No thanks, Pal

Rules, they say, are made to be broken. And so, for one issue only, we’re bucking tradition by turning our attention not to the games featured within this section but one obvious absentee. We’re talking about Palworld, the (at time of writing) 19-million-selling phenomenon whose Early Access launch managed to spark some of the most depressing discourse in living memory. Until the arrival of Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, at least.

Some declared it a brazen Pokémon ripoff, with claims of plagiarism and generative AI use supported and debunked. Others were overly keen to praise this plucky upstart – which, suspiciously familiar creature designs aside, isn’t much like Pokémon at all, but rather a robust survival game which just happens to contain creatures to battle, capture and train.

Our time with the game reveals that it is a competent, utterly craven bandwagon-hopper. Whether or not you believe the more unseemly accusations levelled at Palworld, it is undeniably cynically conceived, and it speaks to a troubling lack of critical standards that the fact it exceeded the lowest of expectations was cause for celebration. Its popularity resulted in a curious desperation to retroactively make a case for its overnight success. If you look hard enough you can see its “endless busywork” cited as a positive, bafflingly.

Yet its popularity, ultimately, is no great surprise. There will always be an audience whose hunger is simply for more of what it already likes, a hint of additional flavour enough to get maws opening wide for another spoonful. Consider the game’s principal demographic, too: beyond the memetic value of that (misleading) ‘Pokémon with guns’ hook, it’s certainly a less ugly and exploitative virtual hangout for younger players than, say, Roblox.

Those sales numbers don’t automatically mean that it deserves a place within the following pages, though, where we would much rather focus on games we think are genuinely deserving of your time and attention.