I remember when I was 6, my parents gifted me a pink GameBoy Advance and Pokemon Sapphire for Christmas. I was obsessed, because I absolutely loved Pokemon. I’d been watching the television show religiously, and collected more Pokemon cards than I could count. Pokemon was one of my many obsessions as a kid— so naturally, when Pokemon Go came out, I downloaded it without hesitation.

Since its release on July 6, I have become obsessed with Pokemon again, and have been playing it any chance that I get. So I guess you could say that I highly recommend the app.

Now before I get any farther in my review, let me explain exactly how Pokemon Go works. Basically, Niantic (the company that owns Pokemon) teamed up with Google to create a GPS-driven game. The idea of the game is that as you walk around, various Pokemon pop up, and you catch them— it’s literally like playing Pokemon in real life. And yes, you do have to walk around to catch the Pokemon (I’ve tried cheating by trying to catch Pokemon in the car, and it doesn’t work too well).

There are also Pokestops that you can stop at and collect a variety of objects, such as Pokeballs, eggs, and various other things used to enhance your Pokemon. These Pokestops typically are historic sites (trust me, there are way more around you than you think there are). The eggs are hatched by walking (yes I know more exercise), and you need to walk either two, five, or ten kilometers to hatch each egg. If you haven’t figured it out yet, Niantic is trying to get us off our lazy butts and go outside again. And it’s working.

There are also gyms, where you can battle gym leaders (or some of the last people to win the battles at that gym). Those people choose a Pokemon to leave at the gym for other trainers to battle (there can be more than one), and if you win the battles then you get to be one of the new gym leaders.

So when you open the app, you log in using either a Pokemon Trainer Club account, or a pre-existing Google account. Or, if it’s an especially busy day in the Pokemon world and the servers are experiencing problems, you’ll get a message like this one:

Not so fun when you’ve waited all day at work to play.

Now once you finally get into the app, you make an avatar, and you get to pick one of the typical starter Pokemon (Bulbasaur, Squirtle, or Charmander), but unfortunately not Pikachu. Then your Pokemon adventure begins.

As you go about your Pokemon hunting and battling gym leaders, you level up as you gain more XP, which leads you to finding stronger Pokemon as you’re walking around, and gives you access to new items you can use to help you along your journey (Razz Berries and Mega Balls and such).

There are a few things that aren’t the same as the old television show, or the games. You don’t have to battle Pokemon before you catch them, you just kind of throw Pokeballs at them until they’ve been caught. You also can’t get into Pokemon battles with your friends, and you can’t trade Pokemon either. I’m sure all of these things will come in future updates, but for right now I personally believe they’ve done an amazing job.

One of my favorite things about this app is that it’s not one of those games that’s time sensitive; you don’t need to come back to the game within a certain time frame or you lose all of your progress, so you can play it whenever you have free time— or all the time! I also like that they’re using the original Pokemon from the television show, because those were personally my favorite.

Overall, I really enjoy the game. It’s fun and makes me feel like a kid again— which we all need sometimes. It’s forced me to go on walks almost every day, and I think it was a great idea to actually convince people to go outside again. Some people have even said it’s done wonders for their anxiety and depression, which is an amazing plus side to this game.

Of course, there are always people who are going to abuse something good, and you’ve probably heard all the negative sides to Pokemon Go on top of all of its positives (people getting hurt, people abusing the locating features of the app, etc). The Terms of Service do state that Niantic is not responsible if you break the rules while using the app, and is not responsible if you get hurt, so please remember to be safe as you’re using the app. You will have another option to catch that Pikachu, and remember that you can’t be a Pokemon Master if you’re not being safe while playing.

So with that said, download the app, go outside, and catch them all!