10 Video Games That Are Painfully Behind The Times

As with Sonic Frontiers, a lot of fans and critics are forgiving –or at least tolerating – Pokémon Scarlet & Violet’s old-fashioned shortcomings due to their prospective fun and freshness. Obviously, that’s totally fine, yet it’s impossible to pretend that those flaws don’t hold the pair back quite a lot.

Not to sound like a broken record, but once again, it’s the visuals and flow of the experience that’s truly horrific.

Simply put, myriad glitches and bugs run the gamut from being amusing or charming to flat-out game breaking. Just peruse the internet for a few minutes and you’ll read dozens of stories of save files being ruined or exploration and battles slowing down to a crawl.

Similarly, ugly textures, basic assets, low resolutions, misshapen NPCs, and terrible draw distances really kill the immersion. There are also abundant cases of objects bleeding into each other or disappearing (so it’s often difficult to tell what’s solid and what’s not).

For as joyfully elaborate as they are, Pokémon Scarlet & Violet embody developer Game Freak’s infamous history of forgoing quality control in favor of rushing games to market.