New pokemon snap review – Entertaining, but not much more than that

For those unfamiliar, Pokémon Snap is a game that isn’t about catching – and battling – Pokémon, but about photographing the critters. The player goes on an expedition to various places in the game world to capture the most diverse Pokémon on camera. In the old game you did this on behalf of Professor Oak, who needed the photos for his research. That recipe has, unsurprisingly, been copied one to one, although the professor is now called Professor Mirror and we have arrived in the Lental Region. Professor Mirror provides the player with the Neo-One, a futuristic-looking vehicle that allows the digital photographer to safely approach Pokémon. By the way, you don’t control the Neo-One yourself. Each expedition is completely ‘on-rails’, the car therefore follows a certain route and automatically arrives at an end point. This allows you to fully focus on finding and capturing Pokémon, with the goal of filling the Photodex completely with Pokémon spotted in the wild.

Scavenger hunt

That all sounds a lot easier than it is, not least because each Pokémon in your scrapbook has four levels. A photo is rated on all kinds of aspects and the rating determines in which category, from one to four stars, your photo will end up. Your most mediocre shots naturally get one star, excellent photos three and photos that show something very special – and in many cases where you meet certain assignments – are entitled to a four-star rating. This will take you a while to collect all the photos, also because you have to visit the different areas in the game repeatedly. For each level you have reached in an area, you see different Pokémon or the Pokémon that are there do different things. You also occasionally get some new gadgets from Professor Mirror that open up new options in areas you’ve been to before. New Pokémon Snap thus turns out to be a true treasure hunt in which you look for the right Pokémon and for that one moment when you can shoot exactly the right picture.

The challenge of doing that well, of course, increases as you progress. In the beginning it is quite simple. After all, you don’t know most of the Pokémon yet, so there is always a usable photo that earns points between your snapshots. After an Expedition, you can only submit one photo of each Pokémon you’ve photographed for the Professor to judge. Photos that are no better than the plates that are already in your Photodex will not earn you any or very few points at the most. The supply of good material is therefore becoming increasingly important and increasingly difficult. Fortunately, you can use various tools. For example, you can lure Pokémon with ‘fluffruit’, or you can quickly take a photo when a critter eats the piece of fruit. With the flute that you get after a few expeditions, you can get Pokémon’s attention and some of the critters will even dance when they hear your music. Even better is the Illumina Orb, which gives a special glow effect to the Pokémon and has a special effect on some of them. They will behave differently due to the Illumina Orb and will show extra rare behavior, which can of course produce fine photos. You earn the orbs by photographing special flowers, which enable the professor to develop the orbs. Finally, there is the superlative of the Illumina Orbs: the Illumina zones. Here you will find special, rare Pokémon that you will not find anywhere else. which gives a special glow effect to the Pokémon and has a special effect on some of them. They will behave differently due to the Illumina Orb and will show extra rare behavior, which can of course produce fine photos. You earn the orbs by photographing special flowers, which enable the professor to develop the orbs. Finally, there is the superlative of the Illumina Orbs: the Illumina zones. Here you will find special, rare Pokémon that you will not find anywhere else. which gives a special glow effect to the Pokémon and has a special effect on some of them. They will behave differently due to the Illumina Orb and will show extra rare behavior, which can of course produce fine photos. You earn the orbs by photographing special flowers, which enable the professor to develop the orbs. Finally, there is the superlative of the Illumina Orbs: the Illumina zones. Here you will find special, rare Pokémon that you will not find anywhere else. Finally, there is the superlative of the Illumina Orbs: the Illumina zones. Here you will find special, rare Pokémon that you will not find anywhere else. Finally, there is the superlative of the Illumina Orbs: the Illumina zones. Here you will find special, rare Pokémon that you will not find anywhere else.

Dull, empty areas

The rhythm of the game is therefore clear. You start at base camp, choose a place to go on an expedition, follow the route of that expedition while taking photos, select the photos to submit to Professor Mirror, get ratings for them, score experience points and level up of the same world free, as well as any new areas to be opened. The key question is of course: is this fun? Let’s face it, it’s a rather repetitive recipe. Partly because you have to search the areas over and over again, the novelty wears off pretty quickly. It doesn’t help that the areas generally look very simple. Certainly the desert area is an environment that we can simply call ugly in 2021. In addition, some areas contain few Pokémon. If you need to look there, New Pokémon Snap isn’t very entertaining. In addition, sometimes you would like your car to be a bit faster because you are looking for a specific Pokémon or an item that can be found at the end of a route. The ability to speed up was an unlockable extra feature in the original Pokémon Snap, so we may not be far enough into the game yet. Anyway, you will definitely miss the option at first.

Still, New Pokémon Snap has a certain charm. In the first place, the game succeeds quite nicely in actually providing good photos with high scores. The game analyzes certain data, such as how well a Pokémon is in the center of the screen, how big the animal is depicted, what its pose is and whether there are other Pokémon or an interesting background. Of course, taste is debatable and good photos sometimes get mediocre ratings, but the system works well enough to play with. It is also nice that the game always provides feedback, so that you know at what point your photo did not meet the criteria for a top score. The system is clear and works effectively, so that you quickly become handy in making high-scoring pictures.

Nice habits

The Pokémon actually have fun habits that you can discover. One Pokémon shows them automatically, another only when you interact with it in a certain way, but there’s plenty to do. In your base camp you will find a menu at the top right where you can look up requests. Those are actually tips, because if you manage to photograph what is requested, you can count on your photo getting a four-star rating. It is therefore extra fun to look for these often rare admirations. In that respect, the game continues to fascinate for a long time. In every world and at every level of that world, you can spot unusual behavior. Whether it’s a flexing Machamp or a few Pokémon battling each other, there’s always something to see and it’s also fun to experience how the Pokémon interact with each other.

The search for rare moments and rare Pokémon keeps New Pokémon Snap going for a surprisingly long time. Several times we thought ‘we’re done with it now’ and each time we picked up the Switch again after a while. The expeditions don’t last long. You can get through it in a few minutes, hand in your photos and you may be one step further. A tip is to adjust the controls and possibly the layout based on your preferences. You can control the game with movement, so that the Switch in your hands is like a camera, but you can also just aim with the thumbsticks. If you choose the latter, it is certainly advisable to set the sensitivity of the controls a bit higher, because the rotation speed is quite low by default. That’s not only annoying, it also allows you to miss opportunities for good photos simply because you look in the right direction too late. This can be solved quickly by playing with the settings.

A final point we would like to mention is the presence of a post-processing program. You can spice up your photos by adding filters, stickers, and frames. If you’ve spiced up your photos or not, you can choose to share them with other players, who in turn will also share photos that you see from time to time. For example, New Pokémon Snap has a social edge, even if it is limited. Wouldn’t it have been nice to go on an expedition with a friend? As far as we’re concerned, that would have fit perfectly with a modern version of Pokémon Snap.

Conclusion

New Pokémon Snap is entertaining and there is certainly a lot to discover in the first few hours. After that you will learn how to manipulate the Pokémon around you a bit and what to look out for. That is also quite a fun phase. Yet it is striking that the game becomes repetitive relatively quickly, especially because you often roam around in the same areas, looking for the right Pokémon. The sometimes somewhat slow pace is not conducive to the fun of playing. In addition, not all environments are equally beautiful and inspiring, although the variation is a plus. Despite all the negatives, New Pokémon Snap remains fun for a surprisingly long time. The game succeeds enough to tickle the sleuth in you, because the will remains to take the very best photos and find the rarest Pokémon.