New Pokémon Snap
“If a crime writer, a cosmologist, and a mythologist collaborated on a video game, the result might be Genesis Noir,” said Christopher Byrd in The Washington Post. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s short stories and developed by a small New York City studio, the stylish new game takes on the mystery of the universe’s creation by way of a whodunnit straight out of 1930s film noir. It’s “the most conceptually audacious game to hit digital storefronts in many moons,” and it features a beautiful jazz score and line art that “would not be out of place in a gallery.” You play as No Man, a trench coat–clad watch peddler whose affair with a jazz singer leads a jealous saxophonist to fire a gunshot that becomes this universe’s Big Bang, said Simon Parkin in TheGuardian.com. Because you’re limited to point-and-click interactions with the animated images, Genesis Noir feels at times “like a piece of art-house cinema where the director, not the player, controls the action.” But as you explore whether time can be reversed and the Big Bang prevented, the game “sizzles with invention.” At one point, I tapped clouds until a pond fed by their rain burst into life with lotus flowers, said Holly Green in PasteMagazine.com.
Elsewhere, I built prehistoric single-celled organisms and helped them find mates. “I’m still not sure I understand Genesis Noir,” which poses deep questions about what sparks life and love. “But the asking is beautiful all the same.”
The long-awaited sequel to Pokémon Snap “forced me to change the way I think about virtual spaces,” said Andrew Webster in TheVerge.com. This “supremely chill” Nintendo Switch exclusive “moves at a leisurely pace, rewards curiosity, and does little to punish players for not following the rules.” As in the 1999 original, players ride a self- driving vehicle through jungles, deserts, and other beautiful biomes, each teeming with cute Pokémon. Your goal is to photograph 200-plus species, and the repetitiveness can become tedious. But for the past year I’ve craved a vacationlike escape set in a richly detailed virtual world. “Turns out what I needed was a safari full of Squirtles.”