The funniest part is they were both sourced from the same announcement. Like literally the next sentence after the release date is the end date. Groundbreaking stuff.
I was so confused by the first story but also big sleepy so after rewatching it twice I assumed I'd get the joke later and moved on. Got distracted during the second story and opened reddit, so see someone making fun of that announcement. @@Yammenkow
Shivers [Medium: Success] You feel the blistering wind blow through the city. In some distant apartment you can see an electric rodent ruffle through the bills. "Pika Pika. Pikachu", he mutters. The city gives nothing to its downtrodden. It will be a cold winter.
I've not played Palworld, but I think a lot of its success is due to the fact that survival-crafting is a genre with a very large market and no games that have fully filled that market. So whenever someone puts out a survival-crafting game that's at least halfway competent, it gets a surge in popularity from people chasing a craving that has yet to be satiated. Survival-crafting that lets you collect and use monsters is an even more focused niche that, to my knowledge, has only been filled by ARK. And I say this is someone who rates ARK among his top 10 favorite games of all time: ARK is not a good game. So that market is ripe for the picking.
Yeah. The game is much less "Pokemon with guns" so much as it is "Conan Exiles but slightly better". The bar for quality in that genre of games is so staggeringly low that Palworld is unironically one of the best in the genre. It's got better AI, far more forgiving and time generous resource gathering and crafting systems, and the addition of really solid Fakemon designs and Legends Arceus gameplay elements just gives it something distinctive. Some would question the better AI part, but they're not familiar with how atrocious other games in the genre are. The Pals can walk around and even fight one another. In comparison to Conan, its leagues ahead. Most games in the genre lean incredibly hard on large server pvp (i.e. log in to find your base was blown up and everything stolen while you weren't online). Palworld doesn't, and as such has even the bare minimum of engaging pve gameplay.
Minecraft villager farms are a fair comparison to the way palworld treats their pals, in my opinion. So in that respect, the marketing is just marketing. I'm giving palworld a shot, it is a more thought out and polished game than the early Pokemon 3d open world games, again my opinion. It at least has an answer to the question "so after a Pokemon starts fighting, why am I just standing there?" Guns are obvious. They lean into how obviously violent and whiplash guns are, I think they could have had a more cohesive art direction if the made the monsters more monstery, but that would have fully broken orbit with Pokemon and their marketing would have suffered.
Palworld is LITERALLY ARK. Its every single system is the same except the dinos are now pals and they have special attacks. It's made by people who discontinued their ARK mod Pokemon Evolved.
Survival crafting does have a bad habit of reusing the same mechanics loop that's unsatisfying in the long term but ends up eating large amounts of time. Palworld's graphics are probably more pleasant than most of them I've played, if I had to spend 100 hours clicking rocks.
In addition to "being bad" most survival games also have the very strong urge to punish and restrict the player. Even without lackluster AI and limited assets, these games are full of mechanics that only exist to torment the player and multiply the playtime by 10. Sure to some degree that's what we want from a survival game, challenges to overcome, adversities to brave, but that also makes it easier for a game in that genre to appeal to most people if it simply does not... try to frustrate the player at every end.
I think one of the reasons it's become so popular is that the game seems to have, possibly accidentally, come up with a novel gameplay solution to the biggest problem with survival crafting games (for me). Being able to go out and recruit cute friends to your base to automate the boring survival crafting parts away is what I've always wanted from that genre! And yes, it's absolutely wild to me that there's a context where I can describe the game as "novel", given how many store-brand chunks of popular games they seem to have unnecessarily stitched together. Also, the other weird thing to me about the game is that it really feels like the different parts of the company just... aren't talking to each other as much as they should? The tone of the game is wildly inconsistent as to how "edgy" they seem to want to be. All the marketing makes it out to be a violent, cynical, depressing slavery sweatshop simulator, but in the actual game all the pals are running around your base with big smiles, and if their ominous SAN gauge goes too low they... just start slacking off, take a break in the hot tub, or go to bed early? They don't even have the edge to kill pals when they run out of HP, they just get spiral eyes and ragdoll down a hill and have to recover in your box. There's less edge in this game than a nuzlocke, for the most part! Yes, meat comes out of them when they do that, but meat comes out of them when you capture an uninjured one with a ball, so who knows how that works. And then there's a bunch of other gameplay elements that are clearly on a different page and are still going full-on with the edge, like the guns and poaching and catching humans, and the butcher's knife that replaces the pet button, so it's not just a case of the marketing not matching up. It's a weirdly comedic dissonance. I kind of think the devs just have no idea what they're doing, but it's WORKING, so they might as well keep going and see what happens.
Absolutely A+ reply here, I remember playing for a while and thinking "this is the game everyone was up in arms about promoting slavery but I can't get this damn deer to work a single minute more than he wants to and all my Pals seem relatively happy to help me carve out a little home in the wilderness together". Not to mention that yes, I think a major part of its success is because despite being clear ripoffs of other things, the elements it's stitching together are making something novel in both the Monster Collection and Survival Craft genres. After Pokemon Legends Arceus showed how much people *do* want to just explore a big open world with their cute monster friends, and all the survival craft games continuing to be dragged down by their more tedious mechanics, combining the two into something that's fun to engage with - that being establishing a co-operative, peaceful existence with fun monster friends in the wilderness - makes it incredibly appealing even to those of us, like myself, who don't usually like survival craft games all that much.
@@Quiltfish Hah, that's not surprising. If we're counting mod developers, I don't think don't think the rest of us will get to have an original idea ever again. I can think of several entire genres of game that spawned out of modding communities; it's crazy how much experimentation that enables. The world of Minecraft mods alone has thrown plenty of game mechanics at me that the wider games industry hasn't come close to. Lately I've been seeing some really innovative stuff out of the Factorio modding community as well. I think game developers could do a lot by taking more influence from weird mods.
So the thing about Pokemon Black and White is that they kind of did the Marvel Villain thing where the villains at first seem to be trying to do some actual good but then it turns out it's just a front so they can be mustache twirlingly evil and the injustice they originally claimed to fight is never brought up again. Except for the weird kid they have as their front man who they intentionally socialized exclusively with abused rescue pokemon.
Not to mention that N's DAD Ghetsis is the "true villain", who gaslights his own son enough that N prefers the company of Pokemon over humans, and that the main supporters are a group of old yes men who just seem like they're trying to get their stock options in order before Ghetsis obliterates the world with the box legendary.
Maybe not that, but like IRL, ppl who entered debt, or bought the lies ghetsis was spouting. Remember ghetsis is coated in pope like attires. Referring to wayback when the head of the national churches was many times "counseling" younger kings left by internal wars, or epidemics. And they were the actual head of state, until next king rolled around. This repeated until French revolution era.
Pokemon Black/White was really interesting. It even took things a step further with the figurehead and many of its members being true believers of the cause, but then having the leader of it using the whole movement as a power play to get people to steal oppressed pokemon (some of them were actually being rescued from terrible situations, but they would also do it in cases where it was clearly just a young child whose best friend was there pokemon) so that he would be the only one with pokemon and could use that power disparity to rule the world. Now, whether that was just a way to keep the player on the side of justice or a commentary on how good movements can be used for nefarious ends is another conversation, but they certainly the games with some of the most interesting plot.
Fully agreed. I loved playing Pokémon White, and was of the opinion it was the most “grown up” Pokemon game because of how they treated the shades of grey around team plasma. I kinda dropped off of Pokémon when I realized that the writing was backing off of that rather than embracing it, and it wasn’t growing up with me. Which is fine! But i’m just surprised people want “adult Pokemon” in the way of “but with guns” rather than something more interesting.
Also though I don’t know if intentional there is kinda the theme of you opposing the evil team because that’s the trope even if what they are doing at the very least at first is good. rescuing Pokémon from abuse but your already put into the position of protecting the status quo before even being revealed as truly villainess.
It's funny, because I had to borrow a line from Watch & Play to describe how I felt about Palworld; "of all the games I've played (that are scams) this is one of the best"
Thank you Graham for bringing sensibility to the discussion and discourse around Palworld. I like the game and I like the mechanics and I hope it sticks around and I agree with your sentiments
I think people like Palworld because it lets you get to watch your cute monster pets help out around camp and do stuff with you instead of only existing during battles or occasional picnics.
And it's the closest thing adult fans have to a Pokemon game that acknowledges all the non-family friendly jokes we made as a kid like can Pokeballs capture humans too and what happens if you do? Where does food come from if most plants and animals are Pokemon? And why haven't guns been made that Pokemon can use?
This is a big part of it. Even in the Switch-era when wild-pokemon appear in the overworld, they aren't... doing anything. They only exist for you to catch them, at which point things immediately return to the status-quo. If you want to maintain the fantasy that these are living creatures in their natural-habitat, your imagination still has to do all the work. This is why I prefer the classic/2-D games-it's easier for my imagination to fill-in the blanks when it's obvious the game is a representation rather than a depiction.
@@iankniel I know the Pals do stuff in your base/camp once captured but do the wild ones do stuff in the open world or just wander around aimlessly like Pokemon do?
They don't, but they do seem to move around a much wider area than they do in Legends Arceus. Like, in Legends it was very obvious they were just spawning in a random position in an area. There was no illusion of a natural world in place. In Palworld spawns are more consistent but certain pals have routes they seem to travel across. So you get consistency but not a complete lack of surprise. Pals also get into fights with people that aren't you and sometimes also each other out in the world, which goes a massive way in making the world feel more alive. That was always my biggest criticism of other games in this genre, and Palworld is weirdly one of the best I've seen. @@PlebNC
to anyone who's confused by the Love Live announcements, i can assure you that i've been looking into it for the past hour and i am no closer to figuring out what the Fuck Fick is happening
The discourse around Palworld was so rotten that I was dreading even THIS SHOW talking about it and whipping out the hottest of takes or something. I shouldn't have doubted, of course, and thank you for the sanity check.
I believe one important reason why Palworld is doing so well is because it's the first Monster Catcher game I can think of (first party Nintendo or otherwise) that isn't a JRPG. Yeah it's a mid survival game, but the fact that it even is a survival game is novel. Also it fulfills a promise that Pokemon has had since Gen 1 and has only ever really used as set dressing: the ability to work with your Pals to achieve tasks. Having a set of 3 Pals do berry planting itches my brain in a specific way that no Pokemon game has itched.
@@jackielinde7568 It's a marginally more Western RPG and has some MMO-adjacent elements (it was originally going to be one, its status as one presently is dubious) but it is definitely an RPG yes. There's also Coromon I'm aware of which is more early 2000s Pokemon-like.
I'm glad people who are not afraid to call Palworld as what it really is. Which I like to compare to food. Palworld is slop. It's a hodgepodge of parts put together to make a game that's in the uncanny valley. Just like how you take ingredients you like and cook them altogether to make food. You could certainly cook an actual meal, but sometimes you just want to eat some slop. That's Palworld. It's an average game that just jumbles art styles and game design mechanics and sells it for people to buy. And it works thanks to the outlandish marketing and uncanny valley mix of realism and pokemon artstyle design that made it memorable.
I didn't care about having guns or slavery themes. I just wanted an open world 3rd person creature collector, and everyone making creature collectors so far have focused on turn based combat so this scratched an itch that has been waiting for years to be met.
I would be fine with turn based if they actually evolved the combat to be more than "babby's first RPG". I've been wishing for them to make 2v2 or 3v3 the norm even with wild battles and make pokemon abilties more interactive to a party with things like AoE and more support abilties. Stat buffing abilties become much more interesting if they effect the party or are targetable. have a support pokemon that buffs another one who has a taunt ability or just to improve its damage instead of wasting a turn when you could just hit twice or buff the entire party. as it is 1v1 is too simple. at least most single character RPGs usually have you engaging with multiiple enemies which complicates it. But I'll take real time combat with both you and your creature to manage. Anything but that simple 1v1 combat that focuses on 1 shotting enemies.
So the thing with Pokémon Black/White is basically what beej described, but in reverse; the "we care about Pokémon autonomy and forcing them to do your bidding" thing was the front, and the real motivation of the villain was to separate everyone from their Pokémon so they're powerless to stop him from... idk taking over Unova or whatever. Tl;dr the interesting mature theme everyone praised those games for having is never resolved because in actuality it never really mattered in the story of the games
I don't think the villain wanted to take over the world. He just wanted to free the Pokemon from slavery so they can be free and more willingly choose if they stay with people. First Pokemon villain that actually had a good point and motivation.
To be completely honest, palworld still feels very rough, but it is a very fun game ! It feels to me like a mix between the exploration, survival and building of Valheim-like games combined with the cuteness of pokémon and an automation process which reminds me of Factorio. Gameplay-wise it is very addicting. But even so, it's still just a game and I also think it's ridiculous how riled up people are getting over it. Just let people enjoy what they enjoy and if they ripped assets, Nintendo is gonna be litigious enough to stand up for themselves. A massive company doesn't need us to defend them, they are more than capable of doing so themselves.
my friend went to twitter after playing for a couple hours, and that's how we found out that apparently the internet was imploding about this game lol. we're used to playing early access survival stuff, so this game was just that, but the pokemon worked better than the mod for the other games :D
The Love Live SIF2 story has been my favorite thing to see in a while thanks to its absurdity. It was meant to replace the original that was shut down last March, supposedly improving on the whole thing in some way and being released in April. The fact that it barely failed to make their one year anniversary because the new game isn’t actually that much better is astounding, and the notion that the developers and localization team of the Global version have to watch their work essentially become dead on arrival is quite the sight to behold. I hope everyone involved gets compensated well, but I definitely still had a good laugh at the announcement.
agreed. its clearly a ripoff of several things, but most games ripoff stuff from other games. I also don't really care if they are copying homework from a billion dollar corporation that sues its fans and is extremely litigious. but people are making up the most extreme shit like saying they ripped a couple models straight from pokemon, and not backing down after the people that made that accusation admitted to doctoring the comparisons. Why would a company specifically steal 2 models and not the rest when they know they have to be very legally careful? they're not that dumb and if they were they'd have been lazier. Its a game, that people like, and people are getting too worked up about it.
I agree too. The quality of the games has been falling with each game, and I second that the basic formula of the story needs some slight deviations but not fundamental changes. For example, maybe instead of a team CRIME existing, you have 2 official Pokemon trainer teams (like Pokemon Go), that compete in a Championship for the title of Best Team, and the player joins a team, climbs to the top, and wins the championship. The evil guys would be some 3rd party that gains/profits from the chaos and rivalry.
My partner who is a pokemon fan and survival game fan looked at palworld, saw a bit of gameplay, and then looked at a previous game by the dev "Craftopia" that he played and said "pass." The content looks middling, its functional, but it doesn't feel like we'd be playing it a month from now. That and basically you can mod Ark survival evolved to be just this but just without NPC humans to bother you. That and it looked like it lacked substance beyond "pokemon with guns and survival" EDIT: So my partner who played Craftopia and saw G's criticism said Palworld is "literally Craftopia's code copy/pasted (There is a catching mechanic in Craftopia), rebranded, added pokemon ripoffs and shipped. They didn't even bother changing their character creator, it is same thing!" So draw on that info however you want. The UI is barely changed, the BOTW vibes is the same, its just literally a previous product rebranded.
I want to tell you, my partner played craftopia before the open world stuff, and finished it, then was done with it forever, but has been very much enjoying palworld, despite it being just craftopia with a pokemon style theme. I haven't played the other game much, but I have enjoyed ark, and this is just ark, but the monsters are easier to flee from. As messy as the game seems though, it holds together a lot better than you'd think, and it's deeper than I ever imagined. I actually was going to give it a pass, because it just looks like a shitty ripoff of EVERY game, but in my opinion it's a good ripoff of every game. Like, every thing that I like about the other games is in this, and it even makes finding collectables feel rewarding and fun. They have eggs hidden around the place, like easter eggs, and they hatch random pals, and that's just fun to get at, because it's like real easter. idk, I'd say give it a try, I hear it's on gamepass, so you could even do it for free if you already have that maybe? I want to stress, I'm not trying to be argumentitive with this. Your opinion is quite valid and reasonable. I just wanted to let you know, I had the same opinion once, and have since changed it.
So, here's the thing about the Pokemon Black and White storyline Beej talked about... It does put you in a morally gray area. The villains talk a lot of sense and the game makes you stand by the "pro slavery" of Pokemon side as opposed to the "free Pokemon" side. BUT THEN The story does a rug pull at the end and instead of diving into the moral implications of Pokemon ownership... We find out the villains talked about all this just so they could be the LAST Pokemon trainers and take over the world. And in the sequel they just shoot the entire world full of ice. People oversell the B/W storyline. It isn''t actually that good.
I kinda remeber that a grunt tells you very early that "We are doing this for evil reasons actually" so its not even a rug pull later on, its like you already know the twist but cant tell anyone and have to endure the plot going on and on on its bullshit.
The word you're looking for, Graham, is "nondiegetic". The game is a mismash of styles, but the mechanics are pretty well incorporated. Graphics clearly don't matter when the gameplay is solid.
Palworld is an exciting study of taking all the most popular games' ideas and UIs (minecraft, fortnite, zelda, pokemon, ark, sims.. to name a few). It is also a hell of a fun and addicting game, even though it's a mishmash of everything, the game play loop is actually fun. Every level you get, you get to unlock a bunch of new things. The exploration is actually interesting and the base mechanics, building system (decorate your base like Sims) and pal maintenance is a great change of pace to survivor games. I don't know how they did it, it shouldn't work but it does. If you are on the fence give it a bite specially if you play it co-op, it's just plain fun.
its sold 8 million now. I think part of it is that the game hits a market niche that people didnt know they wanted. Also the guns are apparently made by one employee that the CEO found working a convenience store. The employee really likes guns. And FPS games.
11:35 about the gun part being hyper-realistic, according to an interview with the palworld devs they literally hired a Japanese guy who they found on Twitter who was a SELF-TAUGHT animator and gun enthusiast who made realistic gun reload animations. They immediately hired the guy full time and even gave him housing in Tokyo since he was from Hokkaido I believe, there are articles about this in other game news site and reactor vids. Also, this game was made on a 10k$ budget by a bunch of people who had no prior experience in the gaming industry or the use of Unreal engine itself (they literally learned on the job according to the same dev interview), which in all honesty explains the mish mash of things in Palworld and its jankiness. But hey, I've been really having fun since day 1 release, it's really funny that your bringing a wooden club in the early game against human enemies (the syndicate thugs) and their just the holding a Beretta/Desert Eagle.
Having missed all of the controversy by being on social media very little, I can't believe there's such uproar over Palworld. My roommate plays it and, while it looks pretty bad, very video-gamey, and clearly "taking a lot of hints" from pokemon, it's also perfectly functional. Won't be buying it myself, but if people are genuinely having fun with it, let em.
As some who has grown up playing most Pokémon games, I only want 2 things in future games: higher quality (memory usage/fps especially) and different difficulty settings
Pokemon idea: Pokemon Explorer, an open world survival cozy game takes place in early near-industrial time. The goal is to build a town in a brand new land. Survival gameplay in the early game where you and your low-tier pokemon team gather resources to build your town and protect yourself against higher tier wild pokemon that will attack and dismantle your town. As your town level up, more NPCs will move to your town from the old world and they'll help with resource gathering and eventually production to export back to the old world. The longer you play, the more the game turn into a cozy game like Animal Crossing and Stardew where cosmetic and decoration becomes the end game as wild pokemon attack on your town becomes less frequent, but more powerful.
I wanna see a pokemon game that has you playing as a gym leader. You're locked into a gimmick, and progressively stronger NPC trainers come through to challenge you
And you have to deal with challengers meta gaming your gimmick and the existencial depression of being a water gym leader next to a power plant that electric types live at.
The 2/3 of the hosklings looked at Palworld because it keeps smacking them in their face every time they look at anything online, and they said "no thanks this game looks bad"
Having actually played Palworld: One of the best things they did was make the difficulty granular. You wanna make the survival aspect trivial? Up the resource multiplier. You wanna have harder fights? Up the amount of Pals that spawn in, how much damage they take and how much damage they deal. Hunger? Turn it off or make it happen faster. Day night cycle? Make the nights never come if you hate them. It *is* a pile of random things, but the best I can really come up to explain why its so compelling is that it's got all the stuff i loved in Legends Arceus, but actually expanded on. I can just Ride most of the bigger Pals after making a saddle/harness for them. My Pal follows me around instead of sitting there like a dork when i toss them out of their ball. Instead of having a few Mon at the farm or showing up at the pasture, I can have 15 Pals at my base and all can do different tasks but not *all* of the tasks - there's a reason to catch them. And the game will happily let you spoil them with special foods and relaxation fixtures just as easily as it will let you buy mind altering drugs to keep them content while you overwork them (With a slowly increasing chance of them burning your base down as you do so). And then there's a whole Pal breeding system. The game is clearly just a pile of "I really liked this in another game, lets slam it all together" and that's fun. And it's priced about right for what it is.
So I don't like survival/crafting games, partly for the same reasons that Graham mentioned. But I had a friend who wanted to check it out together so I started playing with him a bit on a server I think he said he spent about 30 minutes playing on. What I will say for Palworld is that it looks like having these little creatures collect resources and build things for you means that you can automate things very quickly and possibly get to the "mid-game" very quickly. What I found *very* frustrating is that (possibly because we joined a group together) we could only have one base, and he had already maxxed the number of creatures that could be working in his base. So I...just couldn't do the whole "base-building" part of the game.
You are correct, it's because you joined his group. Base limits are per-"guild" ingame. Haven't tested if they actually have multiple guilds on a single server working yet tho xD
I'm looking forward to Kindred Fates, which is another mature take on a Pokemon-like game, but instead of putting in guns, they made the kinfolk fully sentient, able to speak to you, and then gave them permadeath if you're unable to revive them in time. Which doesn't sound nice at all, now that I say it like that, but it looks adorable and possibly heart-breaking.
For people looking for an actual pokemonlike I'd recommend Cassette Beasts. It has cute art, a great story, and interesting mechanics to spice up the formula
Cassete Beasts is an excellent game, and I second the recommendation....with the acknowledgement that part of the reason palworld is doing so well is that it's mechanically very *un*like pokemon. One of the major draws I'm feeling and hearing from others about the game is that lots of people love catching and collecting their little monster friends but have been wanting a different style of game to do it in for a long time, and an open ended survival craft game is exactly scratching that itch. The guns and violence isn't even the main draw, and the slavery just straight up isn't present; people just want to go on a fun exploration adventure with their animal friends
Truly, I think that the main reason Palworld has been successful is that pokemon fans who have grown up past their first game are desperate for a pocket monster game that isn't just the same one Gamefreak releases every couple of years with a roster update. Yeah, Palworld wears a sports jacket with its references emblazoned on every conceivable piece of fabric but the sales figures say that that is what the people want. Maybe it could just be more cohesive and competent. I've put in an hour or two and its fine? Just looks and plays like 3-4 games smushed together.
When people say they want an adult pokemon, I roll my eyes and halfheartedly point them to Cassette Beasts. Phenomenal game, but, god, grow up already.
I legitimately started playing Destiny 2 when it came out after watching Graham play the Beta on stream. Twitch has a surprising amount of influence when games are streamed.
I wanted an open-world, sandboxy co-op game, where I could build a house, fly through the air riding a cool bird or dragon (or bird/dragon) thing, and explore with my friend. Palworld absolutely nailed that. Y'know what else it nailed? If my friend or I found a mon the other wanted, we could just (drop it on the ground for them to take) hand it over, without needing a special trading system.
"I see, people want a more intreciate and functionally complex pokemon game" actually, Graham, I DO want that, and it's called Legends Arceus, legends is SO much better than regular pokemon
Honestly, I think that the demand for a more adult version of pokemon _is in fact that high_ and Pokémon itself is really bad at funneling people towards that. Nuzlocking and Competitive Pokémon are really fun - once you grind like hell and learn some of the worst mechanics in a major video game.
I think this is the first sensible opinion on Palworld I've seen so far. The game randomly popped up in my youtube feed and I was thinking that it looked a bit interesting (weird aesthetic choices aside) but it gave me massive ARK flashback. I have a love/hate relationship with that game so I was checking if it would be as soul crushing as ARK was to me. It's also an early access game from a company I don't know so the usual research starts. Looking at their page, I saw another survival crafting game still in early access, Craftopia. It raised some red flags for me and negative comments on steam usually mention that Craftopia has been left in a bad state and that Palworld is just that game with monster collector genre slapped on top. Pretty much anyone I talked to about Palworld mention some element that feels ripped of somewhere else. But, if I try to dig deeper, there's just the endless madness about if it's a ripoff of pokemon and only toxicity from all side. I just wanted to see if I would enjoy it considering previous experience with the genre and if it was a legit game or an asset flip cash grab.
Fortunately there's no live service FOMO yet so there's no reason to not wait until a heavy sale or a patch comes out that makes the game up to standard.
There's a couple games for grownups which are pokemon-like. I recently loved playing Cassette Beasts, for example. Weird that there aren't more pokemon-likes given the success of the formula, but still, there's a few around.
So the thing I'm more surprised people aren't up in arms about with Palworld is false advertising. I saw those ads at the Game Awards the last couple years, and literally nowhere else, same as everyone. Not for a second did I expect the game to just be Ark or Rust or any one of those. Not that I care. But it seems like the kind of thing people would be mad about. Thankfully I am apparently also blessed in some small way? I'm aware of the Palworld uproar because of things like Checkpoint and the topical mention of the week on a couple podcasts going "Can you believe this reaction?". But that's it. I don't know where these angry weirdos are fighting over the mid looking survival game but I'm blissfully not in that ecosystem it seems. It's quite nice. I recommend it.
As someone who has no nostalgia for Pokemon (I never played them) and doesn't enjoy survival games, I've just passed on Palworld and its discourse entirely. I'm in agreement with Graham: it looks like a bunch of disparate pieces tossed together amateurishly with no regard about how they could make a cohesive look.
I think Pokemon Scarlet Violet was a great step in the right direction by having more relatable and interesting character stuff that's appealing to adults (than in the past) without making the games less fun/whimsical. Like kids movies that put stuff in that the parents will like. Though I don't believe that many players did the optional tutorials (classes) to get rewarded with extra character lore like how the grass gym leader nearly died of an illness and later got saved from capitalism through the power of love (and I mean this in the gayest way possible) by the elite four member who ran away from being home to pursue music and passion instead of being the heir to his prestigious family and carrying on their ancient legacy
I feel like "we cherish and nurture each and every pokemon" is not a statement The Pokemon Company can say with a straight face considering the number of critters I've converted to candy over the years in PoGo.
90% of what I know about palworld I learned from this video, might never hear about this game ever again unless it comes up in another checkpoint story
@@varice2248 Also escape the never-ending gig cycle, find work that fulfils you, a good boss and good co-workers. As someone stuck in the grind, that is real adult fantasy!
Whenever I hear "adult pokemon", I think "Oh, so a game about making the vaporeon copypasta real, and overall an eroge about all those pokemon that are both humanoid and meant to look female, that ppl seem to be into".
Palworld is the first survival crafting game I've played since minecraft, and I totally agree graham that visually it's a mess of styles but I've found it's a decent podcast game and that's the best I can say about it
If you think Palworld looks like an assetflip 11:43 , you should see their previous 'big' title, Craftopia. I think that will explain alot about the current discourse. Palworld is the tame one in comparrision.
I am personally dismissive of Palworld, but some of my friends have had their moods so improved by play it, they are like actually excited for something, and for that, i support it.
Yeah the deal with Black and White was specifically that Team Plasma was nominally advocating for Pokémon liberation (by any means necessary), but the guy actually in charge (and his high-ranking followers) ACTUALLY just wanted to become a sort of god-king bc he was the only one allowed to have Pokémon, and to that end he also groomed and abused a child to act as a figurehead for his movement. Meaning you’re opposing BOTH a classical evil team boss (albeit under the guise of altruistic goals) AND this 20-something who is horribly misguided from like 15+ years of manipulation and just wants for Pokémon to not be exploited/abused. Which HAS kind of set the blueprint for more nuanced evil teams since then (with varying levels of success), but Black/White’s villains are just exploited young adults (I always got the impression the grunts DID NOT know the goal wasn’t actually Pokémon liberation) and cartoonishly evil old men. And then the idea of Pokémon liberation is promptly discarded by the franchise bc it wants to stick to the “utopic harmony with nature” vibe it has going
The new Adult Pokemon - now with: Spreadsheet evolutions - trace, plot and calculate, and you'd by Oak better get it right or your 'mon explodes into chunks of raw meat! Emotional Evolutions - been cheating on Stupid Sexy Bunny with another 'mon? Next time you go to use her, she will evolve! Will it be sad? Angry? Angsty? Will it abandon you for 5 new trainers from Pokemon Black? (Memes not included) Food requirements! - when trapped in the woods decide if you're a Shia or a Donner Party! 'Mon Abuse! - Crack out the old whip and see which 'mons will give you the patented P+S+M master title! Do you want to be the best? Or the worst?
I have been playing for about 22 hours or so. Both on Xbox and PC. It doesn't feel like desperate parts. It feels like the best parts mashed into a relaxing and fun game. It also works pretty well. Very solid and most of my complaints were fixed in the first patch. So what I recommend is to play it. Try it out. If you like survival you might like this one.
You know the first thing I heard about this game and this was like a week before it came out was a warning to not stream it because it was claimed that it will steal your likeness and voice and whatever it can for Ai generating. And I did t think much of this later until right now when Graham said they were giving those codes away like popcorn, of course not really compelling evidence yet something that makes me go hmph… that’s interesting in bad way
I love Palworld, but I enjoy resource hoarding and crafting. Started with pokémon when the cards came out in '96 and this covers just enough of the Critter Collector genre for that nostalgia. The fact that the player can have an impact on the world, do things without even having an pals with them, was something those games lacked. People can hate on it 'till they turn blue and break their keyboard, preferably with SOME logic involved?
The Loveline double story felt like a QWERPline sketch
considering it's coming from Beej, it does really feel like his intro/outro ad reads
The funniest part is they were both sourced from the same announcement. Like literally the next sentence after the release date is the end date. Groundbreaking stuff.
lovelive*
I was so confused by the first story but also big sleepy so after rewatching it twice I assumed I'd get the joke later and moved on. Got distracted during the second story and opened reddit, so see someone making fun of that announcement. @@Yammenkow
Shivers [Medium: Success] You feel the blistering wind blow through the city. In some distant apartment you can see an electric rodent ruffle through the bills. "Pika Pika. Pikachu", he mutters. The city gives nothing to its downtrodden. It will be a cold winter.
👏👏👏 That reminds me, I could go for a rewatch of True Detective Pikachu
"This game aint worth this."
Probably the best description of this whole situation I've heard.
hell, I never saw the appeal of "the original game" either, the power of that franchise baffles me
I've not played Palworld, but I think a lot of its success is due to the fact that survival-crafting is a genre with a very large market and no games that have fully filled that market. So whenever someone puts out a survival-crafting game that's at least halfway competent, it gets a surge in popularity from people chasing a craving that has yet to be satiated. Survival-crafting that lets you collect and use monsters is an even more focused niche that, to my knowledge, has only been filled by ARK. And I say this is someone who rates ARK among his top 10 favorite games of all time: ARK is not a good game. So that market is ripe for the picking.
Yeah. The game is much less "Pokemon with guns" so much as it is "Conan Exiles but slightly better". The bar for quality in that genre of games is so staggeringly low that Palworld is unironically one of the best in the genre. It's got better AI, far more forgiving and time generous resource gathering and crafting systems, and the addition of really solid Fakemon designs and Legends Arceus gameplay elements just gives it something distinctive.
Some would question the better AI part, but they're not familiar with how atrocious other games in the genre are. The Pals can walk around and even fight one another. In comparison to Conan, its leagues ahead. Most games in the genre lean incredibly hard on large server pvp (i.e. log in to find your base was blown up and everything stolen while you weren't online). Palworld doesn't, and as such has even the bare minimum of engaging pve gameplay.
Minecraft villager farms are a fair comparison to the way palworld treats their pals, in my opinion. So in that respect, the marketing is just marketing. I'm giving palworld a shot, it is a more thought out and polished game than the early Pokemon 3d open world games, again my opinion. It at least has an answer to the question "so after a Pokemon starts fighting, why am I just standing there?" Guns are obvious. They lean into how obviously violent and whiplash guns are, I think they could have had a more cohesive art direction if the made the monsters more monstery, but that would have fully broken orbit with Pokemon and their marketing would have suffered.
Palworld is LITERALLY ARK. Its every single system is the same except the dinos are now pals and they have special attacks. It's made by people who discontinued their ARK mod Pokemon Evolved.
Survival crafting does have a bad habit of reusing the same mechanics loop that's unsatisfying in the long term but ends up eating large amounts of time.
Palworld's graphics are probably more pleasant than most of them I've played, if I had to spend 100 hours clicking rocks.
In addition to "being bad" most survival games also have the very strong urge to punish and restrict the player. Even without lackluster AI and limited assets, these games are full of mechanics that only exist to torment the player and multiply the playtime by 10. Sure to some degree that's what we want from a survival game, challenges to overcome, adversities to brave, but that also makes it easier for a game in that genre to appeal to most people if it simply does not... try to frustrate the player at every end.
"We want an adult pokemon game!" Well, SMT is right there.
*pushes Jiminez into the fusion machine*
REMEMBER BILL!?
"You know what a fan of smut I am." - Brendan 'Beej' Dery, January 2024
His nickname is literally slang for oral sex
I've watched Beej's Anime round up, so I'm well aware of what a fan of smut he is.
Get the feeling "palworld was this year!!!!???" Is a thing many people will say in November.
people these days are making ai chatbots look extremely creative by comparison.
Aww damn it... I can almost guarantee that I'll say that at some point between October and December
I think one of the reasons it's become so popular is that the game seems to have, possibly accidentally, come up with a novel gameplay solution to the biggest problem with survival crafting games (for me). Being able to go out and recruit cute friends to your base to automate the boring survival crafting parts away is what I've always wanted from that genre! And yes, it's absolutely wild to me that there's a context where I can describe the game as "novel", given how many store-brand chunks of popular games they seem to have unnecessarily stitched together.
Also, the other weird thing to me about the game is that it really feels like the different parts of the company just... aren't talking to each other as much as they should? The tone of the game is wildly inconsistent as to how "edgy" they seem to want to be. All the marketing makes it out to be a violent, cynical, depressing slavery sweatshop simulator, but in the actual game all the pals are running around your base with big smiles, and if their ominous SAN gauge goes too low they... just start slacking off, take a break in the hot tub, or go to bed early? They don't even have the edge to kill pals when they run out of HP, they just get spiral eyes and ragdoll down a hill and have to recover in your box. There's less edge in this game than a nuzlocke, for the most part! Yes, meat comes out of them when they do that, but meat comes out of them when you capture an uninjured one with a ball, so who knows how that works. And then there's a bunch of other gameplay elements that are clearly on a different page and are still going full-on with the edge, like the guns and poaching and catching humans, and the butcher's knife that replaces the pet button, so it's not just a case of the marketing not matching up. It's a weirdly comedic dissonance. I kind of think the devs just have no idea what they're doing, but it's WORKING, so they might as well keep going and see what happens.
Absolutely A+ reply here, I remember playing for a while and thinking "this is the game everyone was up in arms about promoting slavery but I can't get this damn deer to work a single minute more than he wants to and all my Pals seem relatively happy to help me carve out a little home in the wilderness together".
Not to mention that yes, I think a major part of its success is because despite being clear ripoffs of other things, the elements it's stitching together are making something novel in both the Monster Collection and Survival Craft genres. After Pokemon Legends Arceus showed how much people *do* want to just explore a big open world with their cute monster friends, and all the survival craft games continuing to be dragged down by their more tedious mechanics, combining the two into something that's fun to engage with - that being establishing a co-operative, peaceful existence with fun monster friends in the wilderness - makes it incredibly appealing even to those of us, like myself, who don't usually like survival craft games all that much.
Re: First paragraph. The Minecraft mod Millenaire has been doing basically that for years. :)
@@Tomoka51 I mean, if you want slavery, it *does* give you the option to capture humans as well...
@@Quiltfish Hah, that's not surprising. If we're counting mod developers, I don't think don't think the rest of us will get to have an original idea ever again. I can think of several entire genres of game that spawned out of modding communities; it's crazy how much experimentation that enables. The world of Minecraft mods alone has thrown plenty of game mechanics at me that the wider games industry hasn't come close to. Lately I've been seeing some really innovative stuff out of the Factorio modding community as well. I think game developers could do a lot by taking more influence from weird mods.
@@Quiltfish Good lord, its been years since i have heard of that mod, i would be surprised if it was still being developed.
So the thing about Pokemon Black and White is that they kind of did the Marvel Villain thing where the villains at first seem to be trying to do some actual good but then it turns out it's just a front so they can be mustache twirlingly evil and the injustice they originally claimed to fight is never brought up again. Except for the weird kid they have as their front man who they intentionally socialized exclusively with abused rescue pokemon.
Not to mention that N's DAD Ghetsis is the "true villain", who gaslights his own son enough that N prefers the company of Pokemon over humans, and that the main supporters are a group of old yes men who just seem like they're trying to get their stock options in order before Ghetsis obliterates the world with the box legendary.
Maybe not that, but like IRL, ppl who entered debt, or bought the lies ghetsis was spouting. Remember ghetsis is coated in pope like attires. Referring to wayback when the head of the national churches was many times "counseling" younger kings left by internal wars, or epidemics. And they were the actual head of state, until next king rolled around. This repeated until French revolution era.
Oh yeah, Ghetsis was trying to install a puppet dictator as Champion so that he could forcibly "disarm" the people of Unova and stage a coup
Man, the whiplash between Beej's first two stories
For a second I thought he was just repeating the same story for a bit!
SexPoint!
I'm glad I already new that piece of news before watching, because I don't know that type of heartbreak I would have had hearing it on Checkpoint.
Pokemon Black/White was really interesting. It even took things a step further with the figurehead and many of its members being true believers of the cause, but then having the leader of it using the whole movement as a power play to get people to steal oppressed pokemon (some of them were actually being rescued from terrible situations, but they would also do it in cases where it was clearly just a young child whose best friend was there pokemon) so that he would be the only one with pokemon and could use that power disparity to rule the world. Now, whether that was just a way to keep the player on the side of justice or a commentary on how good movements can be used for nefarious ends is another conversation, but they certainly the games with some of the most interesting plot.
Fully agreed. I loved playing Pokémon White, and was of the opinion it was the most “grown up” Pokemon game because of how they treated the shades of grey around team plasma. I kinda dropped off of Pokémon when I realized that the writing was backing off of that rather than embracing it, and it wasn’t growing up with me. Which is fine! But i’m just surprised people want “adult Pokemon” in the way of “but with guns” rather than something more interesting.
Also though I don’t know if intentional there is kinda the theme of you opposing the evil team because that’s the trope even if what they are doing at the very least at first is good. rescuing Pokémon from abuse but your already put into the position of protecting the status quo before even being revealed as truly villainess.
It's funny, because I had to borrow a line from Watch & Play to describe how I felt about Palworld; "of all the games I've played (that are scams) this is one of the best"
Having already seen the Love Live news I was absolutely giddy at the end of Beej's first story when i realised what he was doing.
Thank you Graham for bringing sensibility to the discussion and discourse around Palworld. I like the game and I like the mechanics and I hope it sticks around and I agree with your sentiments
When Beej came back with the second gacha rhythm game story, I died laughing. Perfection.
I think people like Palworld because it lets you get to watch your cute monster pets help out around camp and do stuff with you instead of only existing during battles or occasional picnics.
Correct!
And it's the closest thing adult fans have to a Pokemon game that acknowledges all the non-family friendly jokes we made as a kid like can Pokeballs capture humans too and what happens if you do? Where does food come from if most plants and animals are Pokemon? And why haven't guns been made that Pokemon can use?
This is a big part of it. Even in the Switch-era when wild-pokemon appear in the overworld, they aren't... doing anything. They only exist for you to catch them, at which point things immediately return to the status-quo. If you want to maintain the fantasy that these are living creatures in their natural-habitat, your imagination still has to do all the work.
This is why I prefer the classic/2-D games-it's easier for my imagination to fill-in the blanks when it's obvious the game is a representation rather than a depiction.
@@iankniel I know the Pals do stuff in your base/camp once captured but do the wild ones do stuff in the open world or just wander around aimlessly like Pokemon do?
They don't, but they do seem to move around a much wider area than they do in Legends Arceus. Like, in Legends it was very obvious they were just spawning in a random position in an area. There was no illusion of a natural world in place. In Palworld spawns are more consistent but certain pals have routes they seem to travel across. So you get consistency but not a complete lack of surprise.
Pals also get into fights with people that aren't you and sometimes also each other out in the world, which goes a massive way in making the world feel more alive. That was always my biggest criticism of other games in this genre, and Palworld is weirdly one of the best I've seen. @@PlebNC
Graham: "when we say 'Adult Pokemon', you say 'Guns and Murder.'"
Me: "Guns and Murder and Slavery, too!"
Don't forget cannibalism~
to anyone who's confused by the Love Live announcements, i can assure you that i've been looking into it for the past hour and i am no closer to figuring out what the Fuck Fick is happening
godspeed
The discourse around Palworld was so rotten that I was dreading even THIS SHOW talking about it and whipping out the hottest of takes or something. I shouldn't have doubted, of course, and thank you for the sanity check.
Palworld and it's discourse is basically just the gaming world desperate for something to do while we drag our feet through the release drought.
we SHOULd be talking about how great the prince of persia game is but NOoooO
I believe one important reason why Palworld is doing so well is because it's the first Monster Catcher game I can think of (first party Nintendo or otherwise) that isn't a JRPG. Yeah it's a mid survival game, but the fact that it even is a survival game is novel.
Also it fulfills a promise that Pokemon has had since Gen 1 and has only ever really used as set dressing: the ability to work with your Pals to achieve tasks. Having a set of 3 Pals do berry planting itches my brain in a specific way that no Pokemon game has itched.
Is TemTem an RPG? I never played that one.
@@jackielinde7568 It's a marginally more Western RPG and has some MMO-adjacent elements (it was originally going to be one, its status as one presently is dubious) but it is definitely an RPG yes. There's also Coromon I'm aware of which is more early 2000s Pokemon-like.
I'm glad people who are not afraid to call Palworld as what it really is. Which I like to compare to food. Palworld is slop. It's a hodgepodge of parts put together to make a game that's in the uncanny valley. Just like how you take ingredients you like and cook them altogether to make food. You could certainly cook an actual meal, but sometimes you just want to eat some slop.
That's Palworld. It's an average game that just jumbles art styles and game design mechanics and sells it for people to buy. And it works thanks to the outlandish marketing and uncanny valley mix of realism and pokemon artstyle design that made it memorable.
What I love about the discourse is that Pokemon is itself taking many, many animals from real life, sticking extra bits on, and cutefying them.
Not to mention the fact that it was *far* from the first game to do so.
I didn't care about having guns or slavery themes. I just wanted an open world 3rd person creature collector, and everyone making creature collectors so far have focused on turn based combat so this scratched an itch that has been waiting for years to be met.
I would be fine with turn based if they actually evolved the combat to be more than "babby's first RPG". I've been wishing for them to make 2v2 or 3v3 the norm even with wild battles and make pokemon abilties more interactive to a party with things like AoE and more support abilties. Stat buffing abilties become much more interesting if they effect the party or are targetable. have a support pokemon that buffs another one who has a taunt ability or just to improve its damage instead of wasting a turn when you could just hit twice or buff the entire party. as it is 1v1 is too simple. at least most single character RPGs usually have you engaging with multiiple enemies which complicates it.
But I'll take real time combat with both you and your creature to manage. Anything but that simple 1v1 combat that focuses on 1 shotting enemies.
So the thing with Pokémon Black/White is basically what beej described, but in reverse; the "we care about Pokémon autonomy and forcing them to do your bidding" thing was the front, and the real motivation of the villain was to separate everyone from their Pokémon so they're powerless to stop him from... idk taking over Unova or whatever.
Tl;dr the interesting mature theme everyone praised those games for having is never resolved because in actuality it never really mattered in the story of the games
I don't think the villain wanted to take over the world. He just wanted to free the Pokemon from slavery so they can be free and more willingly choose if they stay with people.
First Pokemon villain that actually had a good point and motivation.
@@PlebNC N was the front man for the actual villain, Ghetsis, who yes, wanted to conquer the world and was completely evil with no depth.
@@SBJ_Tube I completely forgot Ghetsis was a thing because N was so much more compelling of a character.
To be completely honest, palworld still feels very rough, but it is a very fun game ! It feels to me like a mix between the exploration, survival and building of Valheim-like games combined with the cuteness of pokémon and an automation process which reminds me of Factorio. Gameplay-wise it is very addicting.
But even so, it's still just a game and I also think it's ridiculous how riled up people are getting over it. Just let people enjoy what they enjoy and if they ripped assets, Nintendo is gonna be litigious enough to stand up for themselves. A massive company doesn't need us to defend them, they are more than capable of doing so themselves.
my friend went to twitter after playing for a couple hours, and that's how we found out that apparently the internet was imploding about this game lol. we're used to playing early access survival stuff, so this game was just that, but the pokemon worked better than the mod for the other games :D
The Love Live SIF2 story has been my favorite thing to see in a while thanks to its absurdity. It was meant to replace the original that was shut down last March, supposedly improving on the whole thing in some way and being released in April. The fact that it barely failed to make their one year anniversary because the new game isn’t actually that much better is astounding, and the notion that the developers and localization team of the Global version have to watch their work essentially become dead on arrival is quite the sight to behold.
I hope everyone involved gets compensated well, but I definitely still had a good laugh at the announcement.
I agree with Graham's afterward bc Palworld looks like a Watch + Play game
As a former Homestuck fan, I heartily endorse the simile "like cheap cigars" as a stock phrase for something passed around easily.
As a pokemon fan, graham basically said my take word for word.
agreed. its clearly a ripoff of several things, but most games ripoff stuff from other games. I also don't really care if they are copying homework from a billion dollar corporation that sues its fans and is extremely litigious. but people are making up the most extreme shit like saying they ripped a couple models straight from pokemon, and not backing down after the people that made that accusation admitted to doctoring the comparisons. Why would a company specifically steal 2 models and not the rest when they know they have to be very legally careful? they're not that dumb and if they were they'd have been lazier.
Its a game, that people like, and people are getting too worked up about it.
I agree too. The quality of the games has been falling with each game, and I second that the basic formula of the story needs some slight deviations but not fundamental changes.
For example, maybe instead of a team CRIME existing, you have 2 official Pokemon trainer teams (like Pokemon Go), that compete in a Championship for the title of Best Team, and the player joins a team, climbs to the top, and wins the championship. The evil guys would be some 3rd party that gains/profits from the chaos and rivalry.
My partner who is a pokemon fan and survival game fan looked at palworld, saw a bit of gameplay, and then looked at a previous game by the dev "Craftopia" that he played and said "pass."
The content looks middling, its functional, but it doesn't feel like we'd be playing it a month from now. That and basically you can mod Ark survival evolved to be just this but just without NPC humans to bother you. That and it looked like it lacked substance beyond "pokemon with guns and survival"
EDIT: So my partner who played Craftopia and saw G's criticism said Palworld is "literally Craftopia's code copy/pasted (There is a catching mechanic in Craftopia), rebranded, added pokemon ripoffs and shipped. They didn't even bother changing their character creator, it is same thing!" So draw on that info however you want. The UI is barely changed, the BOTW vibes is the same, its just literally a previous product rebranded.
I want to tell you, my partner played craftopia before the open world stuff, and finished it, then was done with it forever, but has been very much enjoying palworld, despite it being just craftopia with a pokemon style theme. I haven't played the other game much, but I have enjoyed ark, and this is just ark, but the monsters are easier to flee from.
As messy as the game seems though, it holds together a lot better than you'd think, and it's deeper than I ever imagined. I actually was going to give it a pass, because it just looks like a shitty ripoff of EVERY game, but in my opinion it's a good ripoff of every game. Like, every thing that I like about the other games is in this, and it even makes finding collectables feel rewarding and fun. They have eggs hidden around the place, like easter eggs, and they hatch random pals, and that's just fun to get at, because it's like real easter. idk, I'd say give it a try, I hear it's on gamepass, so you could even do it for free if you already have that maybe?
I want to stress, I'm not trying to be argumentitive with this. Your opinion is quite valid and reasonable. I just wanted to let you know, I had the same opinion once, and have since changed it.
Oh Craftopia was bad, nothing was balanced and everything seemed hastily mashed together.
I would argue that the real bad guy of Pokemon Scarlet/Violet is Professor Sada/Turo. A genuinely terrible parent.
Wait but I do want a Pokémon game that’s just Disco Elysium
So, here's the thing about the Pokemon Black and White storyline Beej talked about... It does put you in a morally gray area. The villains talk a lot of sense and the game makes you stand by the "pro slavery" of Pokemon side as opposed to the "free Pokemon" side.
BUT THEN
The story does a rug pull at the end and instead of diving into the moral implications of Pokemon ownership... We find out the villains talked about all this just so they could be the LAST Pokemon trainers and take over the world. And in the sequel they just shoot the entire world full of ice.
People oversell the B/W storyline. It isn''t actually that good.
I kinda remeber that a grunt tells you very early that "We are doing this for evil reasons actually" so its not even a rug pull later on, its like you already know the twist but cant tell anyone and have to endure the plot going on and on on its bullshit.
Graham, thank you so much for your take on the Palworld situation. It's so nice to actually hear someone else saying everything I've been saying.
Did not realize how hard Twitter community notes goes. A.I. throwing shade. That's the future I can get behind.
The word you're looking for, Graham, is "nondiegetic". The game is a mismash of styles, but the mechanics are pretty well incorporated. Graphics clearly don't matter when the gameplay is solid.
You guys are one of primary reasons I keep my UA-cam account. Thank you for the work you do!! ❤
Palworld is an exciting study of taking all the most popular games' ideas and UIs (minecraft, fortnite, zelda, pokemon, ark, sims.. to name a few). It is also a hell of a fun and addicting game, even though it's a mishmash of everything, the game play loop is actually fun. Every level you get, you get to unlock a bunch of new things. The exploration is actually interesting and the base mechanics, building system (decorate your base like Sims) and pal maintenance is a great change of pace to survivor games. I don't know how they did it, it shouldn't work but it does. If you are on the fence give it a bite specially if you play it co-op, it's just plain fun.
its sold 8 million now. I think part of it is that the game hits a market niche that people didnt know they wanted.
Also the guns are apparently made by one employee that the CEO found working a convenience store. The employee really likes guns. And FPS games.
I love you Beeg and your Pacific Rim refrence. 😂
Always good to see a reference to that movie in the wild. It was so good. Shame it never got a sequel.
Your level-headedness is very refreshing. Thank you.
11:35 about the gun part being hyper-realistic, according to an interview with the palworld devs they literally hired a Japanese guy who they found on Twitter who was a SELF-TAUGHT animator and gun enthusiast who made realistic gun reload animations. They immediately hired the guy full time and even gave him housing in Tokyo since he was from Hokkaido I believe, there are articles about this in other game news site and reactor vids. Also, this game was made on a 10k$ budget by a bunch of people who had no prior experience in the gaming industry or the use of Unreal engine itself (they literally learned on the job according to the same dev interview), which in all honesty explains the mish mash of things in Palworld and its jankiness. But hey, I've been really having fun since day 1 release, it's really funny that your bringing a wooden club in the early game against human enemies (the syndicate thugs) and their just the holding a Beretta/Desert Eagle.
God bless you guys for having the most sane take on Palworld I've seen.
Having missed all of the controversy by being on social media very little, I can't believe there's such uproar over Palworld. My roommate plays it and, while it looks pretty bad, very video-gamey, and clearly "taking a lot of hints" from pokemon, it's also perfectly functional. Won't be buying it myself, but if people are genuinely having fun with it, let em.
As some who has grown up playing most Pokémon games, I only want 2 things in future games: higher quality (memory usage/fps especially) and different difficulty settings
Pokemon idea: Pokemon Explorer, an open world survival cozy game takes place in early near-industrial time. The goal is to build a town in a brand new land. Survival gameplay in the early game where you and your low-tier pokemon team gather resources to build your town and protect yourself against higher tier wild pokemon that will attack and dismantle your town. As your town level up, more NPCs will move to your town from the old world and they'll help with resource gathering and eventually production to export back to the old world. The longer you play, the more the game turn into a cozy game like Animal Crossing and Stardew where cosmetic and decoration becomes the end game as wild pokemon attack on your town becomes less frequent, but more powerful.
I agree, Palworld definitely looks like 2, maybe even 3, different art styles mixed together. Very weird situation.
I wanna see a pokemon game that has you playing as a gym leader. You're locked into a gimmick, and progressively stronger NPC trainers come through to challenge you
And you have to deal with challengers meta gaming your gimmick and the existencial depression of being a water gym leader next to a power plant that electric types live at.
There is at the very least, a fangame with this premise.
"Pokemon: Shades of Grey" is 100% a Wattpad fic title and masterful double play
The 2/3 of the hosklings looked at Palworld because it keeps smacking them in their face every time they look at anything online, and they said "no thanks this game looks bad"
Discussing Palworld online is more relaxing about the real world, I guess.
Having actually played Palworld: One of the best things they did was make the difficulty granular. You wanna make the survival aspect trivial? Up the resource multiplier. You wanna have harder fights? Up the amount of Pals that spawn in, how much damage they take and how much damage they deal. Hunger? Turn it off or make it happen faster. Day night cycle? Make the nights never come if you hate them.
It *is* a pile of random things, but the best I can really come up to explain why its so compelling is that it's got all the stuff i loved in Legends Arceus, but actually expanded on. I can just Ride most of the bigger Pals after making a saddle/harness for them. My Pal follows me around instead of sitting there like a dork when i toss them out of their ball. Instead of having a few Mon at the farm or showing up at the pasture, I can have 15 Pals at my base and all can do different tasks but not *all* of the tasks - there's a reason to catch them. And the game will happily let you spoil them with special foods and relaxation fixtures just as easily as it will let you buy mind altering drugs to keep them content while you overwork them (With a slowly increasing chance of them burning your base down as you do so). And then there's a whole Pal breeding system.
The game is clearly just a pile of "I really liked this in another game, lets slam it all together" and that's fun. And it's priced about right for what it is.
Also the theme song for the Pokémon black and white anime was literally
“It's not always black and white,
But your heart always knows what's right.”
I watched a bit of Palworld gameplay, and my takeaway was "this has asset flip energy."
I heard that the modder may have been charging money, which may explain the relatively swift response.
So I don't like survival/crafting games, partly for the same reasons that Graham mentioned. But I had a friend who wanted to check it out together so I started playing with him a bit on a server I think he said he spent about 30 minutes playing on. What I will say for Palworld is that it looks like having these little creatures collect resources and build things for you means that you can automate things very quickly and possibly get to the "mid-game" very quickly. What I found *very* frustrating is that (possibly because we joined a group together) we could only have one base, and he had already maxxed the number of creatures that could be working in his base. So I...just couldn't do the whole "base-building" part of the game.
You are correct, it's because you joined his group. Base limits are per-"guild" ingame. Haven't tested if they actually have multiple guilds on a single server working yet tho xD
palworld is the best asset-flip i have played. i'm having a great time :)
I'm looking forward to Kindred Fates, which is another mature take on a Pokemon-like game, but instead of putting in guns, they made the kinfolk fully sentient, able to speak to you, and then gave them permadeath if you're unable to revive them in time. Which doesn't sound nice at all, now that I say it like that, but it looks adorable and possibly heart-breaking.
I love how Graham was instantly repulsed by himself saying Pokemon Shades of Gray.
I love you guys so much. This show makes my week.
For people looking for an actual pokemonlike I'd recommend Cassette Beasts. It has cute art, a great story, and interesting mechanics to spice up the formula
Cassete Beasts is an excellent game, and I second the recommendation....with the acknowledgement that part of the reason palworld is doing so well is that it's mechanically very *un*like pokemon. One of the major draws I'm feeling and hearing from others about the game is that lots of people love catching and collecting their little monster friends but have been wanting a different style of game to do it in for a long time, and an open ended survival craft game is exactly scratching that itch. The guns and violence isn't even the main draw, and the slavery just straight up isn't present; people just want to go on a fun exploration adventure with their animal friends
Truly, I think that the main reason Palworld has been successful is that pokemon fans who have grown up past their first game are desperate for a pocket monster game that isn't just the same one Gamefreak releases every couple of years with a roster update. Yeah, Palworld wears a sports jacket with its references emblazoned on every conceivable piece of fabric but the sales figures say that that is what the people want. Maybe it could just be more cohesive and competent. I've put in an hour or two and its fine? Just looks and plays like 3-4 games smushed together.
When people say they want an adult pokemon, I roll my eyes and halfheartedly point them to Cassette Beasts. Phenomenal game, but, god, grow up already.
I legitimately started playing Destiny 2 when it came out after watching Graham play the Beta on stream.
Twitch has a surprising amount of influence when games are streamed.
I wanted an open-world, sandboxy co-op game, where I could build a house, fly through the air riding a cool bird or dragon (or bird/dragon) thing, and explore with my friend.
Palworld absolutely nailed that.
Y'know what else it nailed? If my friend or I found a mon the other wanted, we could just (drop it on the ground for them to take) hand it over, without needing a special trading system.
I think the clash between the guns and pals is intentional. It's supposed to have the comedy of hyper realistic guns existing next to little blorbos.
"I see, people want a more intreciate and functionally complex pokemon game" actually, Graham, I DO want that, and it's called Legends Arceus, legends is SO much better than regular pokemon
Honestly, I think that the demand for a more adult version of pokemon _is in fact that high_ and Pokémon itself is really bad at funneling people towards that. Nuzlocking and Competitive Pokémon are really fun - once you grind like hell and learn some of the worst mechanics in a major video game.
I think this is the first sensible opinion on Palworld I've seen so far. The game randomly popped up in my youtube feed and I was thinking that it looked a bit interesting (weird aesthetic choices aside) but it gave me massive ARK flashback. I have a love/hate relationship with that game so I was checking if it would be as soul crushing as ARK was to me. It's also an early access game from a company I don't know so the usual research starts. Looking at their page, I saw another survival crafting game still in early access, Craftopia. It raised some red flags for me and negative comments on steam usually mention that Craftopia has been left in a bad state and that Palworld is just that game with monster collector genre slapped on top. Pretty much anyone I talked to about Palworld mention some element that feels ripped of somewhere else. But, if I try to dig deeper, there's just the endless madness about if it's a ripoff of pokemon and only toxicity from all side. I just wanted to see if I would enjoy it considering previous experience with the genre and if it was a legit game or an asset flip cash grab.
Fortunately there's no live service FOMO yet so there's no reason to not wait until a heavy sale or a patch comes out that makes the game up to standard.
As a ride or die Pokemon fan I just find all the Palworld discourse from every side just exhausting.
Funny how after watching this a got served an ad for the new Pokemon TV series. 😂😂😂
Man, do I love it when Checkpoint is over. Yet the video progress bar is only 2/3 complete.
Honestly from having watched some stream, Palworld looks like a very fun and well-made (if not especially original) crafting survival sim.
Hey, shoving half a dozen games into each other worked great for Darksiders.
11:04 Giving it away, giving it away, giving it away now, like red hot chilli peppers.
Now I know objectively what palworld is xD
There's a couple games for grownups which are pokemon-like. I recently loved playing Cassette Beasts, for example. Weird that there aren't more pokemon-likes given the success of the formula, but still, there's a few around.
So the thing I'm more surprised people aren't up in arms about with Palworld is false advertising.
I saw those ads at the Game Awards the last couple years, and literally nowhere else, same as everyone. Not for a second did I expect the game to just be Ark or Rust or any one of those.
Not that I care. But it seems like the kind of thing people would be mad about.
Thankfully I am apparently also blessed in some small way? I'm aware of the Palworld uproar because of things like Checkpoint and the topical mention of the week on a couple podcasts going "Can you believe this reaction?". But that's it.
I don't know where these angry weirdos are fighting over the mid looking survival game but I'm blissfully not in that ecosystem it seems.
It's quite nice. I recommend it.
Palword is experiencing all the growth issues a big game can get in real time.
As someone who has no nostalgia for Pokemon (I never played them) and doesn't enjoy survival games, I've just passed on Palworld and its discourse entirely. I'm in agreement with Graham: it looks like a bunch of disparate pieces tossed together amateurishly with no regard about how they could make a cohesive look.
I think Pokemon Scarlet Violet was a great step in the right direction by having more relatable and interesting character stuff that's appealing to adults (than in the past) without making the games less fun/whimsical. Like kids movies that put stuff in that the parents will like.
Though I don't believe that many players did the optional tutorials (classes) to get rewarded with extra character lore like how the grass gym leader nearly died of an illness and later got saved from capitalism through the power of love (and I mean this in the gayest way possible) by the elite four member who ran away from being home to pursue music and passion instead of being the heir to his prestigious family and carrying on their ancient legacy
I feel like "we cherish and nurture each and every pokemon" is not a statement The Pokemon Company can say with a straight face considering the number of critters I've converted to candy over the years in PoGo.
Lt. Surge's line about "the war" in Gen 1 pokemon is going to hang over the series like a stale fart until we get a pokemon game set during wartime.
Anyone want to mention Gunkern? Seems appropriate here. Anyone? Anyone?
Palworld, if fanfiction was a game
I would say Cassette Beasts feels like an adult Pokemon.
90% of what I know about palworld I learned from this video, might never hear about this game ever again unless it comes up in another checkpoint story
I really feel Adult Pokémon is Pokémon Concierge.
It was a very darling mini series, it was just beckoning you to relax, put on a Hawaiian shirt and drink something out of a pineapple.
@@varice2248 Also escape the never-ending gig cycle, find work that fulfils you, a good boss and good co-workers. As someone stuck in the grind, that is real adult fantasy!
Whenever I hear "adult pokemon", I think "Oh, so a game about making the vaporeon copypasta real, and overall an eroge about all those pokemon that are both humanoid and meant to look female, that ppl seem to be into".
Palworld is the first survival crafting game I've played since minecraft, and I totally agree graham that visually it's a mess of styles but I've found it's a decent podcast game and that's the best I can say about it
When you said adult Pokemon i said vaporeon
If you think Palworld looks like an assetflip 11:43 , you should see their previous 'big' title, Craftopia. I think that will explain alot about the current discourse. Palworld is the tame one in comparrision.
I am personally dismissive of Palworld, but some of my friends have had their moods so improved by play it, they are like actually excited for something, and for that, i support it.
Yeah the deal with Black and White was specifically that Team Plasma was nominally advocating for Pokémon liberation (by any means necessary), but the guy actually in charge (and his high-ranking followers) ACTUALLY just wanted to become a sort of god-king bc he was the only one allowed to have Pokémon, and to that end he also groomed and abused a child to act as a figurehead for his movement. Meaning you’re opposing BOTH a classical evil team boss (albeit under the guise of altruistic goals) AND this 20-something who is horribly misguided from like 15+ years of manipulation and just wants for Pokémon to not be exploited/abused. Which HAS kind of set the blueprint for more nuanced evil teams since then (with varying levels of success), but Black/White’s villains are just exploited young adults (I always got the impression the grunts DID NOT know the goal wasn’t actually Pokémon liberation) and cartoonishly evil old men. And then the idea of Pokémon liberation is promptly discarded by the franchise bc it wants to stick to the “utopic harmony with nature” vibe it has going
Palworld looks like something you'd play on Watch+Play
The new Adult Pokemon - now with:
Spreadsheet evolutions - trace, plot and calculate, and you'd by Oak better get it right or your 'mon explodes into chunks of raw meat!
Emotional Evolutions - been cheating on Stupid Sexy Bunny with another 'mon? Next time you go to use her, she will evolve! Will it be sad? Angry? Angsty? Will it abandon you for 5 new trainers from Pokemon Black? (Memes not included)
Food requirements! - when trapped in the woods decide if you're a Shia or a Donner Party!
'Mon Abuse! - Crack out the old whip and see which 'mons will give you the patented P+S+M master title! Do you want to be the best? Or the worst?
That's just Digimon !
There already exists a much more adult counterpart to Pokemon.
It's called Shin Migami Tensei.
I have been playing for about 22 hours or so. Both on Xbox and PC. It doesn't feel like desperate parts. It feels like the best parts mashed into a relaxing and fun game. It also works pretty well. Very solid and most of my complaints were fixed in the first patch. So what I recommend is to play it. Try it out. If you like survival you might like this one.
You know the first thing I heard about this game and this was like a week before it came out was a warning to not stream it because it was claimed that it will steal your likeness and voice and whatever it can for Ai generating. And I did t think much of this later until right now when Graham said they were giving those codes away like popcorn, of course not really compelling evidence yet something that makes me go hmph… that’s interesting in bad way
I love Palworld, but I enjoy resource hoarding and crafting. Started with pokémon when the cards came out in '96 and this covers just enough of the Critter Collector genre for that nostalgia.
The fact that the player can have an impact on the world, do things without even having an pals with them, was something those games lacked.
People can hate on it 'till they turn blue and break their keyboard, preferably with SOME logic involved?