I sit here at my keyboard a humble man. I use words like "stinky" and "purple" instead of words like "malodorous" or "mauve". I don't speak with the crossed arms of the white collared elite. I speak with the open arms of St. Stephen, with the blue collar of Coach Eric Taylor. Come as you are.

But I also come before you a humbled man. I thought I knew what a good game was. And I trusted my snout to detect the stinkers before they reached my finger tips. So when I heard about Pokémon Smile being released, I pointed my finger. I laughed. I called names. More like Pokémon Frown!

I took my pharisaical perspective on game design to its mocking conclusion. I would pick up and play Pokémon Smile to laugh at it. To post a review saying this is dumb and the people who made it are dumb and the people who played it are dumb but I am smart just me no one else ha and ha and ha and ha.

But God in His infinite wisdom saw my pride and decided to show me His glorious humbling light. My daughter saw the app on my phone.

"Papa," she certainly called me, "what's that thing with Pikachu on it?"

"Guh!" I had been caught in my ridiculous act of cruelty. I decided to play the part of the Grinch to my daughter's Cindy Lou. "Why it is an app for teeth brushing! We can brush our teeth together to catch Pokémon."

My daughter was excited. My son was too. They love Pokémon; Something that has been documented well on this site. Suddenly this thing I meant for evil was being used for good. When I would do bedtime with my children, something that at the time was primarily taken on by my wife, they would request that we play it. They would take turns flipping the Pokéball each night. If I forgot whose turn it was, my children would litigate who threw the ball last. They treated their individual Pokémon catches as personal accomplishments. Hearing the click of the Pokéball after a catch and the following jingle ended up being a small but important moment of joy for my children before bed.

My situation with work has been slowing and slowing over the last year. I basically dropped from the bonkers 80-100 hours of work each week to a now manageable 40-50ish hours. Which means I am able to do bedtime with the children most every night. Which means I have been doing Pokémon Smile most every night. And the reason for this review is last night we "beat" Pokémon Smile. My daughter fittingly flipped the final master ball to catch Mew. I unlocked a party hat filter for when I brush my teeth. My daughter asked me if I thought they would add Johto Pokémon into the game. I said no. I saw a sadness in her face; Brief but there.

It is hard to encapsulate what one wants a game to be. I think a lot of people would say they want it to be "fun", but there are certainly excellent games that don't qualify under any traditional definition of "fun". I think you could connect a game's value to how well the game accomplishes its individual purpose, but that makes our beliefs secondary to the creator's beliefs. Heck, even worse than that, it makes our beliefs secondary to the most charitable interpretation of the creator's beliefs.

I think a game and all media for that matter can be reviewed through a much simpler criteria- the memories we made. Maybe you don't like that definition for a review because it is so wildly subjective, but we must not deny our simplistic animal nature. The world is big and complex, and in a lot of critical ways, the world is unknowable. I don't fully know why my kids loved Pokémon Smile. I don't fully understand how it became a nightly ritual of joy. I struggle to understand the things outside of and beyond myself.

But I do have memories of this game. And when I tap into those memories of brushing my teeth with my children while a stinky purple Doduo hops around a cartoon mouth, I have feelings. Those feelings I understand. Those feelings are ones of joy and love. I have some of my best memories playing games this year from playing Pokemon Smile. I'm a humble man. What more could I really ask for?