Pokémon Snap

The Good
The sprite art is really good on the island screen. It would have been nice to have more of it. The sounds that Pokemon make are quite faithful to their sounds in the anime. Apart from the camera, the only decent interaction you have with the Pokémon is tossing available projectiles at them. Little fun stuff, but overwhelmed by the deep layer of boringness all over this game.

The Bad
The gameplay fills you to the brim with boredom. You just sit in Professor Oak's mine cart/little raft (that's supposed to be his brilliant little invention?), swiveling around to take pictures of Pokémon. You have absolutely no freedom of movement or exploration. And when you're done with one location you have another boring task of showing Oak your album, one photo at a time, then it's time for the next round of tedium. The location "Pokemon Island" isn't a very original name, they could have come up with something like "Tealmarine Islet". There's no real plot in the game either, you're just some errand boy doing Oak's photography.

The bulk of the graphics in the game are nothing to admire. A lot of the 3D textures don't look very well textured, being flat on multiple sides. Many of the Pokémon look deformed like they took a seven hour sun tan or something. The choice of text font is awful and squiggly. It doesn't even resemble the classic font used in the main series.

Sound effects are annoying cartoonish toots when you swivel about, it gets annoying very quickly. Professor Oak's little voices don't sound very encouraging, they just add to the repetition. Music also adds to the repetition as it loops after a number of seconds and drifts you off to sleep with the controller in your hand.

The Bottom Line
This is perhaps one of the worst Pokemon spin-offs in existence. It doesn't begin to capture the atmosphere and experience of a Pokémon safari trip. It can't even reach the quality and standards of Super Mario 64. The Wii version is equally bad, so don't bother with either. In this entire cartridge is a whole game of nothing with features of nothing. You'll be sorely disappointed that you ever bought this one and it cannot fit anywhere in a Pokémon game collection. Pokémon Snap indeed. Break out the deck of Pokémon cards and play snap instead.