This Week's New Pokémon Snap Update Also Includes Quality Of Life Improvements

Can't wait for negative Nancy to complain about this too!

This is such a great game… but I stopped playing it…. there is so much to do and sometimes you feel like you’re stuck progressing.
Anyway, free DLC? I will come back for that!

Fantastic! Nice QoL fixes.
I thought the game was great already, excited to play the new levels after work.

Also bought Snap for my 6yr old nephew for his birthday next week as he's getting a Switch. So these fixes and new levels is great!

I only just ordered this and it arrives the day the dlc lands, quality!

Quality of life improvements are always encouraged. Nice!

All very welcome changes. I've really enjoyed New Pokémon Snap. I'm missing 5 or so Pokémon and I'd like to get all achievements too. I personally thought the game was already pretty much the perfect sequel and well worth its price but having even more content is awesome.

This is the most unique and beautiful game on Nintendo Switch. I already loved it like crazy, now I can’t wait to see what this update brings to it!

For those that have played the game a lot, how helpful are these QOL improvements?

"If you achieve a LenTalk Mission with one of your photos, they will get flagged as meeting the requirements before you get it assessed"

This is exactly what I needed!

Nice! Glad I haven't brought this one yet (backlog is too big) Will be an even fuller game when I do so.

I knew it would get good DLC when I found out Namco Bandai was the developer. Look at how well supported their other game Smash Ultimate is. Surprised it's free though!

And hopefully Mario Golf will get a bunch of QOL improvements at some point. God knows it needs it...

@wanghosom Not many of those for this game thankfully since it actually has a lot of effort and quality behind it 😄

When I first got this game, I was expecting it to be a lot like the first Snap game, short but sweet. I was stunned at the amount of courses there are and additional versions of it as well (night/day), loads of content to enjoy! And now even more stuff is being added? This game is slowly becoming my favorite of the year.

The phrase when writing about games, reviewers and writers used to use was 'the sum of its parts'. That appeared in most reviews but seems to have faded away, probably because it started to sound rather naff and had no real meaning.

So in its place we now have 'quality of life improvements'. Equally as naff and meaningless. But the writers have a new phrase they think is 'cool' so expect it to be around for a while yet.🙃

I was addicted to this when it first came out. Literally say playing it constantly but got burned out after a week of travelling the same routes trying for the 4 star shiny photos. Ended up trading it in but regretted it instantly. I think i may have to get it again now.

Wonderful! We also get technical improvements!

@zool What "phrase"? And how are the improvements "meaningless"? You haven't even tried them yet.

@zool I mean, sum of its parts certainly does make sense and I think it’s quite easy to infer what somebody means when it’s used within its context. ‘This game is greater than the sum of its parts’ - okay, so maybe the music, graphics, gameplay aren’t great but when they coalesce, they form an experience that exceeds the individual flaws.

I also don’t remember it being egregiously prominent in games journalism, though I did and still do see it pop up from time to time. I have noticed quality of life start becoming more and more prevalent and I, personally, don’t have a huge issue with it. I just tend to read it as a way of concisely saying ‘improvements to how smooth an experience a game is for the player’ so it does its job.

"If you achieve a LenTalk Mission with one of your photos, they will get flagged as meeting the requirements before you get it assessed"

FINALLY

I wasn't sure about this as the 64 original was a bit slight and I remember not really enjoying the grading system for photos.. But with the good reviews and additional content its becoming more of a must have for me.. On a quiet month when theres less coming out probably

@MajorasLapdog you read it as....
‘improvements to how smooth an experience a game is for the player’ so it does its job'.

I don't understand that either.

@mr-duster you have miss read my previous post.

@wanghosom

Who is this Negative Nancy woman you speak of?

@zool minus the ‘so it does its job’. That was my stance on the phrase.

It’s essentially misc. improvements that make a game a smoother experience. E.g. allowing you to select a different research level upon selecting replay instead of backing out of the stage to do that.

While it does sound like a bit of a wishy washy phrase, it’s certainly easy to categorise what is and isn’t a quality of life improvement so, as I said, it does its job as a snappy conveyance

@AG_Awesome I can attest that the first three will be very helpful. I can't comment on the fourth because I haven't used the photo editing.

@MajorasLapdog it's a band wagon phrase, writers jump on it because it's the thing to say.

'quality of life improvements'. Or correcting things in a game that should have been correct first time round. Or making adjustments so the game works on a new console.

Wishy washy phrase. You got it in one 😀

@zool quality of life improvements, or QoL, is a phrase that’s as old as the first rerelease of a game on better hardware is. It isn’t a hip and trendy thing journos came up with.
They also aren’t things that should have been that way in the first place. Game devs are humans, they make mistakes. They can have oversights of certain things that they later think “duh, ofcourse that should be that way” and add it in.

Pokemon (main series) is an example of how old the phrase is. Gen 2 added QoL things like being able to obtain a mon through breeding without the need to catch it again. Gen 3 added better movement options. Gen 4 made shinies easier to obtain. Gen 5 improvement overal gameplay speeds. Gen 6 made traversal even better and made shinies have more options to obtain them. Gen 7 removed the walking grid and added stuff like super effective indicators. Gen 8 made shinies and competetive completely accesible to casual players.

Back in my day, we only had 151 Pokémon and only 6 stages to play on. No fancy updates to expand the game.

@RadioShadow the original snap only had like 60 of the 151 mons so it was even less.

Good to know the mission stuff has been improved slightly, those were what drove me crazy. Still would like better hints for some of them, though.

@zool "the sum of its parts" and "quality of life improvements" don't mean anywhere near the same thing.

"Quality of life" improvements or updates is a phrase that has been used in software development forever. Game reviewers using it might be newish (did a quick google and saw someone saying it was new a few years ago) but I remember software journalists using it in the 90s.

@wanghosom - "Can't wait for negative Nancy to complain about this too!"
My first thought to this was "Yeah, someone will probably complain about how it probably should've happened sooner" or something, then I see this comment:
"'quality of life improvements'. Or correcting things in a game that should have been correct first time round."
Thankfully though, that seems to be the minority this time around.

In any case, it's nice to see some refinements being made to the core gameplay in addition to the free extra content. Here's hoping more arrives in the future.