With the freedom of a gigantic world map to be explored, Scarlet and Violet come closest yet to capturing the spirit of a true globetrotting adventure. Tragically, beneath the shonky surface, Scarlet/Violet’s game loop is the most compelling Pokémon’s been in decades.

City buildings shimmer like a bad Photoshop cut-job, and the ground regularly disappears under your Pokémon, mid-battle. The frame-rate in the open world constantly judders to a crawl. It’s not hyperbole to say that Scarlet/Violet is one of the worst-looking – and running – games I’ve ever played. Much like Arceus, Scarlet and Violet are games that dream big, but are beaten down by reality. Photograph: Nintendoīut on setting foot outside your house – the classic first step on all Pokémon adventures – the wheels fall off. But Scarlet and Violet buckles violently under the weight of that ambition. It aims to take the series’ expansive-yet-enclosed-environments to the next logical level: a seamless open world, where you can go where you want, catching and battling creatures as you travel. In this second Pokémon outing of the year, developer Game Freak abandons February’s Legends: Arceus’s intriguing feudal-era setting, but otherwise picks up where it left off. M odern video games can be so perceptibly realistic – grass rippling in a gentle breeze, non-player characters going about their daily routines, faces and gestures that look so close to those of real humans – that they’ve started to call to mind Plato’s old chin-stroker about the cave (reimagined in 1999’s trench coat-flapping classic The Matrix.) What if we are all trapped inside a shockingly realistic illusion? Would we really know if we were inside a video game? If you’re looking for reassurance that we haven’t yet reached the singularity, boot up the ropey Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.

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