January 27, 2024 - Day 392 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 428
Game: Palworld
Platform: Xbox Game Pass for PC
Released: Jan 19, 2024
Installed: Jan 27, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 4.9h
Rating: 4 - Good
Palworld is a third-person tree-punching survival game with a new game mechanic of seeking to be sued out of existence by The Pokemon Company.
If you haven't heard of the game that sold 8 million copies in a week on Steam, and is currently sitting at #2 behind PUBG on the Steam chart for record number of concurrent players, the elevator pitch for Palworld is "Pokemon with guns"
I didn't expect it to be quite so literal.
I'd read a piece about survival games by Zack Zwiezen a few days ago, in which he referred to them as "tree punchers" (which I've stolen from him), and he touched on Palworld in the review; so I had no intention of buying it.
However, after rebooting my PC yesterday, I found myself staring at the Xbox app and an install button for Palworld via Game Pass, which meant I didn't need to buy it, and the die was cast.
The gameplay loop is certainly addictive; I can understand why so many folks are playing it.
It starts out like most survival games; wake up in a random location with no idea how you got there, and start punching trees. It's the same gathering-and-crafting loop we've been doing since Minecraft (and probably even before).
Then there's the Pokemon... sorry, "Pals". I'm not a Nintendo girl. I didn't have any Nintendo stuff growing up, and the first Nintendo console I owned was the N64 I bought for our kids for Christmas 2000 (Christmas 2000 sounds like an awesome B-grade movie).
My first encounter with Pokemon was Pokemon GO. I lack the encyclopaedic memory of all the different Pokemon I encountered in PoGo, but upon encountering -and killing- Pals in Palword, they were definitely giving off Pokemon vibes.
You can also collect the Pals, by attacking them with a weapon until they're weakened enough to capture in a Pokeball... erm, Palsphere.
Once captured, you can put them to work in your base, or, uhh... butcher the cute little PokePals, to feed the other PokePals working in your base.
Best not to think too deeply about a game that is also apparently survival horror.
The Pokemon vibes ceased to be vibes and became "you're going to get sued for IP infringement" when I encountered Gumoss.
Gumoss is a grass-type Pal (yes, they've snarfed the 'type' concept too), which feels unarguably like Ditto in an acorn cap.
If I, with my limited recall of Pokemon, can recognise this, I've no doubt the Pokemon fans calling Pocket Pair out are on the money, and it makes sense that the notoriously laid-back-and-not-at-all-protective-of-their-IP, The Pokemon Company, are "investigating".
Which is primarily why I didn't buy it on Steam; I don't want to lose A$44 when they get sued out of existence for IP infringement.