As we enter a new generation of games, with higher frame rates, increasingly complex stories, and shorter loading times, it’s easy to forget how impressive prior generations actually were. But back in 1999, the original Pokémon Snap blew me away. I remember the first time I played it, as a 9-year-old. To my young Pokémon-obsessed self, the 3D rendering of the Pokémon universe, as well as its easy-to-love gameplay, felt world-shattering.
I haven’t played the original Pokémon Snap in decades, but I do remember one critical detail: For as much as I loved the game, I was never actually good at it. Maybe it was my poor reflexes or lack of coordination, but I clearly remember fumbling on all of my photo endeavors. Now, as an adult, I find a similar enthusiasm for New Pokémon Snap, but also that old feeling of total inadequacy. Yet the more I play, the more I realize that the problem might not be my “bad” photography skills but rather the game series’ approach to “good'' photography.
I spent the past week playing New Pokémon Snap, and while I enjoyed it, I also found myself less excited about a game that isn’t so interested in encouraging me to get weird with my photos. But before all that, let’s talk about the game.
New Pokémon Snap begins as something of an extended (and probably unpaid) academic internship. You play the part of a young, lightly customizable Pokémon aficionado who’s been invited by a researcher named Professor Mirror to conduct an unprecedented ecological survey of the Lental Region. A fresh addition to the Pokémon universe, the Lental Region is an archipelago of climate-diverse islands teeming with wild Pokémon, mysterious ruins, and a new “Illumina” phenomenon that seems to make Pokémon glow at night. It’s this Illumina phenomenon that’s really gotten Professor Mirror all worked up, and it figures quite largely into the game’s overarching story.
As you might guess, the primary research method for your expedition is photography, and a very circumscribed style of photography at that. Much to my dismay, Professor Mirror doesn’t want an abstract, interpretive photo of Bulbasaur’s front paw or a blurred snapshot of Dodrio running in the horizon; he wants some good ol’ normie portrait photography. Think “dating an Instagram influencer” style photography. Indeed, after each research run, Professor Mirror will critically assess your photos according to his five core parameters: the Pokémon’s pose, its size, the direction its facing, its placement, the presence of other Pokémon, plus the quality of the photo’s background. For Professor Mirror, the bigger and more centered the photographic subject, the better. Photographs are also further categorized by color for their quality, and in a range of one to four stars depending on the Pokémon’s behavior.
After a quick tutorial covering the basics of photography at camp, you’re sent off to the Florio Nature Park, the first of many research areas you’ll visit. As in its predecessor, your photography is a bit confined here, as you are forced to remain within a NEO-ONE vehicle—a throwback to the old ZERO-ONE of the 1999 game—that slowly trudges through each area. If you were hoping to run around freely in the Pokémon universe, that will have to wait until the remaster of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl in late 2021 or the much anticipated open-world Pokémon Arceus in 2022.
In another salute to the original 1999 game, players eventually get access to a few tools that can be used to lure—or coerce—Pokémon into a variety of poses. These include an edible apple-like Fluffruit, some music for Pokémon to dance to, a scanner for finding hidden critters, and a variety of Illumina orbs that make Pokémon glow. Later in the game, you even get an acceleration boost to your NEO-ONE, which comes in handy on the repeat visits you will inevitably make to the region’s many habitats.
And indeed, you will be making many repeat photo tours. Aside from the moments that drive the story forward and unlock new habitats, players will be pushed to accumulate “expedition points” for each area by capturing incrementally “better” shots. These expedition points eventually boost each site’s “research level,” which in turn introduces new Pokémon into the landscape or slightly alters the behavior of other Pokémon. The surest way to accumulate expedition points is to take photos of new Pokémon, but after your first time in an area, you’ll eventually have to get repeat photos of Pokémon doing new activities that fall into each of the somewhat nebulous one- to four-star categories. After sinking a sizable chunk of time into this game, I’m still not entirely clear what distinguishes a two-star from a four-star photo—an element that pushed me to constantly return to explore different angles.
This is also the part of the game where your fluffruit really comes into play; not only as food but also as the never-ending bane of every sleeping Pokémon’s existence. Although music might wake up the little Pokémon or even elicit a tiny dance, I begrudgingly found myself hurling fluffruit at larger Pokémon to rattle them into my desired position. To all the sleepy Exeggutors out there just trying to get some rest, I am genuinely sorry for invading your beachfront home in the dead of night to attack you with make-believe fruit.
I’m getting into the weeds about this aspect of gameplay, because in the end, it was simultaneously the cutest and most tedious element of the game. For me, the joy of this game is stumbling upon your favorite Pokémon being adorable in the wild. I, a 30-year-old adult, audibly cried out with delight the first time I saw a Squirtle in this game, and I was more than happy to come by a second and third time to check in on that little papa. Yet as I moved into the higher levels of each area, I felt less drawn to grinding out the portrait-style photography that Professor Mirror demanded of me. As I poked and prodded every Pokémon, hurling an endless flow of fluffruits and shimmering orbs, I found myself with less and less impetus to try again.
Ultimately, I’ve determined that my problem is that I don’t love New Pokémon Snap’s approach to photography. Granted, in the real world I’m also not a good photographer. At any outing, my friends know that unless they want a blurred thumb in the frame, I shouldn’t be trusted to take the group photo. I suppose Pokémon Snap wants to make me a “better” photographer, teaching me to center my subject and capture interesting poses, but I’m not actually interested in that style of photography.
It doesn’t help that I keep thinking back to the last photography-based game I played, Umarangi Generation. Often, and perhaps unfairly, compared to Pokémon Snap, Umarangi Generation took a radically different approach to photography that eschewed numerical evaluations. While in-game photos were assessed on “color, content, and composition,” players were ultimately encouraged to take whatever type of photos they wanted, embracing the subjectivity of the art form. Ignoring the endless pursuit of high scores, Umarangi Generation was instead a game that pushed players to critically see the world around them, and not just in-game. Of course, Pokémon Snap isn’t trying to offer any sort of critique of neoliberal catastrophe or settler-colonialism’s lingering ghosts, nor does it have to. Still, I would have enjoyed a bit more room to explore weirder approaches to capturing a flopping Magikarp, and maybe a little less emphasis on coercing all these Pokémon to look at me.
That said, this is a game that’s best enjoyed as a somewhat mindless retreat into the world of Pokémon. New Pokémon Snap is a wind-down game par excellence; one you can play with a pillow on your lap in bed and some jazz or a podcast on in the background. It’s a game that is literally set to auto-cruise, and combined with its light plot points, this means it might be best for when you’re trying to flop into unconsciousness as soon as possible. Sure, there is a story, but the primary joy of this game is being driven through new landscapes and snapping shots of your favorite cast members from the Pokémon universe. Of course, it is very possible to hit the credits after 10 to 15 hours of gameplay, but even then, you could spend plenty more hours returning to Lental’s islands to complete your Photodex. Just don’t expect any applause from Professor Mirror if you try to explore the infinite melancholy of a solitary Squirtle on the beach.
In sum, this is a game that’s best for fans of the Pokémon series and those of us with some serious nostalgia for the 1999 classic. The 1999 N64 game became a fan favorite, but I’m not sure this is going to create the same ripple of acclaim. While this game is much larger than the N64 original, we’ve grown used to both 3D Pokémon games and in-game photo capture, and I’m not sure this game will revolutionize videogame photography. That said, with its wider editing possibilities and online functionality that will allow players to share photos and compete for rankings, the game might open new possibilities for would-be Pokémon photographers. It’s not my favorite Pokémon game, but it's one that made me cry out with glee more than once, even if Professor Mirror did think most of my photos sucked.