麻豆约拍

By Ben Clarke // 麻豆约拍 The Social contributor // 3 May 2021

It’s no secret that Pokémon has become a cultural phenomenon. With recent releases such as Pokémon Sword and Shield and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon DX, the Nintendo Switch has had its fair share of titles from the series. While those games focused more on RPG mechanics, especially with their turn-based battle systems, the latest game in the series focuses on…snapping pictures?

That’s right. In New Pokémon Snap, your aim isn’t to become the very best like no one ever was and “catch 'em all”. Rather, you’ve got to snap them all as you explore a luscious new world teeming with Pokémon wildlife. While this combination of Pokémon and photography may seem bizarre, it’s a surprisingly perfect fit for the franchise, making for the most enjoyable Pokémon experience on the Switch to date.

In this game, you’re tasked with researching the many different islands of the Lental region in hopes of discovering the mysteries behind the new “Illumina” phenomenon. This causes certain Pokémon to emit a special glow, with the origins of this power being mostly unknown. It’s a very basic story premise, feeling like a simple excuse for players to explore the region and the many Pokémon that inhabit it.

The gameplay itself couldn’t be any easier to get into. The game takes place in a first-person view through the lens of a camera, where you move your camera up, down, and all around to take pictures of any Pokémon that you can see.

All of this is done while riding on the NEO-ONE – a transportation vehicle that takes the player on a set path through each of the game’s stages. This all results in an easily accessible gameplay experience as you try to snap the best photos of the many kinds of Pokémon that you’ll encounter on your journey.

What makes this gameplay work so well are the Pokémon themselves. Naturally, these creatures lend themselves incredibly well to a simulation-type game, meaning you get to see them interacting with other Pokémon and the environments around them. It’s this that makes these Pokémon feel more real than ever before, culminating in an extremely charming experience as you witness all of the different behaviours of these creatures.

Amplifying this even further are the different ways in which the player can interact with these Pokémon. As you progress through the game’s story, you unlock new features that allow the player to interact with them, as well as having new creatures appear. For example, you can unlock the ability to throw fruit to Pokémon, helping to lure them to a specific spot, and aiding you in capturing the perfect photo.

There’s a surprising amount of ways in which each Pokémon reacts to everything around them, further cementing the fact that these are real creatures with their own different behavioural patterns and instincts. It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to these Pokémon and is absolutely the main reason to play this game.

However, that’s not the full story, the game is called New Pokémon Snap after all.

After taking these pictures, they’re then shown off to the new Professor Mirror to assess, in which he’ll grade them on numerous factors, including the pose of the Pokémon, placement in the frame, and whether other Pokémon were in the shot. Although this ranking system mostly works, there were a few instances where these variables didn’t seem like they made sense, resulting in some seemingly bad pictures getting good scores and vice versa. It’s best to just take pictures that you think look great and go from there.

What truly completes this experience is everything you can do after your pictures have been assessed. You have the option of saving any of these pictures and further editing them to your liking. These features aren’t bare bones either, as you can edit the brightness and exposure of these pictures, add stickers that can be adjusted to any size and rotation, include borders, filters and much more.

It’s an extremely robust photo editor and makes every picture you take worthwhile. Even better is that these can all be shared online, meaning not only can you share your own creations with the world, but you can also see the creativity of others’ shots.

Presentation-wise, the game looks and sounds great. It’s easily the best-looking Pokémon game to date, with extremely vibrant colours that help to emphasise the tropical nature of the region. Add this on top of the soothing and atmospheric music, and you have a pleasantly relaxing and inviting experience. It’s the type of game you can get lost in for hours on end without even realising, it’s just that immersive.

The only major flaw of the game is how simplistic and forced the tutorials are. The game has incredibly simplistic gameplay, such as moving the analogue stick to move the camera, yet it still insists on telling you what every single action does and makes you go through them one-by-one. This is on top of the slow start of the game itself, which takes a while to open up other areas of the region. However, once this happens, the game’s true potential is reached, and becomes an absolute treat to play.

Overall, New Pokémon Snap is a game I truly hope people give a chance. Although it sounds like a strange concept, the uniqueness of the gameplay combined with the lovable creatures of the Pokémon series make for one of the best Pokémon experiences in years.

Your mileage may vary depending on how attached to the series you are, but for someone like me who has grown up with it and can recognise almost every single Pokémon, the game absolutely delivers on its promises and can’t be recommended enough.