I half joked with friends when this game was about to come out that “2021’s GOTY will be out soon” and we all had a laugh. My desire to play the game was genuine and everything I’d seen of it in Nintendo Directs prior to launch seemed promising. Even so, I’m very much at odds with the Pokemon franchise these days. I liked seventh gen well enough, but didn’t touch Sword/Shield. It seemed that games like Temtem were delivering on the Pokemon concept in ways that actually reflected the twenty plus years of game design since the first two generations were released. By contrast, Pokemon games just seemed stale, not to mention going down a path of being “child friendly” to the point that it felt patronising to said children.
With all this in mind, I didn’t necessarily think that New Pokemon Snap would really be able to capture the magic again. Well, the joke’s on me. I’m no longer kidding when I say that New Pokemon Snap will almost certainly be in the short list of my games of the year.
Delfeir vs. the Backlog 