Pokemon Scarlet and Violet fans are finding the game's dodgy eating animation hard to swallow

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet fans are less than impressed by the game's eating animation.

The launch of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is here, and in a massive shake-up to the franchise's familiar formula, fans can finally experience the first true open-world Pokemon adventure. While roaming around in the game's vast world, you'll inevitably find yourself a bit peckish and stopping for a picnic might seem like a good idea, but the terrible eating animation will surely make you think twice about chowing down. 

"This is the tackiest animation I have ever seen," says Twitter user @Starjeti. And they're not exaggerating. The clip they shared shows a Pokemon trainer biting into thin air, a flat image of a footlong visible behind them. The scene then shifts to a view of the top of their head as they supposedly tuck into the meal, their Pokemon floating idly behind them.

Unsurprisingly, plenty of other Pokemon fans are just as unimpressed. "I love Pokemon, but even I can't defend this one," says @Touyarokii, adding that 2019's Pokemon Sword and Shield "had better eating animations than this".

User @Schaffrillas took to Twitter to admit that they thought the lacklustre animation was a fan creation designed to get a few laughs rather than an actual scene from the game. While @DoobusGoobus wrote, "they literally could have animated it to look like Disney and not even left a dent in their fortune."

Despite the questionable eating animation, Paldea is proving popular with long-time fans and newbies, with Scarlet and Violet achieving the highest numbers of preorders in the series' 26-year history.  On the whole, the new game has been met with a largely positive response, but the increased scale has brought its fair share of performance issues. In our Pokemon Scarlet and Violet review, we describe it as "The most interesting Pokemon game in a long time, for better and worse".

See which entry in the long-running series comes out on top in our guide to the best Pokemon games.