Review: “New Pokemon Snap” focuses on the latest vision on Nintendo Switch | Entertainment

When released in 1999, the game gained cult support, but its fandom was translated into a sequel over 20 years later with the advent of “New Pokémon Snap.”

Unprecedented on-rail shooter

Gameplay will be familiar to original fans. Players board a pod called Neo One. The pod rolls along a pre-determined path, like the Ford Explorer in Jurassic Park. While touring in a vehicle, players can look around and take pictures of the creatures. At the end of the tour, the player selects an image and presents it to Professor Miller. Professor Miller scores images based on six categories: pose, size, orientation, placement, other Pokemon, and background.

This is a rare system that gives players room to express their creativity. The images that players create to get high scores aren’t always the best looking and the most clever, but this adventure requires patience, timing, and good composition. All of this technically makes “New Pokémon Snap” a rail shooter that resembles arcade masterpieces like “Time Crisis” and “House of the Dead.”

The big difference lies in the approach and emphasis for taking effective images. While other on-rail shooters excite players with enthusiastic action, “New Pokemon Snap” is more meditative and strategic. It helps the photographer to go through the levels multiple times so that he can understand the inside and outside of the stage.

By remembering how to dart the Pokemon’s position and route, players can predict the best position and settings for their photos. In “New Pokémon Snap”, tools such as hula flight, music, and Illumina Orb are also introduced. These items allow players to manipulate Pokemon to move them to their advantage or reveal anomalous reactions. It’s worth noting that as players walk through the route and review photos, they raise the level of research on the stage and introduce new Pokemon and other fresh wrinkles.

Many things need to be understood at first, but the developers of BANDAI NAMCO Studios make it easy for players to experience through a decent story campaign. The player plays the role of Professor Miller’s research assistant in the Lens area. He imposes players on studying the island’s Pokemon by taking pictures and investigating the strange illuminations that are unique to the archipelago.

Players move to six locales and optionally drop in at a research camp. Florio, Belsilva, Volka, Maricopa, and Duris have different biomes and have their own challenges. Players need to try all the tools to see how the Pokemon in the area react. Eventually, they unlock the encounter with the special Illumina Pokemon and reveal clues about their final encounter on the sixth island, Owls.

That said, the campaign was not created for a marathon session. “New Pokémon Snap” has many repetitions, so I am good at spurts.

The creative side helps mitigate this and blends nicely with the collection elements of gameplay. Players need to take pictures of various Pokemon for Photodex to capture diamond level scores and high star moments.

In addition, it can respond to requests from research partners and Professor Miller.

These usually involve capturing a particular moment, and the player needs to understand how to create it. This is an aspect of the “New Pokémon Snap” puzzle that provides players with items to customize their images.

Finally, when the campaign is complete, Professor Miller will introduce a course score. The player attempts to score points for all images snapped on the 72-shot roll. And the leveling aspect of each course creates an incentive to continue playing after the credit has been rolled.

For those who don’t mind it, “New Pokemon Snap” has another trick. In this game, players can share their best images online and compliment their favorite images through Sweet. Medals are essentially social media likes. Here, players can express their creativity with stickers, frames and filters. This is an easy feature these days, but it can also be more robust and allow the player to search for more images than the few images available. Thankfully, players can also share their images via Twitter.

Not perfect, but the New Pokémon Snap is an update enough to keep fans happy while bringing a new dimension to photography.