Posted February 21, 2014
Apparently my review is too long for the game page, so I'll just post it here. Frankly, if the character limit is going to be that stingy, I have pretty much no interest in writing any more reviews for this site.
(Disclaimer: I've only played the first world and a bit of the second.)
The main problem I have is that the screen pans according to where your mouse cursor lies, yet the game often asks you to take pictures while you're moving or while the target object is moving. In order for the picture to register properly, the object has to be centered within the frame to a certain degree, but to be accurate while the screen is panning with your mouse cursor is frustrating, for me at least.
There are plenty of spots where, in order to reach very high ledges, you have to bounce off of a spring, immediately capture it with the camera before it leaves the bottom of the screen, paste it just beneath you at the apex of your jump, and sometimes even repeat. I find the timing for this irritating and difficult, yet the game asks it of me so frequently you would think it's a basic maneuver.
You only have three photo slots, but there are times when there are more than three items, so you might end up going back and forth across the level, rotating things in and out of the three slots, and trying to figure out which ones you actually need. Combine this with a lack of in-level status indicators for whether you've obtained all of the collectibles (sometimes leading to repeating stages to get what you've missed), and I feel like the game is often more tedious than it needs to be.
I don't know what's actually required to unlock levels and make progress, so you might be able to avoid or at least mitigate the above problems by aiming for nothing more than clearing the stages- that is, ignoring all of the collectibles and special medals. But if you were to do that, I wonder if you'd be getting the full experience, since the game seems to revolve around exploring and finding hidden areas- to an extent, at least.
Essentially, I think the game design is hypocritical in the sense that it takes what should be puzzle mechanics and asks you to apply them toward platforming challenges. I understand there's a whole genre of games now that try to offer a mixture of platforming and solving puzzles, but in Snapshot's case I wonder if it would have been better off sticking closer to the cerebral side of the spectrum.
(Disclaimer: I've only played the first world and a bit of the second.)
The main problem I have is that the screen pans according to where your mouse cursor lies, yet the game often asks you to take pictures while you're moving or while the target object is moving. In order for the picture to register properly, the object has to be centered within the frame to a certain degree, but to be accurate while the screen is panning with your mouse cursor is frustrating, for me at least.
There are plenty of spots where, in order to reach very high ledges, you have to bounce off of a spring, immediately capture it with the camera before it leaves the bottom of the screen, paste it just beneath you at the apex of your jump, and sometimes even repeat. I find the timing for this irritating and difficult, yet the game asks it of me so frequently you would think it's a basic maneuver.
You only have three photo slots, but there are times when there are more than three items, so you might end up going back and forth across the level, rotating things in and out of the three slots, and trying to figure out which ones you actually need. Combine this with a lack of in-level status indicators for whether you've obtained all of the collectibles (sometimes leading to repeating stages to get what you've missed), and I feel like the game is often more tedious than it needs to be.
I don't know what's actually required to unlock levels and make progress, so you might be able to avoid or at least mitigate the above problems by aiming for nothing more than clearing the stages- that is, ignoring all of the collectibles and special medals. But if you were to do that, I wonder if you'd be getting the full experience, since the game seems to revolve around exploring and finding hidden areas- to an extent, at least.
Essentially, I think the game design is hypocritical in the sense that it takes what should be puzzle mechanics and asks you to apply them toward platforming challenges. I understand there's a whole genre of games now that try to offer a mixture of platforming and solving puzzles, but in Snapshot's case I wonder if it would have been better off sticking closer to the cerebral side of the spectrum.