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Thursday, May 13, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS
I wasn’t particularly into “New
Pokémon Snap” for the first couple of
hours. I’ve been a fan of the franchise
since I got my first Pokémon card on
the playground in first grade, but the
spinoff games have historically been
hit-or-miss. Although Game Freak’s
most recent release “Pokémon Mystery
Dungeon: Rescue Team DX” left me
utterly disappointed, I had very high
hopes for “New Pokémon Snap”.
These hopes led to me to unrealistic
expectations, and upon starting the
game it felt repetitive to a fault and
overall
unremarkable.
However,
about two and a half hours in, I had
a realization — this game was never
meant to be a grand undertaking, it was
meant to be simple and relaxing. As
soon as I let go and let myself enjoy the
simplicity, I was positively hooked.
“New Pokémon Snap” is the
sequel to 1999’s “Pokémon Snap” for
Nintendo 64. The game follows the
same formula as its predecessor: take
pictures of Pokémon while riding
along a set path, this time in one of the
wide range of natural environments
in the all-new Lental region. Once the
player returns to the appropriately
named Laboratory of Ecological and
Natural Sciences (L.E.N.S.), biological
researcher Professor Mirror judges
the photos based on a four star system
that’s organized by the quality of the
Pokémon’s pose, placement, and size,
among other categories. These photos
are then saved in the “Photodex,”
documenting each Pokémon in the
game. The goals are simply to take
photos that qualify for each of the star
categories and to capture the “Illumina
phenomenon,” which causes plants
and Pokémon to glow.
There’s a story to pull the player
through the game, which boils down
to taking photos that provide Professor
Mirror with more information on the
phenomenon he’s investigating. With
help from the professor’s assistant, Rita,
and a few tools — including Fluffruits,
a melody player, and a scanner — the
player can gain enough trust with
Pokémon to raise their research level
and discover exciting new Pokémon
behaviors.
If you’re looking for an intense and
complex adventure, this isn’t that
game, but it’s still well worth your
time. “New Pokémon Snap’’ feels like
taking a vacation without an itinerary:
just sit back, enjoy the ride, and
observe cute Pokémon in their natural
habitats. In a world that typically
presents its creatures as having some
sort of purpose or benefit to humans,
it’s a breath of fresh air to watch an
ecosystem do nothing but exist. There’s
no doubt that it’s repetitive, but it’s
a joyful escape that’s surprisingly
addicting. It also happens to have
the most impressive graphics of any
Pokémon game to date, so each picture
can more accurately represent Lental
in all its bright, colorful glory.
Due in part to the quality graphics,
the game is also perfect social media
bait. Sharing photos is explicitly
encouraged both in-game and in
reality. Online features include a built
in hub to share your own photos and
view your friends’. Pictures can also
be enhanced with the game’s editing
capabilities, which allow the player to
retake photos or add filters and stickers.
Players can view their total Photodex
score and see how their photography
skills stack up against their friends and
players worldwide. With the ability to
save photos onto the Nintendo Switch’s
album and then share them on social
media, “New Pokémon Snap” is sure to
explode online. The entire world needs
to see Bouffalant in a flower crown,
and I now have the power to grant that
wish.
Dodie’s ‘Build a Problem’ celebrates where she’s been and where
she’s going
The day before the release of her
debut album Build a Problem, British
singer-songwriter Dodie marked the
10 year anniversary of her YouTube
channel with a cover of ABBA’s “Thank
You For the Music.” Over the last
decade, Dodie has established herself
as a steady presence on the platform,
an exceedingly rare kind of content
creator who never left to focus on other
ventures, avoided controversy and
grew up right alongside her audience.
Those who have followed her over the
years know about her mental health
struggles, who her friends are and
have already celebrated the release of
multiple EPs with her.
Her work as a musician and an
online creator is linked in a way that
her contemporaries (for example,
Troye Sivan, who also found fame
through YouTube but stopped posting
vlogs leading up to the release of his
debut album Blue Neighborhood)
have actively rejected. This is part
of what makes her celebration of 10
years on YouTube so notable. Unlike
the shallow, cash-grabbing music of
YouTubers and influencers like Jake
Paul and Addison Rae, Dodie’s music
has always been honest and grounded.
The core of her fan base — those who
have been around since her breakout
song “Absolutely Smitten” or even
longer — is loyal and was earned slowly
but organically. Her songs often touch
on dependency in love, her deep-
seated feelings of inadequacy, and her
struggles with fame and her mental
health — topics she’s never shied away
from talking about online.
Build a Problem, Dodie’s first full-
length album, comes after 10 years and
three EPs, and it manages to feel both
like a culmination of everything she’s
done so far and the very beginning of
something big.
References to her previous work
are scattered through the album and
act both as easter eggs for her fans and
reflections of her growth as an artist.
Three songs on her new album — “Air
So Sweet,” “Cool Girl” and “Rainbow”
— had been previously released on
her YouTube channel as one-take,
unpolished videos in which she’s
accompanied by little more than her
ukulele.
The clearest reference and the
thing that makes the album feel most
like Dodie’s work coming full circle
is “When,” a reworked version of the
track which closed Intertwined. In
the song, Dodie confesses to living life
with one foot in the present and one
in the past, “busy begging the past to
stay.” The lyrics in the new version
are unchanged, but Build a Problem’s
“When” is noticeably fuller. The
single piano, violin and cello which
accompanied Dodie in the original
version are replaced by a thirteen-piece
orchestra that creates a rich, cresting,
almost Disney-like wall of sound
behind her voice, which has clearly
matured since 2016.
Dodie’s intelligence as a songwriter
and musician is emphasized by the
changes she has made. The new
orchestrations make the song feel fuller
and effectively underscore the longing
at the core of the song. The presence
of “When” on both her debut EP and
debut album feels like the loveliest of
bookends, marking the beginning of
an era and then ushering it out lovingly.
Even though Dodie tells us that
she’s still stuck in the past, the clear
development in her skill as a producer
from one “When” to another shows us
how much she continues to grow.
Many of the album’s musical
elements will also feel familiar to fans.
Dodie, who through her career has
fallen into and then elevated the “white
girl with a ukulele” trope, employs a
baritone ukulele as a centerpiece of
multiple songs. It’s a trademark of hers,
but it never feels quirky or gimmicky;
instead, it purposefully creates a
throughline in the album. However,
where her YouTube videos tend to
stick to a more minimal sound, she’s
joined by a full set of strings on multiple
tracks, a well-placed cello and clarinet
in “Special Girl” and heavy percussion
in “Boys Like You” that adds to the
groove of the album.
Thematically, Build a Problem is rife
with uncertainty and regret. “Hate
Myself” and “Sorry” are the most
obvious examples. The former is an
upbeat, one-sided conversation with
a partner who is prone to going silent
during arguments, and the latter feels
like it takes place in the immediate
aftermath of a brutal falling out in which
both parties have said things they wish
they could take back. Still, there are
pockets of hopefulness. “Rainbow”
is an acknowledgment of Dodie’s
bisexuality and her frustration with
the label and public misunderstanding
of it, but also a recognition of belonging
to the queer community and refusal to
change who she is.
KATRINA STEBBINS
Daily Arts Writer
“New Pokemon Snap” is the Summer Vacation I Didn’t Know I Needed
HARPER KLOTZ
Daily Arts Writer
Courtesy of Dodie
Courtesy of Nintendo
Read more at michigandaily.com
Read more at michigandaily.com