Critique of “New Pokemon Snap” for Nintendo Switch originally written 24th May 2021. PAL region game cart, version 1.1.0. A total of 27 hours 22 minutes were played. The main story was completed and the ending credits were unlocked. The photo-dex was left incomplete at the time of writing.
This is a critique of the game called “New Pokemon Snap” (hereafter referred to as Snap2) as measured by how the game design adds or detracts from the primary goal of the game. This critique uses Pokemon Snap (hereafter referred to as Snap64) as a tool for comparing and contrasting the flaws in Snap2’s design. I last played Snap64 December 2019 on original hardware.
Defining the game
The Pokemon Snap series is, at its core, a puzzle game masquerading as a first person on-rails shooter. The setting of the game has the player take on the role of a photographer/research assistant, and they receive the task of taking high quality photographs all of the animals/pokemon in a selection of wilderness areas or courses.
The gameplay loop in both games is as follows: Select course -> play course and photograph pokemon -> pick photos for evaluation -> undergo evaluation and get feedback -> unlock new item/course -> Repeat.
Upon selection of a course, the player is automatically progressed along a set path in a wilderness area. As the player progresses along this path, they are exposed to a variety of timed puzzles for them to solve to successfully photograph each pokemon. These puzzles generally consist of a pokemon preforming a behavior, which can be modified by player interaction to enable the opportunity to take higher quality photographs.
The player interacts by utilizing the variety of tools at their disposal; by taking a photograph, by throwing food at or near the pokemon, by throwing balls at or near the pokemon, or by playing music.
When the course is finished the player then has the opportunity to select the best photo of each species of pokemon to submit to a professor for review. During the review each photo is evaluated on several criteria and assigned a point value. This review may be done in comparison to the previous photo of that species if a previous photo exists. The total points across all the best photos are summed into a cumulative score, and when certain minimum point thresholds are reached new courses or items for interaction are unlocked. Then the process repeats from course select. The credits are reached when a certain species of pokemon is photographed for the first time. The player may choose to continue to repeat the loop after the credits maintaining their achievements up to that point.
The first design problem encountered in Snap2
The number of photos of each species that are allowed to be submitted is incongruent with what the game asks for.
In Snap64 the primary goal is to complete the Pokemon Report by taking the best singular photograph possible for each species on the island. At the end of each course a player may only select one photo for each pokemon species for evaluation. 1 = 1
In contrast, in Snap2 the primary goal is to complete the Photo-dex by taking four photographs of each species in the region, and each of the four photographs should depict a different behavior of that species. At the end of each course a player may only select one photo for each pokemon species for evaluation. 4 =/= 1
During the photo selection phase of Snap2 the photographs the player has taken are sorted into 1 of 4 star categories for each species. Each of these star categories equates to a different behavior that is required to complete the photo-dex. Because only one photograph of each species can be submitted per play on a course, this means that a minimum of four plays of a given course are required to complete a species’ photo-dex entry. Even though it is possible for a skilled player to obtain a photograph for each star rating in a single run.
I can’t think of a good reason for a restriction of only one photo per species. I think that this restriction is probably a decision to try to increase the length of a player’s playtime, rather than a decision to increase the quality of their playtime. The game knows you need 4 different photos (one of each star level) of each species, and the game sorts all photos for each species into the different star levels during the ‘pick photos’ phase. So, the fact that the game still requires you to discard perfectly good ‘research materials’ creates an unsavory ludo-narrative dissonance.
This is disrespectful of a player’s time, it’s disrespectful of skilled players managing to capture photos for each star level in a single run, it causes narrative dissonance where apparently Prof. Mirror doesn’t care if you have captured multiple interesting behaviors on one run even though he wants multiple interesting behaviors on film, and when each course changes after a visit it feels you run the risk of never seeing certain behaviors again.
You should be able to submit a photo for each star-level for each species at the end of each course. Because that’s what the game is asking for.
The second design problem in Snap2
The courses change over time.
On the surface this feature is cool. The purpose is to create the sense of a living breathing world. It’s refreshing to have a difference between day time and night time activities. However, the implementation of this feature creates and unpleasant feeling.
In my play through, each course changed after a single play of the course. And the courses change and change until they reach their ‘final’ form. And when the game is supposed to be a puzzle game, this constant changing made it feel like trying to solve a Rubix cube where the faces that you are not looking at change on their own. I felt like I was constantly missing out on some interesting puzzle to solve, because I would get one look and then before I knew what I saw, it was different.
Compare this to Snap64 where each course plays out the same every time. When things are different, it is because you interacted with something to make it change. Thus, you can learn what to do to get certain effects, and these effects are repeatable so you can gain an understanding and mastery of the puzzle.
In Snap2, things change, and change, and change without your influence, until you get to a point where they stop changing, and then you can master the puzzle? Except you skipped mastery of several steps along the way. And yes, you can change the research level in the menu. But how does this work? Are you time traveling? If the world is real and changing, how can you revert the world? There is some narrative dissonance here that doesn’t sit right. Also, if the world is evolving to its ‘best’ state why would you want to revert it to a worse state?
The way the changing courses are implemented just feels bad. If it is supposed to make the world feel alive it might have been better to have the changes be on a cycle, rather than a linear ramp. For example, if Bouffalant are encountered the first field of course 1 on Mondays, and on Tuesdays they are instead by the watering hole, and on Wednesdays they are in the flowers, then choosing which day to visit a course instead of which research level would make the world feel more alive.
The third design problem with Snap2
Player interactions with puzzles are unclear.
In the puzzle games called pokemon snap, the puzzles are solved by using a variety of tools at the player’s disposal; observation of the environment, interaction with the environment using the camera, apples, pester balls/luminous orbs, and the poke flute/melody. Each pokemon reacts in a different way to each tool. And so, in order to solve the puzzles or see new pokemon behaviors, a bit of trial an error necessary. Because the game is on rails a player only has so much time per level to test different interactions, so clearly telegraphed responses/feedback to each interaction are necessary for player to understand the puzzle.
In Snap64 everything has repeatable clearly telegraphed consequences to learn about and solve the timing to get good photographs. Throwing an apple will lure a pokemon, hitting an electrode will cause it to explode, pointing a camera at a Magnemite will cause it to emit electrical signals, taking a picture of a Diglett will cause it to move to a new close by location. There are some things that require multiple steps, but each step telegraphs that something happened. And these multistep puzzles are generally built on combining more simple interactions. E.g., lure a Pikachu with multiple apples, from point A to B, then the Pikachu does something new. And I can see a change at each step, so I know something is happening even if I don’t know what will happen.
In Snap2, not everything is clearly telegraphed. There are a lot of events that require multiple inputs. And some of these are convoluted. An example that really sticks out is waking up Ariados. This nocturnal pokemon only appears at night, and is sleeping when it does. It does not wake up to the poke flute. Hitting it with either a fluff fruit, or a luminous orb causes it to shrug like that’s not the correct way to interact. The correct way to wake it up is to hit it with a fluff fruit, let it play the entire shrug animation, hit it again, let it shrug again, and then hit it again, and then it will finally wake up. Doing the same thing over and over again, and hoping to get a different result is the definition of insanity. What this puzzle is telegraphing with the first hit is “you successfully tested an interaction” AND “this is not the right interaction”. So, lying to the player is bad game design. A better way to do this interaction is to on hit one, have the Ariados rotate away from the player, like a sleeping person will roll over if they don’t want to be disturbed. Then the second hit can be a second roll, and the third can wake. This change would give better feedback, and telegraphs to the player, “you’ve done something, so keep doing it”, rather than “what’ you’ve done didn’t work.” Snap2 has a lot of interactions where the feedback to the player should have been clearer.
The Fourth design problem with Snap2
Feedback during the grading of your photos is unhelpful.
In pokemon snap after a player has taken photos of pokemon for the professor, then have a change to review their photos, and pick the ones they think are best for the professor’s evaluation. The professor then assigns points to each picture based on several factors. This down time between the action of photographing pokemon, gives players time to reflect on how they did and what they can improve on.
In Snap64 Oak walks through each category for each photo, is it a special behavior that your photographed? Are you too close or too far from the pokemon? Is the pokemon looking at the camera? Is the pokemon in the center of the frame? Are the other pokemon in the picture? The game reenforces what things you need to be considering to properly complete the Pokemon Report. And this feedback and reinforcement enhances the gameplay loop, as it encourages the player to keep trying and getting better.
In Snap2 Mirror tells you some generic photography stuff, flashes up your numbers on the screen, and then says “get back out there and take some more photos”. It’s very unceremonious like he doesn’t really care about the photos, so why should you? And the worst part of this is he is supposed to be looking for 4 specific behaviors for each pokemon, but neither he nor I know what that means. Take these examples from my play through for instance.
One more example of Snap2 being unclear. I know that in Snap64 if I take a dozen sequential pictures of Jigglypuff in front of the crystal stage in the Cave level, that each of those photos will be considered a special “Jigglypuff on Stage” photo. Meanwhile, in Snap2 I have absolutely no idea why each of these pictures of Espeon taken sequentially are different star levels. (Maybe it has to do with the activation of the crystal bloom, but on more than 5 different tries it seemed like each frame of Espeon’s animation was a different star level.)
Conclusion
“New Pokemon Snap” is not unplayable, but it’s really disappointing. It looks nice, but its main gameplay loop is held back from being fun by game design decisions that fail to enhance the experience. Thus, I would say that it is much worse than it’s ~20 year old predecessor.
5/10 a playable game that has many design decisions that clash with what it asks the player to do. I would not recommend it to others, nor would I replay it.
