Last week, like many Americans, I traveled home for Thanksgiving. I chose not to bring my Switch with me because, well, I've sort of moved on. It's old and underpowered compared to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, and, besides, the last couple years of being a homebody (thanks to lockdowns and remote work) have rendered its portability meaningless to me. And then I actually caught (a very mild case of) COVID and was stranded in Kansas for an extra week with no video games. Readers, I've never appreciated the Switch more than I did when it would have saved me from a week of extreme boredom.

Modern video games can be so perceptibly realistic – grass rippling in a gentle breeze, non-player characters going about their daily routines, faces and gestures that look so close to those of real humans – that they've started to call to mind Plato's old chin-stroker about the cave (reimagined in 1999's trench coat-flapping classic The Matrix.) What if we are all trapped inside a shockingly realistic illusion? Would we really know if we were inside a video game? If you're looking for reassurance that we haven't yet reached the singularity, boot up the ropey Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. In this second Pokémon outing of the year, developer Game Freak abandons February's Legends: Arceus's intriguing feudal-era setting, but otherwise picks up where it left off.