New Pokémon Snap (Nintendo Switch Review)

New Pokémon Snap
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Released April 30, 2021
Directed by Haruki Suzaki
Developed by Bandai Namco Studios
Published by Nintendo
$59.99 was mistaken for a Crystal Bloom in the making of this review.

I almost never get excited for the announcement of new Nintendo games because, well, I grew up. You can take it for granted Nintendo is going to keep releasing their cash cows and it’s embarrassing that adults act surprised when they’re announced. “Wait, they’re making a new Mario game, you say? Gosh, I thought the last one was certain to be the last one. Do you think it’ll have Bowser in it? OMG, it DOES have Bowser?! Are you kidding me?! Mario is back, baby! This is the greatest moment of my life! HYPED!” Yeah, I was like that once. You know, when I was 10 years old. But when New Pokémon Snap was announced in 2021, I reverted back to being a squealing 10 year old. I didn’t see it coming. I don’t think anyone did, as it’d been over twenty years since the original game. Easily the most hyped I’ve been for any video game in this decade. Then, when New Pokémon Snap was released, it not only lived up to my expectations, but left the original game in a smoking crater. New Snap is the rare sequel that improved upon the formula to such a degree that it rendered the original game practically unplayable.

And apparently despite selling two-and-a-half million copies, almost nobody actually put that much time into it. It probably killed the franchise off for good, and I even have proof of that, but I’ll get to that.

The core gameplay from the first game returns. Don’t think of Pokémon Snap as a photography game but rather as a video game version of an old school arcade shooting gallery where the bullets cause the robotic contraptions to react. While traveling along an on-the-rails path of each level, you can interact with a series of mostly preset encounters with Pokémon. You can feed them or bash them over their witless heads with apples, or use the apples to lure them towards other Pokémon or points of interest, and while they do this, you’re trying to center them in the frame and snap photos of them. The challenge comes from the fact that you can only submit a single photo of each species of Pokémon to be scored each run through a level.

It might sound exactly the same as the original, but New Snap is a much, much meatier game. The original Snap only saved one photo for each of the game’s 63 total Pokémon. Once you found the highest-scoring pose for each Pokémon and got a quality photo of it, the game was basically over. The scoring system was pretty simple and kind of primitive, doubling the score of a photo just for centering it, among other balance issues. So while it might take a while to get that one coveted photo centered or angled just right, it wasn’t exactly the deepest game.

New Pokémon Snap not only has nearly four times as many Pokémon at 234 total, but it’s seeking four different (wink wink) photos of each of them. Original Pokémon Snap challenged players to find the 63 highest scoring poses of each Pokémon. New Pokemon Snap? It wants you to find an eye-popping 936 photos for the Photodex, aka the thing that tells you what your ultimate score is.

The scoring system is more elaborate too, measuring things like pose, size, direction, and placement within the photo to the single digit. The poses are placed into different “star rating” categories, with the more basic poses being one star and the more complicated ones being four star. In theory, at least. Whether or not it makes sense is another matter that I’ll get into, but it certainly adds to the excitement. I’ve literally had dozens of instances of beating previous photos by a single point, and hundreds of new photos won by single digits. Anything that scores 4,000 or more points earns diamond status, IE the maximum rating.

And that’s not all the content, either. There’s also 234 special requests that don’t necessarily have to count towards your Photodex. For the requests, your score doesn’t matter at all, and the first time you submit a request photo, the request is fulfilled forever and that photo is permanently saved as a memento (and can’t be replaced, even if it really, really sucks and/or likely shouldn’t have even counted).

Throwing apples at the Pocket Monsters and the flute returns from the first game, as does turbo boosting, but in the new game, you can now also do “scans” that not only locate Pokémon, objects, and alternate routes, but the scan causes various effects to the Pokémon. The majority of the time, it gets their attention and makes them perk up at you, and usually interrupts whatever they’re doing. The scan might also trigger an event or scare off the Pokémon. The pester balls from the original game are gone, replaced with “illumina orbs” that light up the Pokémon, sometimes activating effects (such as picking the winner of a fight) or just making them stand out more in pictures (it matters too).

Another new idea that’s barely covered (if it is at all) in the game’s instructions is the fact that you can subtly manipulate the approximate physical location of the vehicle on the track, along with delaying various timing-based Pokémon actions. Okay, so this is kind of hard to explain. While you’re on a preset path, the direction you point and zoom the camera DOES actually make teeny tiny adjustments to the physical location of the vehicle. Let’s say you’re approaching a Pokémon on your left and you want to get closer to it than the “natural” path does. If you turn your camera left, zoom in (zooming slows the vehicle down) and stay that way, even if you’re not focused on anything, you will actually be a hair closer to Pokémon when the vehicle arrives at its location. It’s called drifting and it’s the key to a lot of photos.

And this zooming in on nothing can also prevent certain actions from beginning, allowing you to be closer when specific animations happen OR when Pokémon spawn into the course. This is absolutely essentially for some time-sensitive photos such as in the forest when Pancham and Bulbasaur are riding a Drampa and you have to get a photo of Pancham smiling at the camera, UP CLOSE, in the split second before they round a corner and the shot is no longer possible. If you look down at the ground or to the side or anywhere but the location the Drampa flies into the playfield, it will delay when it makes its entrance. There is no other way to get the 4K in points needed for the diamond status. So even the movement of the on-the-rails vehicle itself offers a LOT of user-controlled flexibility.

Finally, if needing over fourteen times as many photos as the original game to complete your album isn’t “big enough,” there’s the actual levels themselves. The original game had six levels and a “boss fight” for lack of a better term where you try to get a photo of Mew. What levels it had were fairly straight forward and offered little in the way of alternative ways to play. New Snap has fifteen locations and six boss fights. I called them locations and not levels because every single location offers multiple variations, or “levels” of content that are further split into day and night, which usually involves roster changes in the level and has a different variety of pose opportunities.

While you can look at the “levels” of each course as a difficulty setting, really it’s best to think of them as a complexity setting. The higher the level, the more variables there are. BUT, that doesn’t mean high score chasers will want to only play on the highest level. Sometimes specific events only happen on lower levels. One of the best examples is a pose that happens between the Carbink and Sableye. Both are found in the Cave courses and, exclusively on Level 2, there’s a scene where three Sableyes are chasing a Carbink. Giving the Carbink two illumina orbs causes it to attack the Sableyes.

As far as I’ve been able to tell, this is the only spot in the entire game where you can get a 4,000 point or “diamond status” three star photo of Sableye and THE ONLY three star pose Carbink does in the game, and it happens outside of the highest level of complexity the Cave has to offer. You don’t even go that direction in the Cave on level one and the scene doesn’t happen at all on level three if you take that branching path. By the way, in creating that clip, since I didn’t know if I should focus on the Sableyes reaction or the Carbink’s attack, I did both and ended up nabbing two new high scores.

Even after you reach the maximum levels, the game gives you plenty of reasons to adjust to lower ones because there’s dozens upon dozens of other poses that only happen on those levels. So, how many total levels are there in the game? Well, following the free-to-download DLC update, the map has fifteen selectable locations, like so:

But, keep in mind that “Illumina Spots” are boss levels and are NOT the same courses as those they’re paired with. So when you click the dot for Florio Park and you see that you can play day, night, or illumina spot, it’s one course remixed two ways and a separate boss course. There’s six bosses, so just this map alone has twenty-one different courses. Occasionally, an alternate route in a course is so dramatic it might as well be two different courses in one, as is the case with the Undersea course, but I’ll just count it as one. “There’s only fourteen dots on that map.” Right, but the game’s main menu is also itself a course, the Research Camp (you click the upper left hand corner), which also has two variations. If the menu screen looks like this:

You’ll start the course near that campfire. However, if the main menu looks like this:

You’ll start in front of the lab and have completely different poses and photo opportunities. Even the alternate path that takes you briefly inside the lab has changes based on which of the two starting locations you pick. That brings the total up to twenty-two courses total. But with that said, how many total levels, alternate paths, and hidden paths (IE the game doesn’t prompt you and it requires a special activation) are there in the game? Hell, I don’t know, so I’ll list them, or at least the ones I know about.

• Research Camp (Camp): 2 Different Starting Locations or “Levels”
  One major alternate path in each that takes you into the lab
• Florio Nature Park (Park): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels, and 2 Illumina Spot Levels
  Day level 3 and Night levels 1 & 2 has a minor alternate path that takes you across the Bidoof dam.
  Both Day & Night can transfer to Secret Side Path, although any pictures taken there are scored separately.
  Level 2 in the Illumina Spot has four different randomly decided starting positions for Meganium.
• Secret Side Path (Side Path): 1 Day Level, 1 Night Level
  Both Day & Night have a major alternate path that takes you off the main path and into Snolax’s den.
  Day has a minor hidden path. Playing the flute in the first hollow log will take you above Torterra instead of underneath it.
  Both Day & Night end on a remixed version of Florio Nature Park’s final scene, though any pictures taken there are scored separately.
• Founja Jungle (Jungle): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels
  Every level Day & Night has a major (but short) alternate path that takes you off the main path and through a swamp.
  Day level 3 & Night level 2 has an additional (but short) major alternate path that takes you off the main path and behind the waterfall.
  Night level 2 has an additional (but short) hidden path where a Liepard knocks you off the tree in the main path.
• Mightywide River (River): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels
  All levels have a major alternate path that takes you off the main path through a cave.
  Day level 3 has a minor hidden path where a Quagsire knocks you off the main path (can’t go into the alternate route if you activate this).
  Night level 3 has a minor hidden path where a Feraligatr (briefly) knocks you off the main path.
• Elsewhere Forest (Forest): 3 Levels and 2 Illumina Spot Levels
  The level is like a maze structured as a main chamber, a scene based on a season, a main chamber, and an ending scene
  Level 1 will take you randomly to Spring or Summer for the second scene.
  Level 2 will randomly take you to Fall or Winter for the second scene.
  Level 3 allows players to control which of the four seasons they go to based on how they interact with the Espeon, so four major alternate paths.
  Level 3 has a hidden path that’s permanently unlocked as an alternate path to a different finale if you lead the Deerling through the second main chamber.
• Blushing Beach (Beach): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels
  Every level Day & Night has a major alternate path that takes you out into the water.
• Maricopia Reef (Reef): 3 Day Levels, 2 Evening Levels
  Every level Day & Evening has a major alternate path at the end.
  Day levels 2 & 3 and Evening levels 1 & 2 have minor hidden paths based facing left or right when you approach Wailord.
• Lental Seafloor (Undersea): 3 Levels, 2 Illumina Spot Levels
  Levels 2 & 3 have a major alternate path near the start that takes you through, for all intent and purposes, an entirely different course.
  Level 3’s alternate path has an additional major hidden path if you rescue a Lanturn from a pair of Frillish that takes you into Lugia’s lair.
• Sweltering Sands (Sands): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels
  Day levels 2 & 3 and Night level 2 have a major alternate path leading to a different final scene.
• Barren Badlands (Badlands): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels
  Day levels 2 & 3 have a major alternate path that changes the entire middle of the level.
  Night level 2 has the same major alternate path as Day, but it requires you to photograph at least three Digletts at the start of the stage to activate.
• Fireflow Volcano (Volcano): 3 Levels, 2 Illumina Spot Levels
  Level 3 has a major alternate path that takes you to a different final room.
  Level 2 in the Illumina Spot has a hidden path based on how soon you put out the fires in at least one Volcarona.
• Shivering Snowfields (Snowfields): 3 Day Levels, 2 Night Levels
  Day Levels 2 & 3 and Night Level 2 have a major alternate path.
  The alternate path either rejoins the main path or you can take a second major alternate path that takes you to a different ending.
• Outaway Cave (Cave): 3 Levels, 2 Illumina Spot Levels
  Level 3 has an alternate path in the middle of the level.
  THAT alternate path has a hidden path that takes you to a different ending.
  If you stay on the main path, there’s another hidden path near the end of the level that takes you to a different main path ending.
  Level 2 in the Illumina Spot has a major alternate route with a different ending.
• Ruins of Remembrance (Ruins): 3 Levels, 2 Illumina Spot Levels
  There’s a minor alternate ending to all three Ruins levels.

That’s a sh*t ton of game for $59.99. With all the character variables factored in, we’re talking millions, if not billions of variables at your disposal. In a game based around finding the highest possible scores in four different tiers for each Pokémon, that’s a lot of flexibility a player is given. After over 800 hours of gameplay and at least four multi-week binges since 2021, I’m still finding new high score poses. I just found this one a couple days ago literally in the first course of the game. It had been staring me in the face the entire time.

And of course, a new discovery doesn’t end with the discovery. Like in the above example, once I realized the scoring opportunity that happened there and the angle that the game desired, I replayed it and ended up increasing the score from the 4,796 it started the day at to 4,942, and loving every moment of it. Multiply that experience by 936. THAT is what New Pokémon Snap is offering players. That’s a LOT of gameplay for one game.

Most importantly, I never got bored with New Pokémon Snap. Every single main course is a banger and there’s just so much stuff inside each of them and so many different ways to approach each run you make. I’ve been playing this since the week it came out in 2021, and for this review, I’ve been playing New Pokémon Snap for SIX WEEKS STRAIGHT, and I really don’t even want to stop. If you wonder where I’ve been for the last six weeks, this really is it. It worked out for me too, except the way it worked out for me also made me realize we’re unlikely to ever get a Pokémon Snap 3, even though this sold around two-and-a-half million copies.

As a scoring-based game, New Pokémon Snap has global leaderboards, the main one of which measures what your Photodex’s score is, IE the combined score of the highest scoring version of each photo. You wouldn’t expect me, someone with shaky hands and not exactly a professional-quality gamer, to be ranked high on New Pokémon Snap’s leaderboard. The game is five years old so people have had plenty of time to get their scores up. And, well, it’s Pokémon. One of the biggest franchises in the world. But, as of this writing, in a game with 2.5 million copies sold and even more players, I’m ranked #212 in the world for Photodex and (with the help of my family, since not all course records are mine) #403 for total course score.

This should be a huge deal for me. I mean, I’ve set literally dozens of digital pinball world record scores, a few of which still stand, BUT, digital pinball isn’t exactly on the level of popularity as Pokémon. Plus, it’s not like I found myself this high on the leaderboard because the game just came out. I started this review six weeks ago ranked around 90,000th, give or take, and now, I’m 212th. I’m not THAT good. Something about that sounds fishy, right? Well, the score is legitimate and I didn’t use any cheating tactics or glitch the game. Well, except maybe this photo, which my family and I have dubbed the “Mystery Bidoof” photo.

Absolutely no clue why that scored so high, as it normally doesn’t get 945 pose points. Something happened. It’s not facing the camera. It’s not even lit-up. We’ve tried to replicate it and never come even close to getting 945 in pose. When this was declared the new high score for the two star Bidoof, I almost didn’t realize it. The only reason this was submitted for evaluation was because it was the only photo I had of Bidoof that run. (shrug). But otherwise, my Photodex is legit, and #212 in the world. What. The. F*ck?! The problem is, people don’t seem to be “beating” New Pokémon Snap. But at least it gave me a direction for this review: WHY?! Why is this amazing game, immersive, unique gaming experience that’s overflowing with content getting so little engagement?

Well before I had any clue where I would end up in the rankings, I wanted to have a different angle for this review than contemporary reviews. The game is over five years old, after all, so ironically “New” Pokemon Snap isn’t really new anymore. I chose this for the next review after the big video pinball feature because I knew I was guaranteed to have fun and have plenty of stuff to talk about, but I didn’t want to just do a plea for a second chance for New Pokémon Snap. I needed an angle, so I came up with “how hard is it to 100% the game?” I defined 100%ing New Pokémon Snap as scoring a diamond rating (4,000 point or more) on all 936 photos and completing all 234 special requests. I thought it would make for a neat review, and I did end up reaching my goal. This link takes you to all my scores. 4K or more on every photo. Done and done.

Except, something startling happened along the way: my global ranking. Not just how high I was, but how fast it happened. I entered into the top 500 global rankings before I even had all 936 photos. Actually, when I tied for 499th, I still had seven photos missing from my Photodex and nineteen others that didn’t have the diamond status. What?! And THAT got me into the top 500? Okay, so most gamers don’t ace games these days. That’s not a newsflash, and anyone who has heard the “rare achievement” chime on their Xbox knows that way too many achievements get that chime because most owners never actually play the games, Hell, I’m sort of guilty myself with this very game since, again, even though I’ve been playing this at least a couple weeks a year since it came out, I started this review ranked around 90,000th and with a very incomplete Photodex. Like so many others, I never tried for 100%. Once I did try, I realized a really, REALLY low amount of players are actually exploring New Pokémon Snap.

I thought the Pokémon franchise’s fans were into “catching ’em all” and all that jazz. That clearly isn’t the case with this game, which didn’t capture young people’s imaginations the way the original game captured mine. My nieces and nephew all agreed the low engagement has to do with the sparse roster (234 sounds great, but it’s still nowhere near a complete franchise roster even in 2021) and the lack of “Shiny” hunting, which is a popular mechanic in the franchise. They’re big Pokémon fans so I assume they might be right, at least for their age group and general Pokémon fans.

Based on how I climbed the leaderboard and what those scores I passed along the way were, I guesstimate that, conservatively, less than four-thousand players have gotten all 936 photos (unless they just walked away with poses scoring 3,000 or less on tons of photos) and well under a thousand players (out of over 2.5 million) actually tried to get a diamond rating on every photo. Not get every diamond, but just tried. The truth is, it really wasn’t that hard to get one of each photo. The diamonds and a couple of the special requests were, but one star through four star photos themselves? I could probably count on one hand how many put up a real fight. Yet, I’m in the top 0.00848 of all players.

It’s like a f*cking dagger to my heart because I love Pokémon Snap as a concept and as a gaming franchise, but with engagement THIS low on a Pokémon game? Hell, it’s probably the death of the Snap series. And I’m not even using some of the lame ass tactics the top ranked players are using. A popular strategy involves pausing and unpausing the game repeatedly, which automatically centers the camera’s focus and also increases the scoring window for specific poses, even glitching them out somewhat (IE you can see the pose on the screen before it actually starts to animate). I swear to God, I’m not trying to judge anyone based on their style of gameplay and if you actually have fun doing this sh*t, more power to you. But personally, *I* think it looks like a boring, tedious slog of a way to play a game, and what are you accomplishing? A high ranking on a game that I entered the top 500 on without even finishing all the objectives? You’re turning THIS game into a slog for THAT accomplishment? It’s like I said in my Pac-Man review: I might not be setting any world records, but I bet I’m having more fun than the people who are, because that sh*t looks f*cking boring.

Of course, in fairness to those players who are turning an exciting game into a slog, that strategy does exist for a reason. Okay, here comes the negative side of this review, and please, remember, this is a YES! review. I love this game. I want you to play it. I want to plummet down the rankings because New Pokémon Snap gets a second wind and a new wave of popularity. I would be VERY happy to wake up and find myself 250,000th in the world. Got that? Good. Here comes the bad.

I have a theory as to why the game isn’t being finished by more players or even just played more, and that’s because New Pokémon Snap is (checks notes) broken. Like, broken-broken. People are quitting not because they dislike the concept but because the game often doesn’t work and who wants to bother with a game like that? The #1 most obvious broken element is sometimes the game takes the picture of the wrong f*cking thing. Each photo counts towards one Pokémon or object, and only one. Even if they’re the same species and all clustered up, while you’re getting points for all of them, only one is considered the focus of the picture and the main thing being judged. So take this photo:

This pose happens at the end of the River course on level 3. To activate this pose, you have to throw illumina orbs at three Swamperts “hidden” along the river course to set up the pose and then one final orb right at the very end of the level. The three Swamperts will launch out of the water and dive back in within a single second. Because it takes work throughout the whole level, this isn’t the type of picture you can just spam and quickly submit over and over. It takes time to set up. Even with those circumstances, I’ve activated this “pose” at the end of the river course a few dozen times and this was my highest scoring photo of it. Top players using the pause technique are scoring between 5,500 to over 5,700. I’m stuck at 4,924.

Notice I said “highest scoring” and not “best.” I’ve actually had WAY better pictures of this sequence. Ones that should, based on my research,  have scored 5,200+ minimum, only when I submitted them for evaluation, they scored under 4,000 points. Wait, what? How? Because the camera wasn’t focused on the closest Swampert, but one of the rear ones. This is why players who discovered that the game automatically centers photos and delays or extends scoring windows started pausing and unpausing, sometimes extending one second poses into nearly a minute to get that one photo. If you’re like me and think that sounds miserable and ruinous towards fun, your only other option is to aim, shoot, and hope the game focuses on the correct one. Remember the panda on the dragon?

That’s another photo that you have to manually activate over the course of a level, and this pose happens at the end of what is probably the longest course in the game. Even if you go for ONLY this photo, each time will take five minutes just for this, give or take. Again, I’ve had MUCH better photos than this one that sits in my Photodex. Dozens of better ones, in fact. Closer, with the Pancham facing me. But the overwhelming majority of better ones haven’t counted as Pancham pictures. Instead, they count as Drampa pictures. Unless you’re slamming the pause button over and over like you’re doing your best NES Advantage “slow motion” impersonation, you don’t have time to stop, aim, and shoot on this. This pose is gone in a second, and there’s nothing worse than THINKING you got the picture you were looking for only to find out it’s actually something else after the level ends and you see what you got.

Normally as a game critic, I don’t offer solutions for problems with games. That’s not my job. I’m a reviewer and a critic, not a game maker. But the solution is so self-evident that it’s stunning it wasn’t part of the game all along, or patched in later. Nintendo and Bandai Namco should have looked at how f*cking tediously top players were playing the game to earn their points and adjusted the game accordingly. I don’t mean blocking the pause technique. If people want to be boring while playing a game, no skin off my teeth. But they could have eliminated the need or desire to do that by allowing players to select any Pokémon in the photo as the focus on the photo. Look at these three pictures of Grookey:

They look the same (which is another huge problem I’ll get into), but they’re actually three different tiers of photos that happen in a two second window at the end of the Park. You only have a split second to get the four star photo of Grookey, and then it shifts to the two or three star photo. Again, I’ve done MUCH better, for all three. But even with Grookey focused and perfectly centered in the frame, hundreds of different times the game said “this must be a photo of the crystal bloom” or one of the other Pokémon in the picture. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say this is why, going off the global rankings, literally millions of players quit the game early and never returned. Those above pictures are in the FIRST COURSE IN THE GAME!

While I sincerely believe New Pokemon Snap is an immersive game, this problem actually breaks the logic of the immersion. In the story logic of the game, you’re handing these photos to a professor for evaluation. So why would a professor look at this photo:

And not ask the person handing him it “what is this picture about?” Why does it have to be decided at the moment the photo is snapped if the whole shtick of the game is that a photographer is handing already taken photos to someone else to have them rated? Wouldn’t the photographer be able to decide what the photo is about at any time before they submit it for review? This is immersion shattering to a degree that’s stunning. It’s such an obvious fix, and one the game engine should easily be able to handle because it already recognizes and awards points for everything in the photo. This is EASY, guys. As easy as any fix in the history of video games is. This type of thing is not a rare slip. VERY often, you can have something appear suddenly in the camera, like this Gliscor that is so very clearly the focus of the picture:

So you quickly snap photos because it happens suddenly and then is gone from the screen. You’re excited because your reflexes were sharp. You saw the thumbnail in the corner during the course and KNOW you got the picture in the center or close enough. Then you finish the level and the photo isn’t there. Instead, you have pictures of Vivillons (which are in almost every course) in the far, far, far, far background of the photo you THOUGHT you got of something else. Why would any photographer give this photo to a professor and say it’s a Vivillon? Why would any professor assume this is a photo of a barely visible butterfly in the background? THIS IS NOT IMMERSIVE, BECAUSE NO PHOTOGRAPHER OR PHOTO RATER WOULD BE THIS DENSE! This is why most players quit early and never returned and others are pausing and unpausing the game in a way sure to self-lobotomize the fun center of their brains. Because otherwise, once the camera focuses on something, it’s hard to unfocus on it and refocus on something else. There’s a spot in the game where a Squirtle rides a Lapras, and if your timing is true (or you have burst mode on the camera) you might even catch it winking at the camera, which lasts for about a tenth of a second and scores maximum pose points.

Awesome photo, right? But it only scores 4,728 points. I’ve had it where it was bigger in frame, more centered, and facing me more when I captured the elusive wink, but instead of it counting as a Squirtle photo, it counted as a photo of the Lapras. Now Squirtle has a wide variety of poses in multiple courses, but sometimes a Pokémon only has a single viable pose for the diamond rating and it’s almost entirely luck if the photo actually is correct. Such is the case with Mawile. Its only other four star poses are physically impossible to score 4K on (it’s buried head-first in snow, so direction gets basically nothing), so this is it, but the overwhelming majority of the time, the photo instead counts for the Mamoswine its literally engulfed in, and the picture MUST be taken at the point of impact for maximum (IE enough to clear 4K) points.

I seriously can’t imagine why my relatively mediocre photo gallery is ranked 212th in the world. And hell, sometimes it really, REALLY makes no sense what it focuses on. Look at this photo, which broke me. I mean seriously, I’m about to lose my f*cking sh*t.

I assure you that I was not aiming at the f*cking Bidoof in background in this photo. I was clearly aiming at the bunny I just beamed in its f*cking face with an apple, so why would even a bad AI camera focus assume I wanted to take a picture of the thing far in the background and not the other thing that’s closer, dead center, and had literally just been interacted with by the player? Even the stupidest, glue sniffing, window licking idiot on the planet would look at this photo and choose the Scorbunny as the focus of the picture. And yet, because of how I zoomed in while playing the game, it decided it had to focus on something while I was waiting for the bunny that I knew was going to run up to the stick BECAUSE I THOUGHT THAT’S THE F*CKING OBJECT OF THE GAME: TO FIND THE F*CKING POSES AND WAIT FOR THEM! Yet, somehow the brain dead engine decided I was aiming for the sleeping Bidoof and never unfocused on it even after I unzoomed the camera and rezoomed to get this picture. Hey, sh*t for brains idiots that made this game: what the actual f*ck was wrong with you? Have a little f*cking pride in your work and fix this sh*t! OH, IT’LL MAKE THE GAME TOO EASY? WHO CARES ABOUT CHALLENGE?! YOU KNOW, DIFFICULTY AIN’T WORTH SH*T IF PEOPLE JUST QUIT PLAYING BECAUSE THE GAME IS SO F*CKING STUPID IT CAN’T TELL THAT A CHARACTER THAT IS DEAD CENTER IN FRAME IS THE FOCUS OF THE PICTURE AND NOT THE THING COMPLETELY ENGULFED BEHIND IT! YOU SERIOUSLY SIGNED OFF ON THIS ENGINE? ARE YOU STUPID?

Sigh. I feel like an idiot for caring because clearly nobody in charge of making this game did. And there’s other problems. Actually, the crystal blooms cause lots of issues, and not just because they suck the focus away from the Pokémon so much that I’ve apparently taken over 1,300 photos of them (yes, it counts them). The game requires you to take, like, five or maybe six to complete the story, and that’s exactly how many I would have voluntarily taken. But an even bigger logic problem comes with “background” points and how the crystal blooms relate to them. “Background” in general is a problematic scoring category. Look at the very worst photo in my Photodex:

This is a photo of a Sobble and it scores 4,680, ranking it #150 out of 234 three star photos. It scores 556 points for “other Pokemon” and 291 in “background points.” Huh? Okay, first off, “background” in this context doesn’t really mean “background.” It means anything in the photo the makers of the game have decided is point-scoring neat. Any photo taken with the waterfall in view on the jungle course scores high in background points, even if the photo is so obviously not as good. See:

While the right picture is CLEARLY a better, more interesting picture of the cat that someone collecting photos of wildlife for, say, the Pokémon version of National Geographic would prefer, the left picture is providing much more background points. So going back to that Sobble, even though the waterfall is in the foreground, the picture is being boosted by just the presence of the waterfall, and by one other thing. Did you spot it?

That little red fleck? What is it? Well, it’s the edge of a crystal bloom, and the crystal blooms are so heavily prioritized that even having just a tiny sliver of the tip of a leaf from it, or even the glow from one if you activate it with an illumina orb, boosts the background points significantly. So while this is advertised as a game where the object is to photograph Pokémon, really it’s Crystal Bloom: The Game and the actual object is to try to get Pokémon photographed around them. Bonus points if you do it with a background that scores points. Remember that beautiful sunset from the reef course? Well the game actually doesn’t have a concept of beauty. Look at these photos I just took:

Seriously, Reef Evening might be the single most beautiful video game level ever made. Total background points between those four photos: 181 points, and they’re all for the fourth photo. The first three pictures above scored zero background points.

After this, I played the Research Camp for about, no exaggeration, ten seconds and got not one but two separate photos right off the bat that scored more background points than all four of those beautiful reef pictures combined. Take a look:

So wait, what’s the background? The vehicle. Anything taken with the vehicle in view is guaranteed to score tons of points. Or hell, I just today got this photo while I finished editing this feature:

112 in Background points? Where? The grass? Nope. That photo was shot right in front of the vehicle, and even though you can’t see it at all, apparently the “glow” of it or something is boosting the background score, because LOGIC! But hey, new record for my two star Meowth photo so yeah for me. Now let’s compare two pictures taken on the beach. This Lapras pic has a tropical island behind it that draws attention to the eyes. Surely that island is there for some reason besides set dressing.

Nope. It scores NOTHING for background points. Now don’t get me wrong: set dressing is important for immersion, and make no mistake: New Pokémon Snap is one of the most immersive games I’ve ever played specifically because of the variety of settings and how well dressed those settings are. BUT, with that said, when background is given such a high scoring premium in this game, you really need to go through the environments you’ve created and assign background scores to anything that catches the eye. That is NOT a random tree or a tuft of grass. It’s an island. It stands out prominently, and then they specifically placed a Lapras to swing directly in front of it. Compare that photo, which scored zero background points, to this photo that scored an insane 232.

What are the background points for? The coastline? Nope. The shovel, which will eventually (on the Beach’s night course) be a Pokémon, but isn’t now. You don’t even need to have the Pokémon interact with the shovel, either. If the photo has a shovel in it anywhere, it will score at least some points for it. So the scoring system is deeply, deeply flawed, as neither the crystal nor the background stuff makes the game better. It kind of makes it worse, because you’re no longer incentivized to try to get the best action shots wherever they happen. Instead, you find yourself trying to get the best pictures within the limited scope of the crystals or whatever else awards background points. You’ll note that Pikachu is scoring 766 pose points and 232 background, so obviously my three star picture of Pikachu is a better version of that picture, right? Nope. It’s this photo:

Where are the 131 background points? The flower? Nope. Just the glow of a crystal bloom right next to it. For comparison, here’s my one star photo of Shaymin with a flower right next to it:

Zero background points. It’s glowing because I lit it with an illumina orb. So what could be worse than having to base pictures around crystals? How about not doing enough to make sure each tier of photo has no look-alike photos. This is a BIG problem. My two star and four star Pikachu pictures are basically identical, taken in the same location during the opening moment of the Beach at night on level 2.

Because there’s a second Pikachu there, that photo scored 543 “other Pokémon” points for the two star and 409 for the four star. So even though there’s a HUGE variety of Pikachu poses in the game and lots of things they interact with, it’ll be tough to beat the four star picture. At the research lab, you can get Pikachu to pose on one of the vehicles, but the amount of background points the vehicle scores can’t compete with the bonus points for the second Pikachu, plus you’re just plain not close enough.

The tier concept is kind of the problem. Needing more than one picture of each Pokémon is great. It’s part of the reason why I can never go back to the original Snap. But, sticking like glue to the “four pictures AND ONLY four pictures” format for each Pokémon is kind of insane. Not all of them have four pictures worth of content, while some have significantly more. Pikachu is like that. In the research camp level alone, in addition to the special pose of him getting on the vehicle, you can make him jump on the trough. While this isn’t the best example since I didn’t get the timing for framing perfect, you can still see how big the gap the score has. It can NEVER hope to compete with the picture I have.

The thing is, the sleeping picture you pass right by without doing any work to make it happen. All I had to do was light the crystal and hit him with an apple. The trough picture is actually pretty fickle to activate. I can’t just “do it” and make it happen by will. You have to lead him to the thing, then hope he jumps up it. Sometimes he just stops moving like the CPU’s run cycle is stuck. So of the two photos above, one takes maximum effort and one takes almost none. But it’s the one that takes almost none that is all but unbeatable against all other three star photos, and that’s not even the worst example. At one point, Pikachu rides a Mantine in the reef, which is its four star pose. To activate it, you need to light two crystals, and then time it perfectly because it flies by you quickly. I’m SO proud of this picture:

BUT, that’s actually my three star picture of Mantine, not my four star Pikachu picture. Getting the Pikachu version of this picture is really hard because literally every “something riding something” picture is hard to get the camera to focus on the rider. Eventually, someday, I will turn THAT picture into my Photodex’s four star Pikachu picture. I almost did a few minutes ago grabbing the photo for this review. But look at the pose points:

The degree of difficulty to time that picture, center it, aim, shoot, AND THEN have the focus actually be on Pikachu and not the Mantine is so much higher than that boring beach picture. They’re so far apart in the skill required to even get them that it’s kind of insane that the two shots are actually in the same category. But the Pikachu riding the Mantine photo only gets 500 pose points and competes head to head with the beach picture that can also be the two star photo depending on what the second Pikachu is doing. Again, I could beat that four star, and I will eventually. But why are they even put against each-other in the first place? They’re nothing alike. And that’s far from the only identical photo in my album.

What the f*ck? There’s actually TONS of poses for Pichu, but because they made it so the same f*cking moment changes from two star to three star based on whether or not Scorbunny is also celebrating, you can actually get two 5K photos in the three second window, and the only real challenge is making sure the camera focuses on the Pichu and not the Torterra. This pose happens every single time you play the level. You do nothing to activate it. It’s the finale of a battle between a Torterra and Dodrio, and not one of those “you pick the winner” fights. Speaking of Torterra, here are its monster-scoring one and two star photos.

Again, no work needed for either of these besides lighting them with the illumina orbs. You pass right by them. I could use the “they’re the same picture” meme but instead I’ll just note that there’s at least six or seven situations where Torterra does something visually interesting in the two courses it appears in (Park and Side Path), but none of those things score the pose points, other Pokémon points, or background points the above two almost identical situations taken in the same location do and can’t hope to compete. Also, the game weirdly prioritizes sleeping pictures. Shaymin is the worst about this. Here are its two, three, and four star photos.

Again, despite its small size, of course it does more things. You can feed it apples. You can make it jump for joy. But none of it matters because THREE OUT OF FOUR pictures of it are sleeping pictures taken right next to clusters of other Pokémon. The game doesn’t lack for variety. It might actually have the biggest variety of stuff to do in any game I’ve ever played in my life. The problem is, it actually doesn’t reward you for discovering that variety. All the Pokémon behave differently after you hit them with an apple. Some growl at you. Some play it off cool. Some dust themselves off. The Bewears even try to kill you, the only such instance in the game where Pokémon attack you so aggressively that the game automatically speeds up, cinematically running for your life from the murder bears.

But typically, none of the post-hit animations score the maximum pose points, and in fact, they usually score under the 500 pose points average, in the 450 range. Even though the “dust off” animations are unique and memorable, the game heavily rewards the moment the apple impacts the Pokémon. That usually scores anywhere between 750 points to even the max 1,000 points (2,000 for “special” Pokémon). There’s exceptions of course, but it’s yet another example of how the game created these elaborate personalities and then actively punishes you for thinking they’re the prize.

The same goes for feeding the Pokémon apples. That takes time, and you have to wait while they eat them. You would think the slowest Pokemon would yield massive rewards for their “joy” poses after they finish eating and some actually do, but most don’t. The big prize is the moment of impact, IE the one thing in the game where almost every character, regardless of shape or size, acts exactly the same way.

I won’t say that finding the low scoring poses or stuff so far in the background that it’s useless towards scoring isn’t fun. I had fun when I found out there’s a moment where Kangaskhan places another character in her pouch, even if it happens so far from the camera that it can’t ever make the Photodex. I was having fun before I understood the game wouldn’t know a beautiful background if it bit its ass and I was having fun afterward when I started looking for these arbitrary point getters. But I kinda wish they just threw out the background category and the four-tier limits altogether and just allowed more photos. Ideally, the game should be a scavenger hunt for the poses, and it’s not. Applin is a great example of that, and it shows ANOTHER problem in that photos can’t show off motion. Here’s its one star and three star poses.

As you can clearly see, both those photos are nearly identical. Oh, you think the three star is a higher ranking because it’s eyes are slightly more wonky? Nah, it’s because it’s actually rolling in that picture, whereas the one star is completely stationary. The rolling picture doesn’t actually look like it’s rolling, because, you know, it’s a photo and there’s no sense of motion (there’s an idea for a sequel: have players search for ten second clips of Pokémon. Something the TikTok Generation can get behind!). But I promise you it is rolling, and its only other three star pose can’t compete with the roll. How someone seeing the photo in a scientific journal would know it’s rolling is beyond me. The sad thing is, the other three star photo is the perfect alternative to prevent that sameness.

It’s hanging upside down from the tree and when you draw near it, its eyes pop out to get a good look at you. Great photo, right? Nope. That is also a three star pose, and because the Applin spooks too easily and retracts its eyes before you’re close enough to get its size points up, I’ve literally never gotten 4,000 points from it. The “direction” points plummet if the eyes aren’t out. So distant photos of this compete head-to-head with the rolling pictures, which will always look vastly less interesting than the hanging-from-the-tree picture but yield much, much more points. Applin is one of the smaller Pokémon and is very, very hard to get close enough to get enough size points to clear 4,000. For the smaller ones, you practically need the f*cking things pressed up against the lens. Meanwhile, some other Pokémon have such low scoring, limited opportunities for some of their tiers that I swear to God it’s like the entire f*cking development team forgot about them. Here’s my four star Inkay photo.

Pretty lame, Milhouse. So, to get that photo, you have to light a crystal bloom that’s well out in front of you, and then race these two Inkays who are swimming to the bloom. They’ll separate when they reach it, and then jump out of the water and cross paths. This is the only time IN THE ENTIRE GAME they’ll do that. If only one Inkay is in the photo, it drops to the three star tier. That above photo is only the second time I’ve cleared 4,000 points. The only saving grace is that it happens right at the start of the Reef Evening levels 1 and 2. But in literally hundreds of attempts, that’s my best: 4,016 points. F*ck. Off. It’s universally regarded as one of the toughest diamonds in the game. In the clip below, I got 3,994 points.

So why not scoot back when it’s easier to get them both? Well, because size becomes an issue. For Inkay, THIS is a 2,000 in size:

This is 1,999 in size:

Okay, so size changes based on the pose, right? Not really, as the two pics above are actually kind of the same size. What you’re seeing in my jumping pic scored 1,360 in size. The size points drop that quickly, and there’s also a “focus” issue of course as you want the one facing the camera to be the focus, but it happens in a split second and it might not be that one when you go to look at the pics. That’s another problem: when the photo is multiple Pokémon of the same species, you don’t find out if the focus f*cked up until after you’ve chosen the photo for evaluation. Anyway, I just grabbed a quick example and it’s not a perfect example because it’s not even close to centered, but it should give you an idea of how quickly size points drop. Literally every fraction of a frame in distance traveled subtracts exponentially more points. Just a teeny, tiny bit further away from the camera and I’ve lost nearly 300 points in size alone.

What’s with the 762 in pose? Again, some poses are measured in fractions of a second. Like, the game is frame-specific on pose points. For some, that fraction of a fraction of a second is the one and only max point chance for the entire character in a tier. Oh, there’s another four star Inkay photo, just like how the Applin has a second option for the three stars. And, like the Applin, it happens so far away from the camera that it can’t score enough points. It’s actually one of those special requests that takes approximately six weeks to complete (now you know the truth of where I’ve been this whole time) and involves feeding two Inkays an apple, then feeding them each another apple in another spot along with third Inkay, then feeding the third one again, and then feeding another along with four others, and if even one of them doesn’t eat the apple because two of them are bumping into each-other, you have to start over. BUT, if everyone eats their apples, THEN they’ll f*ck off well away from the camera and do this four start pose:

It’s a tedious nightmare of a task that takes forever, is super easy to f*ck up because sometimes they just refuse to eat the apples, and the end result happens so far away from the camera that it can’t score 4,000 points because you’re not even close to getting the size bonus. The photo I submitted of all five jumping scored around 3,700. So that crossover picture is the only option, and you have literally a split second to get this one diamond photo of one of the smaller Pokémon. The small ones are problematic in general. Look at the size scores on Minior, one of the smallest Pokémon in the game.

Now sometimes you get too close and it takes points away, but these aren’t of the “too close” variety. Despite how small this thing is, they actually expect bigger photos than what I have. There’s no scale here but Inkay is roughly five times bigger than these are. That means not being able to get any interesting looking photos since you have to be so close up that details like backgrounds or other Pokémon are going to be nearly impossible. Look at my four star photo of it:

The process to activate that pose involves waking up seven different Miniors buried in the sand, using only your scan to find them (and even then, you don’t throw the orbs where you think you should). It’s awful and one of the most tedious poses to activate in the game. Even then, it took me roughly a dozen attempts to break 4,000 points because the pose literally flies right on by AND it also lumps in the “focus on the wrong thing” problem because if you focus on any of the other Miniors but the center one, your size points will plummet. It’s awful.

Believe it or not, I haven’t even shown you the single worst photo opportunity in the game. The canary in the coalmine that shows how little they gave a sh*t to make sure every Pokémon has logical and/or exciting high-yield scoring chances belongs to Drampa. Drampa is an elderly dragon and he’s located in the Elsewhere Forest, which is a great level with awesome themes. So in theory there should be plenty of stuff you can do with this character. You saw the panda and the lizard with a cancerous tumor called Bulbasaur riding it. That’s a four star photo of Drampa, but not THE four star photo. If you beam the Bulbasaur with an apple after they hop off the ride, Drampa gets pissed.

It’s actually a legitimately frightening moment the first time it happens, and it’s such a cool f*cking picture. So they actually did do well by it, except for the three star photo. As far as I can tell, and apparently as far as anyone on the entire World Wide Web can tell, there’s only one single three star picture for this thing in the entire game, though it’s in the same spot on all three levels of the Forest during the standard finale. Here’s my version of it:

Yep, that’s it.  I could in theory do better by having a nearby lizard appear more prominently in the picture (you can see it a little bit in the bottom left hand corner, hence the 19 “other Pokémon” points), but 4,189 is actually a very high score for this piece of sh*t picture. The problem is, this is literally the game’s only three star Drampa opportunity. I don’t mean the only one capable of scoring 4,000 points. I literally mean THE ONLY THREE STAR DRAMPA OPTION IN THE ENTIRE GAME. It’s sleeping in a way where you can’t even see its face. There’s no way to cut that grass to get a better shot, and if you wake it up, it changes to a two star or one star photo. What the f*ck is that sh*t? In a level that has more variables than any other level in the game, that’s it. Your one and only three star photo pose of Drampa, and hell, it took me dozens of attempts to line it up in a way that scored the diamond rating and another few dozen attempts (done only because I was playing that level and you pass by it every time in the standard finale) to get the score up to 4,189. But at least there’s multiple other places to find Drampa for his other tiers. Can’t say that about Jolteon.

Jolteon appears exclusively at the end of the hidden path found in the alternate path of the Cave on level 3, so even reaching it requires both taking an alternate route AND then manually activating a time consuming hidden route. AND THEN it has to be prompted to actually jump into the play area with not one but two apples, which if the apples bounce wrong, it’ll walk away from you to go eat them. It has an easy four star photo. Just hit it with an apple once it’s walking around. But its three star photo is notorious despite having two options. The first is the one in the above pic of it leaping onto the playfield after you hit it with two apples. The above photo is so hard to get that it was literally the final diamond rating I nabbed for the full set of all 936. That photo above scored 4,012 points, and that’s considered very high for the jump since it doesn’t score a lot of pose points. The other option is this:

That itch scored 948 just for the pose, ultimately awarding me a whopping 4,168 points (that’s the 9th lowest among my three star photos). And I did literally nothing, because that’s one of its random idle animations. Almost all Pokémon have one or more RNG based idle animations if you just leave them alone. They’re one of the few RNG elements in the game and sometimes they won’t happen if you’re zoomed in and waiting for one, I assume as some kind of trollish “a watched pot never boils” thing. So getting that RNG picture of Jolteon close enough to score 1,521 size points (yes, that’s really all that photo got for size) is totally luck based. And here’s a clip of the room it’s in.

The room it’s in is lumpy and thus hard to use apples to lure it because they bounce awkwardly, covered with dense foliage that blocks it from view and dramatically takes away points, and the area it can travel before being stopped by a drop-off is very limited. It doesn’t move very fast, and if you hit it with an apple, it’ll stop to do its angry electric storm animation. Like, the limit is just a few seconds short of where that clip ends. So in Jolteon’s only appearance in the entire game, and an appearance you have to actually take multiple steps to even activate, you have just a matter of seconds to get the full range of poses in an area that’s covered thick with things that block it and lower its score. In the above clip, I did successfully get a centered pic of its gratitude pose. How’d that do? Not even 4,500 points, because it wasn’t close enough.

Better in pose. Better in direction. Better in placement. BUT, a teeny tiny bit further away from the camera, but that teeny tiny bit cost me 407 points. Compare that to this photo:

WHAT THE F*CK?! REALLY!? Well, I can explain. Most levels have some kind of “special” Pokémon that, if the reaction to my nieces and nephew is any indication, are there as a fan service. These special Pokémon score bonkers points just by existing. These aren’t bosses, which I have no objection to scoring higher. These are just normal Pokémon, though some (maybe all) show up as post game content after you’ve finished the linear story of the game. The game so dramatically overloads scoring for these that it’s fish in a barrel. Look at this one:

It’s not even in the f*cking frame properly and it’s scoring 5,509 points. That’s my 12th highest scoring one star photo. So what did I do to activate this high-yielding Pokémon? Nothing. It literally is just there at the start of every single level, 1 through 3, in the Ruins course. Just the act of throwing an illumina orb at it changes it to a two star photo. Here’s that one:

Again, not a great photo. Timing was somewhat off. 5,505 points, my 10th highest scoring two star photo, and again, I can’t stress enough: it literally just slowly floats directly into view at the start of the Ruins, without doing anything, and it shows up at other times in the level too. (throws up hands) I get that it’s special in the Pokémon story, but for the purposes of this game, it’s really not and it shouldn’t get that many points, especially when it takes no work to get it. Compare that to the enormous pain in the ass that is Jolteon, and it really just makes the whole thing feel kind of half-assed. Hell, my #1 scoring Pokémon isn’t a boss. It’s Celebi, which to its credit, you have to hit with an orb as it zooms around the start of the standard finale of the forest to be able to get poses. But it’s not THAT hard to do so.

As of this writing, that one star photo of Celebi is my highest scoring photo in any tier. A one star photo beats even my highest four star photos, and I wasn’t even really trying for it. I was stunned when I got it, and I only got it because I actually screwed up activating the four star photo, which looks kinda the same.

That one star Celebi photo, taken because of a screw-up on my part, passed this photo of last boss Xerneas by five points, even though THIS photo takes a few steps to activate and is pretty difficult to frame correctly.

So the game has way too much emphasis on these special Pokémon, many of which outscore the f*cking bosses with a fraction of the effort even if the photos are no good. It’s so demoralizing to work your ass off trying to get the perfect picture of something that’s hard to move, hard to center, has a touch of RNG, and might even require interacting with other Pokémon, only to then get monster points for a photo of the “special” Pokémon just f*cking laying there in the same level. F*cking really?

By the way, that picture, taken back in 2021 and probably only submitted because I missed the crystal blooms that wake it up, is still my #1 photo of Lugia just because of the 448 points for background. THAT picture scores more points than the three harder to get action pictures of the same thing.

Again, is it any wonder I’m ranked #212th in the world despite not really having amazing photos? New Pokémon Snap is, at times, outright broken in a way you don’t expect from a Nintendo-published game, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to figure out why 99.99% of all people who spent $60 on it didn’t bother to try and get high scores. It didn’t have to be this way. They also didn’t have to make the bosses so f*cking miserable to play. The bosses are my final major complaint, because, well, they’re kind of boring. It’s not enough to simply photograph them. You can, but they won’t score very much. Unlike normal Pokémon, you MUST light them up, often with multiple illumina orbs, to get them to glow in a way that looks like they have magical stink lines coming off them.

While lightning the bosses doesn’t sound too bad, three specifically are really, really hard to actually hit with the orbs. Steelix (when he’s not in slumber land), Wishiwashi (which has slow motion underwater physics to the throwing mechanic), and especially Volcarona cross the line from innovative takes on the photography format to trollish snoozers. They move fast and erratically but you still have to hit them with orbs and then still manage to get the photos when they barely fit into the frame. Wishiwashi and Volcarona have additional steps, as Wishiwashi requires you to orb multiple versions of the smaller fish that make up the larger one, while Volcarona is on fire and has to be put out with TWO apples AND THEN lit with an orb, and also there’s two of them on level two. They’re slogs, plain and simple. Wishiwashi is especially boring to play, and on top of that, it’s the lowest-scoring boss by far.

It should feel like a sea monster which is like seriously my #1 phobia, but it’s so boring that it doesn’t even give me nightmares. The cutesy, sweet and innocent Milotic actually has given me two nightmares where I was in its lake and couldn’t swim to reach the shore (only one less verified nightmare than of the sea serpent from Shadow of the Colossus), and it’s lovable and huggable. I mean, allegedly, if you’re into that sort of thing. I think it’s an unholy abomination but that’s just me.

If it sounds like I hate New Pokémon Snap, well, I kind of do. And also it’s maybe my favorite video game ever. Again, I’ve spent six weeks in a row playing it basically all day and I don’t even really entirely want to stop. The only real thing I hate about it is that they stopped updating it. It needs a lot of work. I didn’t even mention all the times I’ve crashed the game on the park course. I’m almost certain it’s tied to this thing:

It doesn’t crash during the course, but in the transition between taking your last photo (or even just hitting the exit) and the photo selection screen. I think it’s Florges specifically because most crashes happen when I’m excited about some photo I got of it that also uses up the end of my 72 photo roll. Without exaggeration, it’s over twenty crashes back to the Switch or Switch 2 menu, and if they haven’t fixed it by now, I assume they never will. I’m not happy with my 19,730 points for Floges (which comes in five randomly selected colors) because I f*cking know I’ve beaten every single one of those four photos and it didn’t count. I know they can fix it. I know they can fix the focus issues. They’re just choosing not to.

Most of all, I know they can add more content. I can’t stress enough that all the main courses in the game are outstanding. There’s SO much to do and so many variables. Plus, they just feel alive and real in a way the Nintendo 64 game could never hope to do because of the limitations of the tech. The preset locations do give the game a dark ride vibe and make the Pokémon feel more like animatronics than living creatures, especially when they have a plastic look to them like this:

But the actual environments can totally pass for ecosystems that you would expect exotic creatures to live in. Combined with the Pokémon themselves, owning New Pokémon Snap is like owning your own collection of sixteen really amazing interactive Disneyland rides that you can go on anytime, and I love it for that. But there is so much more they could do with this. If they want to stick to the natural environment theme, fine. New Pokémon Snap doesn’t have a mountain level. It doesn’t have a true swamp level (a swamp appears for about ten seconds in the jungle level), or a grasslands style plains. There’s an underwater level that’s essentially two levels in one, but no level set in the sky. Hell, there’s enough alien or robotic Pokémon that they could do a course set on a moon.

But, like, why stop at the whole “nature environments” theme? That makes NO sense, because in the world of Pokémon, they’re everywhere on the planet. Not only is the entire global economy based around them and literally everyone owns one, but they even have rights and work jobs in cities. So why not roll with that and have levels set in cities, offices, carnivals, haunted houses, graveyards, museums, etc.? I felt physically ill when I realized that, despite selling 2.5 million copies, very few people are actually playing this. No updates are coming. This is the end of Pokémon Snap. This isn’t an alarmist view. This is reality. I’m 212th in the world despite having some fairly pathetic photos still in my Photodex, like these:

To my credit, those are all really hard photos to diamond at all, but they’re hardly record setting. Yet, out of 2.5 million owners of New Pokémon Snap, 99.99152% of them have lower scores on their overall Photodex than me. Look at those last four photos and ask “is she awesome at it or is nobody playing it?” I’m not awesome, and nobody is playing this. Nobody played it in 2021 and nobody is playing it in 2026. I think people probably tried to play it, but when the game constantly f*cks up what the focus of a photo is, you know, not everyone has the stomach for that. Challenge is awesome, but if that challenge is broken, you should actually expect people to just opt out instead of accepting that challenge. That’s how I, someone with shaky hands, could brute force myself into the top 250 of a major multi-million selling game. Because most people quit playing it after getting f*cked by the focus one too many times, and I can’t totally blame them.

Still I’m going to make this plea to everyone who has passed on New Pokémon Snap or quit early on: give this one another chance. Don’t look up guides for it. Just turn it on and look around. Even five years later, it still has gas in the tank and offers an experience unlike anything out there. Give everyone in charge of this game a reason to second guess this franchise. Nintendo seems to be under the impression that even owners took a hard pass on New Snap’s gameplay. I think they’re wrong and it’s NOT the gameplay that made people opt out. It’s the jank. The gameplay is awesome. For all of its many, many flaws, I could not put this f*cking thing down, putting my website’s momentum at risk because, f*ck it, I was having fun. That’s the whole reason I have this blog, and it hurts my heart that so many of my readers passed on this, and will continue to pass because, yeah, I had to do my job and list all my grievances with it. And I have many, many grievances. Stuff like this:

Well, I can totally understand why putting up with that isn’t for everyone. I might even call New Pokémon Snap the most broken good game ever made, because make no mistake, it is broken. (nods) Broken-broken, with no fixes in sight, even if those fixes would be the most obvious fixes in the history of video games. You know how Nintendo is doing “Switch 2 Editions” of many prominent Switch 1 games? Yeah, I wouldn’t expect such an update for this game. It didn’t sell enough because “2.5 million copies? Pssh, chump change.” And it obviously isn’t being played enough to justify such an overhaul. Just the act of hitting the game’s stated top scoring goal of 4,000 points for every photo put me well into the top 500 global leaderboard rankings. That’s VERY damning for how much engagement this game gets. You don’t think Nintendo pays close attention to this stuff?

Now, read all my grievances again. I STILL WANT TO KEEP PLAYING! That’s my pitch. After six weeks and thousands of instances of getting f*cked by a bad engine, I’m still game to keep going. Maybe I’m just wired for addiction to this type of scoring based thing, and the whole “interactive dark ride” thing (I’m a HUGE Disneyland fan) made this an especially potent addiction for me. But I don’t think it’s just me that’s wired like that. I sincerely think people who haven’t given New Pokémon Snap are missing out. After hundreds of hours of gameplay over the last few years, I’m still finding things I never knew were there. Interactions I’d never seen.

Ready to have your mind blown? I just found out a couple days ago that I hadn’t actually 100%ed the game. Look at this map:

Every course, including the illumina spots, has a map in the Photodex menu. I never used them. They’re kind of worthless. Well, the other day I was playing the Xerneas Illumina spot and nabbed a photo of a random non-Xerneas character that I didn’t know was in that course. After it finished tallying my score it gave me a fake achievement for completing my fifth map, meaning I not only found every Pokémon in the map but every single location of them. Since day and night courses have their own maps, there’s thirty total maps, and I’d just filled out my fifth. “Wait, you meant to tell me I still have twenty-five maps left that have stuff I’ve technically never seen or submitted or whatever?” Yep. If the map is complete, it gets a crown next to it. For all my work, and my high global ranking, as of this writing I’m still missing twenty-four out of thirty crowns. The only ones I have are Park Day, Park Night, Research Center, Side Path Day, Side Path Night, and the Ruins Illumina Spot.

Huh. Wow. So, yeah, that’s my pitch: look what I’ve done with this game. Look at the time I have in it. Look at the score I’ve achieved. And yet, there’s still at least twenty four things left I haven’t done. Folks, this game is packed. And broken, but packed, and so very, very fun. You’ll be in for a world of frustration and pain, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll have the time of your life too. OR you’ll hate it and I’m wired for this type of thing and maybe just a little sadomasochistic. I suppose I can’t rule that out.
Verdict: YES!