Imagine you went to an ice cream shop* with 31 flavors. Uh lets call this place Plaskins Robmons. And you go in and a kind neckbeard tells you about all the wonderful flavors they have there.

Chunky Monkey.

Dulce De Leche.

Strawberry Rhubarb Cheesecake.

Your mouth? Watering. Your eyes? Dinner plates. Your tummy? Rumbling so hard! So you're raring to go- just about to repave some Rocky Road when the kind but a bit imposing neckbeard ice cream man says in order to appreciate the complexities of the flavors they offer- you need to try vanilla. Maybe you, dear reader, believe this is the problem. Certainly not! Their vanilla is delicious. You say thank you and begin to reach for a scoop of mocha chunk.

"Not yet." The neckbeard lowers your hand with his and says "Now try vanilla in a cone!" This is the problem. After that he lets you try vanilla with sprinkles. And only after three scoops and a tummy ache will he let you move on to chocolate. Before you know it, you're chocolate cake eating boy from Matilda and neckbeard has a ruler ready to slap your hand.

Look, I loved this game when I first started playing it. It was soothing, atmospheric, gentle, and even a little magical! But that magic can't last and rather you leaving before contemplating the rabbit in the hat, New Pokémon Snap makes you sit down and understand how it happened. It ruins the magic trick before you're able to see another one.**

I don't know if I've ever had progression ruin a gaming experience as badly as it did here. I really feel like if this game had opened up immediately, this would have been a 4 maybe even 5 star six hour game. Instead, we got a 3 star twelve hour experience where daddy's hand never leaves the steering wheel.

All that being said, I would recommend this if you've been vibing off slower games lately. I know I mixed a lot of metaphors here, but come on. I'd rather have some good vanilla ice cream from a weird ice cream scooper than no ice cream at all.

*You think I'm not brave enough to spell it "shoppe", but I am and Google is autocorrecting this adorable spelling out of existence. Google, you are on of the biggest companies on the planet. Just let me have my cute spelling of shop.

**One final aside, the magic in this game is it's ability to surprise. So I only included Pokemon from your little camp area. But, hey, there are lots of very cool Pokemon in this game. Just don't want to spoil them for you.

The pokemon company doesn't have the best record of improvements. They tend to, though not always, rest on the fact that the bare minimum will sell. people love this series. they don't have to innovate.

So I was pleasantly shocked to find out they tried this time. they could have, and i fully expected them to, just put out the same game essentially as what they made 20 years ago. just update the graphics, swap out some pokemon for new ones, make it different, but nothing better. Instead they went the extra mile for them, and the expected minimum for anyone else.

There are more than twice the number of stages, three times the number of pokemon, and a much deeper experience than before. stages now have day and night versions, they "level up" as you repeat them causing new pokemon to appear, old ones to do new things. there is more to do than just do the stage and you've seen it. There's a wealth of interactions and hidden things, and the new request system compels you to do them. These side quests are basically hints that the game gives you in the form of "why don't you try this" or "this thing is weird. I bet something will happen here". It's delivered in the form of the characters telling you things they "noticed". it's unnecessary, as is any story for a game like this, but it's rather nice for the sake of immersion.

here's the thing that's both good and bad about this game. it's deeper than it has any right to be. The hidden interactions, hidden pokemon, are complex. maddeningly so. The actions you have to figure out to take in order to trigger things are off the wall complex. it certainly extends the length of the game figuring it all out, but it's also very frustrating.

there are little touches to the social aspect that are appreciated, and ultimately what you will want from it. you can re angle, filter, and edit your photos, put stickers on them (which you unlock by doing requests) and upload them to be voted on by the community.

So is the game worth it? well, it's fun. it's a very casual fun. you won't want to play it more than an hour or two here and there. but it's a good time. there's plenty to do if you find the gameplay loop satisfying or you really like fishing for validation by posting the pictures you can take and edit together. it would have been nice if there was more opportunity and randomness to the photos you can take but the set pieces, elaborate as they are, boil down to an on rails path full of animatronics acting out the same actions over and over. it does a lot to make you feel like you're a wildlife photographer, but the feeling bleeds through.

if you like this sort of thing, pokemon or photo taking, it's the game for you. it's better in every way than the original. is it worth the full price? good heavens, no. robust as it is, it's not. but it's a nintendo property so it's never going down in price. maybe go in together on it with another fan? or just bite the bullet and get it if you want. if at least a couple people in your household will enjoy it, it's worth it.

I consider the original Pokemon Snap to be an experience similar to Portal, in the sense that they are short games that have exactly what they need in them to take their premise to the most satisfying form they could have.

I've heard some people say that it's disappointing that it's "on rails", that the cool pictures you take aren't appreciated, or that they should let you just have free roam with a photo mode.

I don't understand this. This game is not a photography game, it's an on-rails puzzle shooter, if you want to give it a genre. It's about figuring out the best moments to aim and shoot pics of these pokemon, and creating those moments figuring out solutions to the many puzzles and requests that either make pokemon pose in a specific way or make rare Pokemon appear.

That said, I'm not the kind of person to use photo mode, and that seems to be huge for other people, so I get that they'd want a game like that. I'm just glad we could get one more of this (that I bet will be the last) before pivoting to more trendy stuff.

That said reprise, this game made some neat changes to the systems and progressions but then didn't account for those changes in other parts of the game. You can archive 4 different pictures of each pokemon now, for example (organized by a Stars system that's as unintuitive as it is dumb) but the conditions for each of them are extremely inconsistent. On top of that, you can still only show the professor one picture per Mon at the end, so getting all 4 types of pictures will require grinding, grinding that adds up on top of the already existing grinding of getting better pictures, or solving puzzles.

To add on top of this grinding there are research levels. In the old game, the only limitations for each of the courses (that were always the same) were the equipment that you had unlocked. Now there is still that limitation, but they added a "level of research" for each stage that you increase taking better pictures, and with a new level the course is slightly remixed to allow for other poses, puzzles, etc. This sounds good on paper to add more longevity to the game, but frequently the changes are not substantial enough that it feels all that new, and the grinding needed for some of the level ups is discouraging, specially since you'll have to grind on that new "level" as well.

The addition that works way better is to have day and night versions of each course, which brings said longevity to the mix without needing to repeat samey versions of the same challenges. In the same way, each place can also get extra paths you unlock by solving a little puzzle or scanning the right place, and they were always surprisingly rich and different from the regular one, not to mention the "boss fights" in the form of one special Pokemon with a cool mechanic for each biome. So it's pretty clear the game is chock full of nice content, solving the common criticism of the original one about its VERY short length.

All in all, one could argue the picture analysis the AI makes is also worse, since the conditions feel a bit more arbitrary and it can't seem to detect smaller obstacles like foliage FULLY blocking pokemon sometimes, but all of that would be fine enough it the structure lent itself to a more satisfying progression.

TL:DR, they nailed the feel and created a ton of really cool content for it, but failed to adapt the original's progression to all their new additions in a more satisfying and smooth way.

Ok, I've beaten the game and put in an additional 7 hours of gameplay, putting me at 22 hours so far. I haven't found every species of Pokemon (there are at least 200), and I'm not done playing it yet, but I feel like this is a good time to write a review.

I freaking love this game.

Overview

I find it really difficult to explain why Pokemon Snap is fun... it doesn't SOUND like it would be fun; it just IS fun. But let me try. Pokemon Snap is like a first-person shooter, but instead of shooting with a gun, you shoot with a camera. You're put on a track in different environments, and Pokemon just sort of exist around you. And you take pictures of them. But what really makes it fun is interacting with the Pokemon and the environment in order to get the best pictures.

On paper, that doesn't sound very riveting, but it's actually really thrilling when you time a picture at just the right time and catch a Pokemon doing something really cool. You just have to play it to see what I mean.

I get how it's not the game for everyone, but if you liked the original 1999 game at all, you will love New Pokemon Snap. With only a few exceptions, everything has been improved, and it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a Pokemon Snap in 2021.

Content

There is so much content. We're talking 13 unique areas, most of which have day and night settings, for a total of 23 total courses (assuming there aren't more I haven't unlocked). Most of those have branching paths, so you don't have to play it the same way every time, and all of them level up as you play them more, increasing the number of Pokemon in the course and changing the way they interact with each other. This is a massive improvement from the 4 hours of total content in the original game, at which point you'd taken every picture and every course felt exactly the same. New Pokemon Snap continuously evolves the courses so they can feel different almost every time you play.

On top of that, they've added the number of pictures you can save per Pokemon. Instead of just picking the single best picture for each Pokemon, there are now 4 poses per Pokemon, and you save the best picture for each pose. Gone are the days of choosing between Balloon Pikachu and Surfing Pikachu.

And that's just the Photodex. You can save up to 48 pictures in your personal album, or up to 480 if you expand the space available on your Switch. Plus you can save them to your Switch and then send them to your Smartphone, effectively creating unlimited storage capacity. Here's one of my favourite pictures I took:

What's New

There's also photo editing and online capability, so you can touch up your pictures, turn them into a meme, and publish them to the world. I'm not sure the algorithm has been completely worked out yet, as the same three pictures have been trending since release date, but it's still fun to see which of your pictures gets the most love.

They've also added achievements by way of what they call Research Titles. Many of these are achieved just by playing the main story, but some pop up when you hit certain milestones, like getting a high score on a photo a certain number of times. However, I think only an insane person would try to 100% these achievements, as some of them are ridiculous, like getting Pokemon to move a total of 6.21 miles by using fluffruit (basically apples that attract Pokemon). I've played for 22 hours and am at 0.21 miles so far. Still, I like having things to work towards. I'm currently trying to submit the same Pokemon 30 times (just need a few more Magikarp).

Complaints

The game's not perfect, though, but my complaints are pretty minor. I would have liked more secrets like that of the original game--like how you could hit a Magikarp out of the water at the beginning of a course, then later hit it with pester ball and it would evolve into a Gyarados. Mind you, I haven't discovered every species yet or found every pose, so stuff like that may be out there, but I haven't seen much of that sort of thing yet. In fact, I haven't figured out how to evolve any Pokemon yet, and I'm not sure if that's part of the game or not. That's not a big deal, though.

I get more frustrated about some of the pre-set poses I mentioned earlier. I hate when I take a picture of a Pokemon doing something cool and the Professor just thinks it's a normal pose. Like, can you not see the cool thing it's doing? How is that not one of the poses? And sometimes I'll take a regular picture and he thinks it is a separate pose, and I'm not sure why.

The separate poses are also tied to the experience points required for leveling up the courses, which can also be frustrating at times. You get experience points for finding new species, new poses, or getting better pictures. This means that if you run a course and don't find any of those things, you might get little experience or none at all. It makes grinding fairly annoying at times. However, I do understand how it encourages you to find the new species and not just take pictures of the same Pokemon every time, and it means that by the time you max out a course, you'll likely have found almost everything there is to find. So I can't be too mad at it.

Discoveries

The last thing I'll say is that if you like the way Breath of the Wild is a big open world and people are still finding out different things you can do in it, you might like New Pokemon Snap for the same reason. I can see months or years down the line someone taking a picture and people being like, "I had no idea you could get Charmander to do that!"

Conclusion

I've still got quite a bit of playing before I'll move onto the next game, but I definitely see myself coming back to it regularly to take some pictures and see if I can find anything new. I haven't ranked it yet, but this is going to end up being one of my all-time favourite games, I can already tell. Top 10 or 20 for sure. Big rec for any Pokemon fan in particular, but really for anyone.

I loved the old Pokemon Snap, when I heard they were finally making a sequel all I could hope was that they didn't mess with the core formula too much, and instead put more Pokemon in game, more diverse levels, and better exploration of the Pokemon world. That is 100% what this game is!

New Pokemon Snap had me regularly looking thinking wow this is amazing, or OMG that Pokemon is so cute! I think the game does a tremendous job providing a diverse array of Pokemon from a bunch of different generations, while creating many different behaviors that they can do.

The various levels each feel really different, and provide some really fun variety in the game play. I have seen some complaints that the game forces you to replay the same levels a lot, this didn't bother me, but then again I replay the original Pokemon Snap regularly, and its 6 levels get replayed the exact same way over and over...

What Works Well:

-Star system: its not just about finding a secret move or behavior to get good pics of 'mons. This means its still work trying to snap good pics of a 'mon just chilling. And I loved that -Scoring system: while sometimes it can feel a little arbitrary, that core scoring system is quite good. Points are largely explained and achievable, and there are no silly super bonus points for things like Legendary or Rare Pokemon, again meaning its not just a rare hunt. -Routes leveling with use: I LOVED this, as you replay maps level with use, changing the Pokemon that appear, and giving them different behaviors. So this makes the maps a LOT of fun to replay over and over. It usually took me 2-3 times to adequately get everything on a single map level (and this excludes tough to get secrets), and by then normally the map had leveled up and I would do it all over :D! -Photo editing and Sharing: This feature single handedly changes that game. No longer are my pics regulated to my dusty cartridge shelf. I can edit and share them for anyone to see!

Some Misses: -There is no comparing Pokedex completion with other players. This feels like a miss. I like comparing pics, and scores, but would also love to brag that I have more Pokemon pics taken then my friends. -A few reviewers have mentioned it, but not evolution based interactions seems a miss, particularly since this is such a big part of Pokemon. There are SO many other things to do I didn't mind this a ton, but it was a little disappointing.

Overall New Pokemon Snap is amazing, if you are looking for a relaxed Pokemon game, I don't think you can do any better then giving it a go.

The original Pokémon Snap, for N64, was one of the few Nintendo games I actually owned and enjoyed throughout my whole childhood. So, I was really excited, when they announced this new entry. New Pokémon Snap manages to capture the essence and charm of its predecessor. But it also goes beyond this, with improving and expanding almost every aspect of the original game.

Graphic/Design ★★★★✭
Beautiful - what else is there to say, really? The Pokémon in every level are appropriately chosen and placed. The courses are well-designed and nice to look at. Overall, it feels like a proper natural habitat for Pokémon. Occasionally, I would even catch myself finishing a level without having done anything, except for looking around and admiring the landscape and reactions of the Pokémon. Only the human character models look a bit off.

Story ★★★☆☆
This type of game doesn't need a story, but it has one. A rather flat one, which for a Pokémon game is not uncommon. There isn't much to say about the characters, either. They are more like an additional accessory. Still, I thought it was quite nice to have a couple of cutscenes throughout the main story. The focus of New Pokémon Snap lies clearly with the gameplay. So, I don't feel like putting too much weight into rating the story.

Gameplay ★★★★☆
On the first look, the gameplay seems rather simple. You automatically travel through a pre-designed path and try to capture photos of Pokémon. You can then pick one photo of each Pokémon, which will receive a score from the professor, just like in the N64 game. New Pokémon Snap adds an extra "1 to 4 star" rating. Usually, special poses or behaviour of Pokémon mean more stars. However, it's not always quite so clear, when capturing a photo, which star you will get. As you progress through the story, you unlock different objects, that will help you to trigger different reactions.

What's more, each course can be levelled up. Reaching a new level unlocks new Pokémon, different behaviour or a new path. It can get a bit grindy, even if you're only trying to finish the story, as some courses are linked to a certain score.

There are side quests to complete and achievements to unlock. Honestly, I never expected to get that much content. It took me about 140h to achieve a reasonable 100%. All I'm missing are the achievements for the online function.

Sound & Music ★★★☆☆
The music in this game is subtle. Which isn't necessarily bad. However, I do somehow miss the vibe the original game had.

Overall Fun★★★★✭
Engaging gameplay with gorgeous visuals. It's everything I wanted the game to be and more.

Final Score: 3.8/5