What I’m Playing: I Might be Addicted to New Pokémon Snap

You would NOT believe how hard it was to get that measly 4,011 point picture. I’m almost certain there’s no other 4 star pic of Eevee, either. Dozens, if not hundreds of tries, and that’s the best anyone in my family got (that’s actually my pic).

Okay, so, I’ve not updated since the day I posted Classic Pinball Video Games: The Definitive Review, but I am working on a new review for one of my favorite games ever: New Pokémon Snap. I reviewed the original last month just so I would have an excuse to play this again and do a review. It should have been done by now. Since the game is five years old, I wanted to have a unique angle to the review, and I came up with “how hard is it to ace the game?” Acing in this case meaning “get the diamond rating on every photo.” There’s 234 Pokémon in the game so that’s 936 total photos. The good news is, I did it! The bad news is this act by itself put me in the top 500 scores on the leaderboard. In fact, I was tied for #499 when I got the final diamond photo.

Gosh darn it. I was so hoping to be exactly #500 when I finished.

Jeez, for a game that sold 2.5 million copies, just the act of 100%ing the game shouldn’t put a novice like me that high on the leaderboard. But while going through my photos and creating a database for the review that notes which photos are problematic, which ones are glitchy, and which ones I believe outright crash the game (which happens a lot IN THE FIRST LEVEL IN THE F*CKING GAME!!), I realized I had a lot of low scores. So I started bumping the scores up to “get it out of my system” and, well, now three weeks have passed. But I’ve climbed another 145 rankings and currently have the 354th highest scoring photodex out of 2.5 million total players.

Look, I’ve been #1 on dozens upon dozens of pinball leaderboards so this shouldn’t feel as good as it does, but I’m pretty proud. Only a couple dozen of the 936 photos are my family’s. Most are mine and for a chick with shaky hands, that ain’t too shabby. Yet, it’s a huge bummer to be this high on the board too. This is a game that sold millions of copies and is one of the biggest gaming franchises in history. I should not be THIS high on the leaderboard, especially when I still have a lot of photos that are just barely over the 4,000 point threshold. I’m knocking those low ones out, but still, I’m going to guess there will never be another update to Snap. No Switch 2 upgrade. No more levels. And, worst of all, no third game. Apparently less than a thousand people were invested enough to ace the game.

Once upon a time, my Twitter followers staged an unofficial intervention when I was hooked on Tetris 99. Well, I’m not on Twitter anymore and my family is playing this with me, and given my past with this game and all the productivity lost to it, me reviewing New Pokemon Snap is like me deciding to review Vicodin: a bad idea fated to end exactly like this. I’m sure my readers can tell from the heavy usage of my family in my Classic Pinball Video Games feature that I treasure the time I spend with them. My father just turned 77 and he’s got age-related stuff. Angela will be off to college in the blink of an eye and hell even my mother plays New Pokémon Snap and even though she watched me play games as a kid, she almost never actually played them with me. I’m enjoying this time. Okay, so technically that’s not ENTIRELY my score on the leaderboard, but that makes it even better. The Vice Family (MOSTLY me goddammit) is ranked #354 globally and climbing, and I’m having the time of my life.

The photobombers actually added points.

I never started IGC with the intent for it to be the dominating thing in my life. So while I will be reviewing full time again very soon, I do want to finish this project with my family because some day soon I won’t be able to play games with them. This is what I cherish. The reception to the pinball project was amazing and thanks to EVERYONE who linked to it. And now I ask for one more week to finish this. It’s a fickle game.

F*CKING REALLY?!

See what I’m dealing with? Or how about this? In this screenshot, it doesn’t know what the subject matter is. This photo literally cannot be scored because there’s no Pokemon in it!

Nope, no Pokémon to be seen. No sir.

And other pictures are INSANELY low scoring yet for the life of me I can’t figure out any method to get closer. I finally caved in and started looking up the techniques other people use, but none of the really low scoring “rare” pictures have advice to pump the score up. There’s no truly useful strategy guide out there. A few YouTubers did have a few helpful pointers but the majority of the time I found a lot higher scoring pics than they suggest.

Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of attempts and this is the best I could do for these adorable little jellyfish things in the four star category. You can’t get close enough to diamond in the other four star method.

Most of the advice out there aims to simply get the pics regardless of what the score is or just over the 4,000 point threshold. One guy was genuinely helpful, though even then I found he too often went for the easiest or barest minimum diamond scoring pics. Thankfully some of the comments in his videos DID point me in the right direction, (on the other hand, his videos don’t show him crawling through levels so I appreciated that). Oh, and there’s a lot of weirdness with the four tiers of pics. The most notable one is ultra high scoring Shaymin. Here’s the one star picture.

Shaymin – One Star – Taken on Florio Nature Park – Night Level 2 – Score: 5,266

So far, so good. Here’s where it gets kooky. Here’s the two star photo.

Shaymin – Two Star – Taken on Florio Nature Park – Night Level 2 – Score: 5,313

What’s so bad about that? Here’s the three star photo.

Shaymin – Three Star – Taken on Florio Nature Park – Night Level 2 – Score: 5,839

Uh, seriously? How about the four star photo?

Shaymin – Four Star – Taken on Florio Nature Park – Night Level 2 – Score: 5,649

(throws up hands) What the f*ck? Really? So three nearly identical photos with only other characters sleeping around it and one action photo. Okay. And it’s hardly the only example. Here’s my current high 2 star Pichu.

Pichu – Two Star – Secret Side Path (Day) – Score: 5,161

And here’s the three star.

Pichu – Three Star – Secret Side Path (Day) – Score: 5,046

Here’s the one star photo of Swanna.

Swanna – One Star – Park Night Level 2 – Score: 5,031

And here’s my two star Swanna.

Swanna – Two Star – Park Night Level 2 – Score: 5,103

You get the idea, and there’s many, many more things like that. Sometimes you might have literally less than one second to get one type of photo before it turns into another photo. That’s the case with Grookey at the end of the level 1-3. When you play the Park on the third level, at the end of the course you have a split second to get a photo of him, but the game is kind of janky and often I took pictures of him DEAD CENTER of the frame, only the game decided I was taking pictures of the Shaymin behind it or the Crystal Bloom next to it. They could EASILY patch this by allowing you to choose any Pokemon in the photo, but no, the game decides what the subject of the photo is. And also, I’ve crashed the Park Level 3 so many times I quit counting after, no joke, two dozen.

Grookey – Two Star – Park Day Level 3 – Score: 5,177

Grookey – Three Star – Park Day Level 3 – Score: 5,476

Grookey – Four Star – Park Day Level 3 – Score: 5,124

So if you’ve been curious what I’ve been playing, this is it. It has made me scream and want to throw my controller through the wall. I literally hurt my throat yelling when it crashed after a run I *knew* I had at least two higher scoring photos. And also this might be my favorite video game ever made, and while I’m going to be calling out a LOT of bullsh*t, I’m also going to outright beg those who have been holding out to give it a shot.

I literally felt sad that the picture on the right beat the one on the left. That one on the left is INSANELY hard to get. The one on the right requires you to beam a crab with an apple and then turbo boost to get close enough to see the two Pikachus celebrate. Seriously, it’s F*CKING INSANE how low some amazing pictures score. That pic on the left, dead center, should be a 5,500 point pic, and now it’s not even in my photodex. Neither is the one on the right, but only because I got closer to it a few times over. Same picture but now it’s up to 4,662. Sigh.

I’m not a Pokémon fan. I haven’t played the main series since I was a kid (it’s seriously been twenty years, good lord I’m getting old). But I *love* this game, and after 600 combined hours since 2021, I still can’t put it down. It’ll also almost certainly be a game that never gets a third one. How do I know? I started this process in the six figure range and now I’m ranked #354 on the global leaderboard for a five year old game. It “only” sold 2.5 million copies and a non-professional gamer like me could get a higher than 99.99% of all players (I’m also #446 in “Total Course Score” so by both metrics I’m top 500). But seriously, give it a shot. And hey, Florges…….

If you don’t knock that sh*t off you’ll go blind!