Video Review: Detective Pikachu

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Late to the party!

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Welp, thanks to Amazon being a bit late with my copy of the game and other unforeseen events in my personal life eating up most of my time, I didn’t get to play much of Pikachu’s latest adventure until late last week. However, I managed to finally sit down, set up my recording gear, and play through Detective Pikachu in two sittings so I could deliver this latest video!

That said, I absolutely do not recommend playing this game to near completion in two sittings. This game feels like something you’d play a single chapter of and then maybe play again later or the next day. My first session with Detective Pikachu was a little over seven hours in length and it was mind-numbing. For those of you who are playing or have played the game, I’m curious if anyone else felt like chapter four was moving in slow motion… because it sure as hell was for me.

Worse yet, I already figured out who the culprit was a good half an hour before that chapter ended. For added context, I went into Detective Pikachu completely blind. I didn’t watch any trailers, I didn’t check up on any gameplay of it, nor did I watch any other reviews of it. I had almost no idea what to expect and I can’t help but feel disappointed by the end of it. I think the only redeeming thing for me in Detective Pikachu was Pikachu himself as every other element of this game felt bone dry to me.

Big props to Kaiji Tang, though — the English voice actor for Detective Pikachu absolutely nailed the performance and was perhaps the sole reason for me to keep playing. Here’s hoping the upcoming movie and future games in this series up the ante, because man, I don’t know if I can sit through another game similar to this one.

But, maybe I’m alone on that opinion, what do you think?

6
Alright
Slightly above average or simply inoffensive. Fans of the genre should enjoy them a bit, but a fair few will be left unfulfilled.

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Image of Dan Roemer
Dan Roemer
Contributor / Video Editor - Local video person. I've been enjoying and dabbling in Destructoid since 2014, became staff in 2017, co-hosted Podtoid, and my spirit animal is that of wild garbage. Disclosure: I backed Shenmue 3 on Kickstarter and I'm a current Patreon supporter of Nextlander, NoClip, and Mega64.