New Pokémon Snap (Switch)

Back in 1999, the original Pokémon Snap released for Nintendo 64, and its unique game structure felt like lightning in a bottle. Not merely a photo safari, the world of Pokémon allowed for special creatures that could evolve into new forms and call on incredible powers to serve as the subjects of your photos. With a detailed scoring system, little secrets to find, and a tight and concise design that makes it easy to replay, the original Pokémon Snap captivated players and many were eager to see a sequel. However, I was a bit more skeptical on if they could make this lightning not only strike twice, but once again properly bottle it. Some people believed the gimmickry of the 3DS and Wii U cameras could have helped it, but I always feared the gameplay could be hampered by such a devotion to something nominally novel. Other photography focused games like Jurassic GO often felt slow, and games like Animal Kingdom: Wildlife Expedition lacked the detailed scoring system that could motivate you to take better pictures of your subjects.

22 years later though, a new Pokémon Snap title would be released, with the less than stellar but rather direct name of New Pokémon Snap. In this sequel you head out for a series of islands in the Lental Region to perform an ecological survey under the supervision of a researcher named Professor Mirror. Setting out to different parts of the island, you document the behaviors of the Pokémon wildlife with your camera, but there is a larger goal hanging over the adventure related to a phenomenon known as Illumina Pokémon. Certain large creatures hidden away on the islands exhibit an unusual feature where they begin to glow and reveal unusual markings on their body, the origins of which guide you from location to location all while never pulling you too far away from the enjoyable and relaxed work of photographing every Pokémon you see.

The plot elements in New Pokémon Snap feel just present enough to give the game a good backbone without overstaying their welcome. A small supporting cast joins your photographer, their personalities simple but perhaps better for it. A young boy named Phil shows up as a sort of rival character who could potentially become a pest if his presence was overdone, but rather than be a nuisance he mostly just serves as an interesting way of complimenting the player. When you’re out taking photos in the field, the rest of the cast will sometimes chime in with tips, observations, or praise, and while someone like the energetic young girl Rita is fairly supportive, Phil instead pops in and will say how jealous he is of the shot or how he wishes he could have gotten it instead. Their lack of depth helps the game avoid bogging itself down with too much chatter, and the times when there is a lot of conversation tend to be related to developments about the Illumina phenomenon that help to open new areas or guide you on the right path towards progress.

Regular play follows a pretty basic but effective structure. Once you’ve picked which area you want to head out to, you’ll pop into a versatile vehicle called the NEO-ONE that can drive along, fly, or even head underwater as needed. Your vehicle has a set path and speed it travels through each location, movement handled by the game as you devote yourself fully to your camera work. Pokémon are found all along the paths you take, living their lives, reacting to your presence, or interacting with each other in interesting ways that you capture on film to show to Professor Mirror later. You are given a good amount of film when entering a stage so you can afford to take multiple pictures of a subject, and as the game progresses you get more ways to influence the world around you such as throwing apple-like Fluffruits to feed creatures or lightly bonk them to get them moving. Special Illumina orbs join your tool kit early to light up Pokémon and make them stir from resting positions, but the music feature you get later on seems to have very limited use. Oddly enough, merely taking pictures of some of the Pokémon can elicit reactions from them as well, which is a bit of a shame since certain behaviors, some vital to opening up secret areas, are locked behind taking repeated photos of certain subjects when such an action doesn’t feel like it should trigger major changes to the game world.

There are 214 Pokémon featured in New Pokémon Snap and they are spread out across the world in plenty of different environments and situations so you’re constantly discovering new creatures. A regular run through a course might only have around 10 or so to start, but based on the score of the photos you’ve taken, you can begin to increase an area’s Research Level which will lead to more Pokémon appearing there as well as introducing new interactions between the creatures. Many areas have a night mode as well where behaviors change to reflect the time of day, with these even having Research Levels as well to work your way through. New Pokémon Snap definitely tries to be economical with its unique areas, finding many uses for them and trying to populate them differently to stay fresh, with alternate routes through them even allowing for drastically different environments and sets of Pokémon to appear once you find them.

However, there are a few limitations that feel like they weren’t necessary. The early game takes its area rollout rather slow, meaning you’ll be exploring a grassy area and jungle quite a few times before it starts distributing the new locations at a better speed. There isn’t really anything wrong with those opening spots, but denying the forward progress to show off Research Level differences and night versions for so long can start to wear away at the game’s early appeal. Once things do open up though, you are in for a variety of distinct and creative locations. Flying over the ocean, heading down into its depths, exploring a volcano’s interior, and even exploring a foggy forest that somehow connects to different seasons in time all provide great areas for the Pokémon to inhabit as well as the photography spaces themselves looking lovely and often quite colorful or atmospheric. The diversity once things start to roll out prevents the repetition threatened early on and the influence of Research Levels do make return trips still feel fresh, but there’s still a few little quirks to that system. Some levels have slow portions that will eventually pay off like driving around a large whirlpool or moments where the only subjects in view can only do one thing so you’re left watching again if you’re captured it on film before. These stop being an issue though when the game gives you the ability to speed up your travel to get through these doldrums a little quicker. The game probably waits too long to hand out the speed boost so that whirlpool becomes all too familiar before then, but it likely doesn’t want you to miss the many subtly hidden creatures around you that sometimes only emerge if you do scan pulses to find them or figure out a trick to get the Pokémon to come out of hiding.

Speaking of the Pokémon, they are naturally the most important feature of this game and they are excellent subjects for it. New Pokémon Snap has achieved a surprising mixture of the incredible feats Pokémon are known for like harnessing elements with a believable level of natural behavior. Here in New Pokémon Snap, the Pokémon don’t say their names like they do in the cartoons, instead making believable animalistic noises that help to immerse them in their environments. So much of what you capture on film are the monsters of the Pokémon world existing in nature like they were real creatures. You might sometimes see something like the squid-like Inkay using its psychic powers to hypnotize another Pokémon or the ghostly ice type Froslass whipping up a blizzard, but you’re far more likely to find the fluffy bird Pokémon Altaria lounging atop a hot spring’s water with its flock, the beaver-like Bidoof gathering sticks for its dam, or the butterfly fish Lumineon nuzzling the sand in search of a meal. Some might be up to mischief like the ball-shaped whale Wailmer delighting in surprising the octopus Pokémon Octillery with a large yell, while that same poor octopus on another occasion could be attacked by the snake Seviper.

A lot of small stories and interactions unfold in these cross-sections of the Pokémons’ lives and capturing those moments on film is an exciting challenge, but because it all manages to feel like a realistic way for these Pokémon to live together, it does make the presence of certain creatures a bit of a shame. The angry ice ball Glalie and flower wreaths known as Comfey float around in the air without much explanation on how they do so since that’s how they moved in the other Pokémon games, and if only 214 of the nearly 900 that exist at the time of writing are going to be implemented, it would have been nice if the game kept up the naturalistic feel throughout. There are even very few areas that show any human impact to help with the feeling of these being Pokémon living peacefully in the wild, a few signs sometimes hanging around but most other signs of human influence are ruins off to the side or serving as the home for creatures who moved in well after humans left them alone. It actually makes finding an area with some human impact fresh because it allows for new creature types to flourish, and even though some locations like the desert can feel a little bare because there’s not as much going on compared to other regions, the totality of the locations and the ways Pokémon behave in them still keep the overall experience entertaining and varied.

New Pokémon Snap even includes some sections that are practically boss fights as you start to encounter the Illumina Pokémon. These large creatures can’t just be photographed the moment you see them, either because they’re somehow interfering with the images of them or not exhibiting the glowing phenomenon until you perform certain actions. You aren’t asked to harm these massive Pokémon, but you will need to figure out how to make them show themselves properly or lower their defenses, snapping photos when you can. These moments are presented with a good amount of gravitas and focus solely on grabbing one good shot of the subject, but this does tie into a little quibble with the way you turn in the photos you’ve taken.

After a visit to an area is complete, you can turn in one picture per Pokémon for Professor Mirror to judge and potentially preserve. You can store shots you like in a personal album, but even if you take plenty of good pictures of a subject, you are only allowed to select a single one per area visit. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if you only needed a single good shot of each Pokémon in the game, but one way the game manages to get even more out of its content is each creature having four sets of behavior you’ll want to document. Rated between 1 and 4 stars based on how rare that behavior is, even if you capture all four rarities in one go through a level, you can only hand one image over to Mirror. You’ll likely be heading back to levels repeatedly anyway to find Pokémon you didn’t see last time, take alternate routes, and so on, so the star system does at least give you motivation to photograph creatures you’ve seen before and try to draw out new behaviors from them, but the enforced limitations on it do hamper some of its appeal. Some of the Pokémon actions you need to document can be a little arcane or obtuse as well, but your allies can help here as they’ll put in requests that can hint at how to trigger such behaviors or find hidden interactions. At other times, it can feel a bit rote, many Pokémon having their 2 star picture being “after they were hit with a Fluffruit” and some of the realistic feel of the creatures living in their environment is lost when each Pokémon species has to have its behaviors stretched to fit the formula of four unique interactions you can document. It can also raise questions of why the pufferfish Qwilfish has a unique behavior like harassing the heart-shaped Luvdisc in an interesting way when it is in the same star category as inflating without the interesting context. The star rating system is definitely a benefit because it means even repeat encounters with creatures can hold meaning, but locking your ability to turn them all in for grading at once does bring it down a little.

The grading system for your photos is also an important part of the photo taking experience. Earning higher Research Levels and making story progress is tied to accumulating enough points from your photos, and most of the criteria are fairly easy to understand. Pose relates to how the Pokémon is staged in the image, Size on how large they are, Direction ties to aspects like having their face in frame or if they’re looking towards the camera, Placement grants points for their spot in frame, and Other Pokémon gives extra points for group shots. Background is the grading metric that feels a little nebulous since sometimes you’ll get no points and others a few hundred, but when a sprig of grass can sometimes provide the same boost as a waterfall, it’s perhaps just uniquely tied to the creature rather than about actually getting a nice backdrop. The game does understand how it placed certain Pokémon as well, so even if the only time the spiky anemone Mareanie can be spotted harassing the coral Pokémon Corsola is from a certain distance, the grading system won’t judge you harshly for the size being what it is. It also makes certain choices like the flatfish Stunfisk a little less odd, since even though you can never truly get a great shot of its oddly thin body, the game doesn’t fault you for that. The images you present get ranked on an increasing scale from bronze to silver to gold to diamond, so even if you have all four variations of a Pokémon you can still angle for getting the diamond stars as well, ensuring an already long and varied experience can have even more longevity after you’ve finished the story and seen every creature once.

THE VERDICT: New Pokémon Snap manages to reproduce the surprising appeal of the N64 original and expand on it without ever losing sight of why this odd formula works so well. The Pokémon are a set of interesting and varied creatures who can interact with each other and the world in unique ways, and the lovely environments they inhabit here really do feel like home to these creatures thanks to touches like the focus on naturalism. The photo grading system keeps things rooted in a game experience where skill and thought can help you earn higher scores and discover new opportunities, with the star ratings, interactive elements, branching paths, and Research Levels helping to breathe new life even into familiar creatures and locations. Some ideas do lead to breaks away from the immersive ecological survey aspect and some enforced repetition doesn’t help the overall experience, but even though it perhaps stretches itself too wide, New Pokémon Snap is still a joy if the concept grabs you.

And so, I give New Pokémon Snap for Nintendo Switch…

A GOOD rating. At times I felt like New Pokémon Snap might have reached all the way up to a Great rating instead, but I try to err to the less extreme option when I’m wavering and I can at least say New Pokémon Snap is Good and definitely even better than the original in many ways. In the original Pokémon Snap’s case, it’s a more concise and focused experience where a lot had to be made out of the more limited content, leading to a snappier but shallower playthrough. New Pokémon Snap aims to be more ambitious and includes a lot more content, but that means sometimes things are stretched out a bit too much or ideas that sound nice start to lead things away from their simple appeal. Snapping photos for the Pokémon in their world is done justice here by having the aesthetic quality of making it more life-like without losing the unique aspects of the creatures involved, but the star rating system kind of ruins the wonder when you have to nail almost all of them with Fluffruits to fill out the Photodex. The areas are more robust in how they can be altered and explored thanks to Research Levels and night versions, but the game perhaps teases too much of what you can find down the line with areas like the whirlpool or the sleeping sloth Slaking rather than filling these locations with plenty of things to keep taking pictures of. If you’re a bit patient, space out your playthroughs, and don’t mind some of the questionable choices for unlocking specific Pokémon behaviors though, New Pokémon Snap is mostly a wonderful way to bring the joys of observing animals in their natural habitats into a game world where those creatures can be more fantastical and do more amazing things as they live their lives.

Perhaps New Pokémon Snap didn’t catch the same lightning bolt in a bottle, but it does definitely build off the original Pokémon Snap in a way that ensures it is a fun photo safari experience and a worthy successor. The life given to this world both in its fauna and its visuals makes each new location you enter a wonder to behold, and trying to figure out how each creature might change its behavior can lead to memorable interactions or great photos you’ll love for reasons beyond just how many points they earn. It manages to stay accessible even to people unfamiliar with Pokémon by leaving out ideas like evolution but still manages to keep the heart of each Pokémon’s appeal and history, with even small references that won’t seem too unusual if you don’t get the reference such as finding the Dark-type humanoid tree Shiftry helping the young panda Pokémon Pancham train in a bamboo forest. With stickers to customize your images and share them online as well, there’s perhaps almost too much to talk about with New Pokémon Snap and sometimes that content isn’t paced or placed properly, but on the whole it is still great to pick up that camera again after 22 years and take some photos of Pokémon.