Feb. 11, 2022, 9:30 p.m.
Who's That Pokémon? It's Nostalgia!
Time to talk about the Pokémon game (not that one)
Good Screen
Hello! I hope 2022’s treating you well so far. For me, like most other years the start of 2022 has involved watching a cultural event pass me by, and much like Tiger King and Squid Game before it my experience of Pokémon Legends: Arceus has been through hovering around my fiancé’s screen on my lunch break.
It's not that I'm disinterested; Arceus is basically Breath of the Wild, right down to its musical cues and UI design, and I love that game to bits. I’m just honestly having trouble reconciling the notion that the makers of one of the most commercially successful video game franchises of all time have made a game that performs like it was made by five people on a budget of 50p and a packet of cigarettes. I don’t want to be uncharitable to the hard work of no doubt hundreds of developers, but watching Digital Foundry take apart the game's technical shortcomings reminded me of Dolly Parton’s delightful self-deprecating quote - it takes a lot of money to look this cheap.
In the meantime, I've been scratching my critter collecting itch with Pokémon Brilliant Diamond, a remake of the first Pokémon game I ever played. I had my concerns over Game Freak’s outsourcing of this most precious of remasters to little-known support company ILCA, along with their decision to use ugly chibi models in the game’s overworld, but it all largely holds up; it's a ladle of delicious nostalgia, poured into a Switch-shaped soup bowl and ready for you to savour.
That is, until it isn’t. Fourteen years after I finished Pokémon Diamond, my rose-tinted memories of the 72 hours I poured into the game the first time round — by far the most time I've ever spent with a single entry in this series — hit cold, hard reality. People like to say this series is basically for children but it can’t be overstated how punishing Diamond can be; the game's third gym was so frustrating that I gave up on finishing the remake, until my better half stepped in and wasted his own day off work building a suitable party while I was stuck on a barrage of Teams meetings. And don’t get me started on the forty minutes we spent battling the notoriously hard Cynthia, her every move against my super-effective party members soaking up all the damage I could deal until I ran out of breathing room and ended up back at the Pokémon Centre.
We left it there, counting my fairly painless victory over the Elite Four as the real endgame rather than committing to something that could take away from my overall enjoyment. After all, there’s still a lot for me to love; seeing Union Rooms and the Underground come alive with other people for the first time were particular highlights, and it’s always a good Pokémon game when you get to catch a Psyduck. I guess sometimes it’s best to take the small wins and leave memories of the bigger ones as just memories.
Good Content
Read: Sticking with games for a moment, the industry caught Acquisition Fever last month — Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard, Sony bought Bungie, and the New York Times bought viral sensation Wordle. I’ve found my favourite takes by far on the whole ActiBlizz situation have been over at Hit Points, where there’s been in-depth discussion on what this means for the whole industry combined with the kind of general disbelief I feel fits the occasion.
Listen: Charli XCX and Rina Sawayama’s Beg for You is the first unadulterated pop banger of 2022, mostly thanks to its interpolation of September’s 2007 hit Cry for You. If guitars are more your thing, let me introduce you to post-punks Yard Act, whose debut album The Overload is the kind of record post-Brexit Britain deserves — and I mean that entirely as a compliment.
And finally: Like the tide, Eurovision season draws near. While I’m not going to bombard you with Hot Takes for this year’s contest just yet I want to draw your attention to one contender in particular: Norway’s SUBWOOLFER, whose song Give That Wolf A Banana is currently rolling through the Norwegian Melodi Grand Prix. Drink it all in; it’s exactly the kind of thing that could do well in Turin.