thoughts on "palworld"?

[roadworx]

i have very little knowledge on what this game is other than it's supposedly pokemon with guns and there's a bunch of plagiarism accusations being thrown around. please tell me your thoughts that way i can base my opinion off of what random internet strangers say.

 

i'm wondering if anyone here has even played it considering that a good chunk of the people on this website are contrarian nerds who only play ancient dos games. i fit into that group, so i really only know about this because of the plagiarism stuff. what's the actual game like? is it...y'know...good?

Edited January 27 by roadworx

[DNSKILL5]

I haven’t played Palworld but from the sound of it, the Pokémon devs made a statement that felt like “we’ve heard you annoying fucks spamming us about this game, now you know we know, stop bothering us about it” more than a legit call for action. Plus, it seems Nintendo was more angry about the Pokémon mod for Palworld than the game itself.

I can definitely see where the accusations would hold weight just from looking at gameplay and the character designs, but, it’s not like Pokémon isn’t somewhat a rip off of Dragon Quest to begin with.

Edited January 27 by DNSKILL5

[MFG38]

I ain't played the game (and it frankly doesn't interest me anyway) so I can't comment on much, but based on what I've seen of it from a video and a stream, I will say that some of the creature designs do look eerily close to their Pokemon counterparts. That and the dev team don't seem to be too shy about professing their love for generative AI - hell, one of their pre-Palworld games is basically the most blatant love letter to generative AI you're likely to see. It's not entirely unlikely that they told whatever AI they generated the creature designs with to just give them Pokemon but with some small details changed.

 

This does bring about an interesting question: does using generative AI count as plagiarism?

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

It's another standard survival game, this time with the gimmick being "we have Pokemon with guns at home" that everyone on the planet from PCGamer to PETA is milking for clicks before it inevitably loses 90% of its players within the next month. If the article isn't about Palworld, it's about the author of the article letting you know that they're sick of hearing about Palworld or survival games. Frankly I find most of this genre to be very uninspiring and I'd rather masturbate instead.

Edited January 27 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[mrthejoshmon]

Never played Pokemon, never liked the idea of Pokemon (just doesn't appeal to me) and only ever watched the anime as a kid (I didn't like it too much).

 

Don't particularly like survival games or base builders that much either.

 

So Palworld could not appeal to me any less than it already does.

 

I will not jump to conclusions of it because I ain't playing it and won't play it, but if I was to do that (which I will now do in the next sentence) I'd say it's another fad game.

[Obsidian]

2 hours ago, MFG38 said:

This does bring about an interesting question: does using generative AI count as plagiarism?

 

Considering AI requires the work of other people for the sake of its learning processes and the majority of the work used is done so without the permission of the people responsible for it...well, yes.

 

No substitute for the application of your own elbow grease when it comes to creative work, folks.

[Antroid]

I played it for a few days so far. It's surprisingly high quality for a shitpost game, though still not free of bugs (especially if you play online). It's addicting, but I'm not burned out on survival games, having played none of them personally (I've seen some streams of ark, valheim and such). It's not the kind of game you go to for a meaningful artistic experience, so using assets or AI assistance in asset making doesn't bother me as it normally would. But with some details and things in the game, you can definitely tell someone was having fun making it and sincerely wanted to make it fun to play, which they accomplished 100%. And how blatant it is about using barely legally distinct pokemons adds to the charm, as someone who has no emotional investment in the original franchise.

[RataUnderground]

Shovelware, without any charm.

[Hebonky]

The AI claims aren't verified....

 

The designs for the "Pals" are just derivative and boring.

[TheCarsEdge]

looks very boring and uninspired. most ""Pals"" are nothing but slightly tweaked pokemons 

also apparently the head of development doesn't really care about art or artists, so yk

fun stuff

[Varis Alpha]

the game itself may not be strictly using ai generated assets, but the ceo is all for generative ai usage, so if you support palworld, you're also directly supporting the whims of someone who thinks positive about it.

 

https://twitter.com/invert_x/status/1748495038898942380?t=38rnnVqeD5Cjvk6HWJQq6Q&s=33

 

aside from that garbage, the game itself looks like a bog standard survival game, but now you can capture funny creatures in spheres that can also use guns, so that makes people look past all these other issues. i'd say skip this one, it's not got much staying power aside from the funny memes.

[Mr Masker]

Fad. Like all these popular games, it'll be big for a while, die and be replaced by something else. Remember Fall Guys? Among Us? All those indie horror games that went, "hey GAMERS! We're not like the OTHER horror games! We have [gimmick]! (Please play us Matpat)"?

 

It just looks like Ark but with Pokemon with guns. Now all the streamers can go, "WOAHOHH! Pickacu has an AK?! SO RANDOM!! XDDD"

 

Fad games are whatever. It's the games that stick around that are truly worth playing.

Edited January 27 by Mr Masker

[valkiriforce]

No Hitmonchan look-alike 0/10 always doin' my boy dirty

[Mr. Freeze]

Pokemon: no AK47s

Palworld: has AK47s

 

The choice is clear 

[SuyaSSS]

14 hours ago, Mr Masker said:

Remember Fall Guys? Among Us? All those indie horror games that went, "hey GAMERS! We're not like the OTHER horror games! We have [gimmick]! (Please play us Matpat)"?

How are both Fall Guys and Among Us horror games? 

 

Anyways, I haven't played Palworld myself but I've heard about it through SomeOrdinaryGamers where he takes a look at its controversies (including the questionable games they've made in the past and their ceo's love for ai generated art). But one thing sticked out to me was that palworld looks like a baby plagiarist when you take a look at the companies library (especially that Zelda ripoff game). 

[ReaperAA]

3 hours ago, SuyaSSS said:

How are both Fall Guys and Among Us horror games? 

 

They aren't. He meant that Fall Guys and Among Us were games that got popular at one point and then died off (just like what happened with some of the horror games).

[SuyaSSS]

33 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

 

They aren't. He meant that Fall Guys and Among Us were games that got popular at one point and then died off (just like what happened with some of the horror games).

Oh ok that makes more sense. Well, personally I wouldn't have categorized both of those games with the junkyard shit that is the mascot horror genre as there does seem to be some love put behind them unlike games like Banban, Poppy Playtime, etc.

 

Palworld for me feels like another game which falls under the junk games with no love behind it category. It is a game made just to get viral with "PoKEmOn WiTH GuNS!!?!?!?!" type of youtube videos. 

[Mr Masker]

3 hours ago, SuyaSSS said:

Well, personally I wouldn't have categorized both of those games with the junkyard shit that is the mascot horror genre as there does seem to be some love put behind them unlike games like Banban, Poppy Playtime, etc.

Among Us, that's understandable. I saw they made loads of accessories based on Indie Games, that seems really cool. Maybe the new maps are fun too. I enjoyed Henry Stickmin Collection too, so they seem like cool devs. The game did kinda fall out of the limelight though, and people seemed to get sick of it fast. That was the main point I was trying to get across.

 

I kinda lost respect for Fall Guys after they sold out to Epic Games Store and took the game off Steam. I mean, if people want to use EGS then whatever, but them alienating their Steam audience doesn't really scream respect for their fanbase. But yeah, I agree there was more care in that than other popular games.

Edited January 28 by Mr Masker

[Astar]

It's good. I like it!

 

I’ve never been particularly interested in all sorts of survival games and Pokemon games, but this game, combining two concepts, really hooked me. The pals have a nice design and make funny sounds. And the game as a whole has a pretty nice color palette.

And of course, guns (for which you will spend a lot of time and resources on bullets)

 

And all this for a not very high price on a PC, which is the best part. And all this works great even on a weak PC (although I still had to go into the config to increase my FPS).

 

And all these accusations on the Internet - you cannot copyright the concept of catching funny silly creatures.

 

To sum it up - I'm glad that there are games with an interesting idea that allow you to have fun and relax after work, while you are tired of other games

[Daytime Waitress]

I don't actually care either way about Poochie: The Video Game, but this stood out for me...

 

9 hours ago, Astar said:

And all these accusations on the Internet - you cannot copyright the concept of catching funny silly creatures.

 

When I saw the first few headlines about plagiarism, I figured it was exactly this: Nintendo/Game Freak's law dogs trying to claim a monopoly over a (sub)genre or concept. And I absolutely wouldn't support that.

 

But I can see where issues with a lot of the designs come from. I think if the art style didn't adhere so closely to the Pokemon formula, it wouldn't be so bad - Digimon is also "catching funny silly creatures", but it has a vastly different style. Some of these things just look like straight pallette swaps, maybe had a feature randomiser slapped on them from a different design. It's the pogeymans equivalent of uncanny valley - your brain is recognises all the individual features from an actual thing, but they're all just slightly off.

 

And I think that's the most miserable part of this. You could go to any art community anywhere - why not the Doomworld Sketchbook? - and ask any artist to draw you "Pokemon, but not", and they would exercise their imagination to come up with fantastic animals like metallic cats that have antennae for ears (to call in airstrikes) or neon-green hippos that have teeny-tiny crystal wings but can inexplicably fly. And unless that artist is really fluent with the Pokemon artstyle, they'd look nothing like existing designs. But that didn't happen here.

[Astar]

4 minutes ago, Daytime Waitress said:

Digimon is also "catching funny silly creatures", but it has a vastly different style.

Oh, when Digimon came out, there was no less controversy than Palworld. History repeats itself in circles.

 

10 minutes ago, Daytime Waitress said:

And unless that artist is really fluent with the Pokemon artstyle, they'd look nothing like existing designs. But that didn't happen here.

This is all cool and dandy, but I have one question...

 

Why should I care about multibillion dollar company?

 

Game companies are NOT your friends.

And if you sell your games on console for crazy money, then expect that sooner or later someone will make the same game on PC, but much cheaper and possibly, even better.

 

I have only one job - just to have fun.

And from my perspective - Palworld gives me tons of fun

[Gentlepoke]

Looks fun, bought the game but haven't gotten around to playing it yet.

[MrFlibble]

Never thought of myself as a "contrarian nerd", but the label feels oddly fitting...

 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta go back to my ancient DOS games :)