I not too long ago did one thing kind of uncommon: I went to a preview occasion for a recreation that’s been out for nearly three years.
I’ve performed round 400 hours of Pokémon Scarlet, in keeping with my Nintendo Switch, because it was launched in late 2022. It’s secure to say I do know the sport fairly nicely. And but, once I was invited to preview Pokémon Scarlet and Violet on the Nintendo Switch 2 forward of the brand new console’s launch, I gladly took the chance to see three-year-old video games I already personal. I needed to seek out out simply how a lot they’d improved.
I’ve a excessive jank tolerance with video games — it builds character — however I’m nicely conscious of Scarlet and Violet’s shortcomings on the unique Switch. There’s lag. The body fee is… inconsistent. There are on-line connectivity points. For lots of people, efficiency issues overshadowed what was in any other case an amazing new technology of Pokémon video games. With the discharge of the Nintendo Switch 2, and the accompanying free efficiency replace for Scarlet and Violet, that may lastly change.
Starting up the demo of Pokémon Scarlet on the Switch 2 at The Pokémon Company International’s workplace in Bellevue, Washington, I knew instantly the place I needed to go first: Casseroya Lake, typically referred to as “Lag Lake,” the place the video games’ graphical points are most obvious. On the unique Switch, the sport actually chugs whenever you’re on the lake; the body fee takes a dive, and it struggles to render greater than a handful of pokémon in your fast neighborhood. Exploring the liveliest open areas and encountering the pokémon that populate them is one in every of Scarlet and Violet’s largest strengths, however on the Switch, Casseroya Lake is uninteresting and empty at greatest and not possible to navigate at worst.
Playing on the Switch 2, nevertheless, Casseroya Lake ran fantastically. There have been way more pokémon in view (and I used to be instantly accosted by a torpedo-like Veluza, identical because it ever was), and the lag and stuttering I’d come to anticipate have been nonexistent. I battled that Veluza with no issues. I stumbled upon a Slowpoke outbreak and despatched out my Clodsire to auto-battle them — no lag. I discovered a wild Tera Pokémon and watched the Tera animation play out, wanting sharper than I’d ever seen it. (I used to be taking part in in docked mode at a station arrange by TPCi, so perhaps that final one may very well be credited to the TV. But nonetheless.)
It was the identical case all over the place I went throughout my 30-minute demo: a secure and easy body fee, considerably sooner load instances, and way more pokémon populating the world. The Switch 2 replace will not be an entire overhaul of the graphics themselves — the grass textures seemed simply as unremarkable as at all times to my eye, for instance — however it does appear to remove the efficiency points which have dragged Scarlet and Violet down for practically three years. It’s a noticeable enchancment on this planet, in battle, in Tera raids, and even in menus.
Is it praiseworthy for a recreation to easily run nicely? Maybe not. I don’t faux to know the way video games are made on a technical degree, or actually any degree, however I do know they’re not simple to make. And I had sufficient enjoyable with Pokémon Scarlet to play for 400 hours with out the efficiency points bothering me a lot. But it did really feel bittersweet, briefly, to assume how rather more these video games may have shone in the event that they’d run nicely within the first place.
Then, within the final 5 minutes of my demo, as I waded in a distinct physique of water to substantiate that it too ran easily, I noticed it: among the many pods of Buizel dotting the shore, a shiny.
An excellent portion of my 400 hours in Scarlet have been spent shiny searching, as a result of though the alternate-color variations of pokémon usually are not fairly as arduous to seek out as they have been in earlier video games, I get excited each time I see one, with out fail. It’s the right encapsulation of the type of pleasure Scarlet and Violet have to supply: exploring a energetic space and discovering one thing particular. I caught the shiny Buizel regardless of realizing that it wasn’t my save file and never mine to maintain.
The Switch 2 replace is arguably arriving a bit late for my Scarlet save file, relying on what number of hours you assume are affordable to spend taking part in this recreation. But I additionally personal Violet, and I’ve performed about two hours of that model whole. Looking on the shiny Buizel I didn’t get to maintain, I spotted I used to be actually excited to have a motive to play Violet lastly — to rediscover what I appreciated most about these video games, in a state that does them justice.
