvings that he discovered and inquired about Pokemon Snap. I explained the premise to him and then proceeded to play Snap for the first time in two years to show him how it works. It wasn’t until I was slowly working my way through the Lental region, snapping pics, that I realized my original playthrough was the last time a Pokemon game made me feel anything.
Before returning to Snap, I’d not really considered Pokemon games to be in that bad of a spot.Scarlet & Violethas been slated since launch, but I played through it and thought it was fine,finebeing the keyword. I can’t think of any other point in my life where my reaction to someone asking me my opinion on a Pokemon game would have been a small shrug accompanied by a, “Yeah, it’s alright”. Snap and so many other Pokemon games to have come before it consumed my life when they were released. They were all I could think about until I was done, and then a bit more after that as I struggled to shake them in the best possible way.
Not only is Snap the last Pokemon game to have made me feel that way, but it might be the only Pokemon game on Nintendo Switch to have had its hooks in me. Scarlet & Violet was fine,Sword & Shieldwas slightly better, and Legends Arceus felt like the start of something special should it ever be built upon. However, all of them were games I finished and left behind with barely a second thought once I was done.
No, I’ve not forgotten aboutBrilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl. It is pretty forgettable, though, and not something that made me feel the way its original versions used to.
Even well into my 20s, Pokemon games made me feel like a kid again. WhenPokemon Gowas released, I had the same feeling I got when a copy of Pokemon Yellow unexpectedly arrived in the mail. It’s a feeling I’ve felt for countless Pokemon games over the years, but one that has returned far less frequently during the Switch era. Other than Snap,Let’s Gois the only Pokemon game on Switch that has made me feel that way again, and it didn’t sustain that feeling for nearly as long as Snap managed to.
There has been something missing from most Pokemon games for the past few years, but I can’t put my finger on what that something is. That’s been the beauty of Pokemon games for most of my life, though. I’ve not had to figure out what it is that makes Pokemon special because the developers have done that for me. Amid rumors that the reactions to Scarlet & Violet have been taken seriously internally, I hope that whatever’s next will have that special something that conjures up the same feelings I had while playing Snap.
Outside of the games, Pokemon has managed to conjure up that feeling in me again. I felt it during Ash’s final run, and also while watching Pokemon Concierge. Perhapsa spinoff game inspired by the latterwould be a good starting point for Pokemon’s Switch 2 era.
With Pokemon Day on the horizon and potentially a new console on which to start afresh, now is the perfect time for Pokemon to prove its games can still leave a lasting mark.
