Remember the April Fool's joke Nintendo and Google pulled where we could actually find Pokemon on Google Maps and add them our teams and pokedexes. Apparently, that was a really good idea and some money could be made from it. Nintendo approached Niantic, Inc., which is a company owned by the Google brand and they decided to make this joke into an actual mobile game for our smartphones. I've explored Johto, Kanto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos and soon the Alola region. Now its time go... outside?
Pokemon has been a huge part of my life ever since I was child. I grew up watching the show, playing the games, interacting with the franchise through many different forms of media. Once my experience with it had gone into my teenage years, I longed for a Pokemon game that had every known monster in it, brought me out of the small scale worlds within the handheld games and allowed me to interact with the world in ways never before imagined in a game. What I was looking for was a MMO style of game where I could see Pokemon before me in the fields and my trainer could walk over and engage. What we got was Pokemon Go. That first trailer had me screaming out of my chair and I saw that this was the game I had been wanting for a long time; but like a game with a stunning CG trailer, it fails to impress with the true releasing product.
This first week of Pokemon Go's release has been rough. There are server disconnects and tremendous levels of lag and app crashes that would make even the buggiest game blush. I can't tell you how many times I have been in the middle of capturing a Pokemon and I receive a server problem message before the app crashes costing me a Poke Ball and the intended capture. Other times I can't even get into the game. It shocks me to this day that developers have yet to prepare for millions of people playing their game especially with a franchise like Pokemon. To be honest, I did see this coming but I was never expecting it.
Unfortunately, the world presented to us in the trailer is beautiful and a fantasy at best while the real one as we see it is much uglier. We see people battling and trading each with each other. You cannot battle or trade with friends. Likely these will be coming out in future updates but as a Pokemon title, it really shouldn't be lacking these fundamental social components. The augmented reality is fun. Its very entertaining finding Pokemon in different places like schools, rivers, my own bathroom and apparently dead bodies. Yeah, go look up that news story.
If you can even get into the game, you'll be treated to meeting Professor Willow who gives you the traditional welcome into the Pokemon world. Then he lets you capture your starter choice of either Squirtle, Charmander, or Bulbasaur. (TIP: If you walk away from these three, you will be given the chance to capture Pikachu instead.) Once that is done, he sends you off into the world in a pretty intimidating but cool fashion. Naturally, our next action is to go out and battle now that we have our starters but in truth you can't battle until you reach level 5 when you unlock the choice between three factions and battle for control over gyms. The only thing you can do is go around and capture Pokemon until that point. The gyms are pretty cool in themselves as you will have to actually walk to the real world location and challenge the leader or leaders. My old elementary school is a gym and a few churches nearby are as well.
As you go about your travels you'll naturally run into the same Pokemon over and over again and an incentive to catching them is that you can send the duplicates to Professor Willow who will give you that specific creature candy required to evolve your Pokemon instead of doing battles and rewarding your Pokemon with experience points to level up.
Like with most mobile games, there is a eventual pay wall to gouge players out of money like Poke Balls, Potions, and others. I've fought against this by frequently visiting the PokeStop near my home which generates random items like eggs or Poke Balls. They refresh every five minutes or so; so make sure to abuse your local PokeStop as much as possible.
Pokemon Go resembles a Pokemon game but it is lacking some of its key functions and the consistent problems make it hard to enjoy at times. I'm afraid that this novelty will wear off because I want this game to succeed. I do truly enjoy that playing this game makes me feel like a trainer going around my neighborhood collecting Pokemon. The future could be amazing for this game.
