Only after three weeks, and two updates later, can I give my definitive review of Pokémon Go. For the first few weeks, it was touch and go; I would touch and it wouldn’t go. The first week of gameplay doesn’t count because there was hardly any gameplay available. Server crashes and a myriad of other equally crippling problems have made this experience frustrating and infuriating, but no one ever said being a Pokémon master was going to be an easy task.
Basic Gameplay
After the attempt at logging in with your temperamental Pokémon Trainer Club account and then completing the near-impossible task of choosing a username, you are thrust into the world of Pokémon Go. After being briefly welcomed by the foxy Professor Willow, you are then left on your own to figure out every single aspect of the game. Even for the most experienced Pokémon trainer, the game’s design is completely unintuitive. There is no walkthrough, hardly any hints and even less clues of how most of the game’s key mechanisms work. Imagine being barefoot in a dark room with sharp-cornered furniture and jagged toys all over the floor. This is exactly the how steep the learning curve is once you start the game. Even several weeks into it people are still figuring out new options within the game.
I was one of the first people to play Pokémon Go as soon as the US servers were up, so I didn’t have Reddit or any of the other guides or resources that are now readily available to new players, so there was a lot of poking, swiping, slapping, flicking and even phone tossing. The interface is simple, clean and fairly basic. Navigation feels completely familiar, however, since it uses the Google Maps API. One of the more intelligent qualities of the game is how it utilizes that API to spawn correlating types of Pokémon. To find water Pokémon just go near large bodies of water, for rock types go to mountainous areas, etc. The game also uses time of day for releasing certain Pokémon, such as there being an influx of ghost and psychic type Pokémon after dark.
Catching Pokémon
Catching Pokémon is both easy and difficult. The set-up is simple. A Pokémon appears on your screen and you tap on it to begin “battling”. This isn’t the Pokémon vs Pokémon battle dynamic we have come to know and love, but instead some oversimplified, bastardization that just breaks it down to tossing pokéballs in hopes of catching something. For Poké-veterans, this will basically feel like you’re in the Safari Zone since your only options are changing the type of pokéball you want to use or to throw Razz Berries in an attempt to calm the Pokémon down. The part that requires skill is aiming the ball inside the center of the concentric circle, with a high capture rate of you get it inside the moving one. The problem comes with the higher level Pokémon and not being able to reach how far they sometimes are. You may think you’re drawing a straight line to the Pokémon across your screen, but even the slightest millimeter to either direction and your pokéball will launch to the side. I’ve lost hundreds of pokéballs that way, which becomes more infuriating when you’re using greatballs or ultraballs. You’ll quickly learn this lesson and turn of your Augmented Reality because that only makes catching Pokémon more difficult.
Advertisement
The Augmented Reality (AR) is a fun option included in the game. It uses your phone’s camera to display Pokémon in front of you. This is a lot of fun when you just start playing because this is a dream come true for the adults that grew up on the franchise. This is the closest we’ll get to being real life Pokémon masters. It is also fun to use the screenshot option in the game to take pictures of compromising positions and situations when the AR is on. Is there an Ekans on that person’s butt? I guess that anaconda did want some. What’s that Rattata doing in this fancy restaurant? Oh, it must be a Ratatouille-like situation. The jokes are endless, but the novelty does wear off pretty quickly. Put that together with making it harder to catch pokemon and the added drain on your phone’s battery and you too will be turning it off.
GPS & Tracking
The GPS aspect of the game is completely unreliable. You can be in the exact location of a pokéstop, but nowhere near it in the game. This is especially fun when you’re either heading to a specific pokéstop, gym or trying to track down a Pokémon. One positive thing to come out the GPS glitch is that if you are in a stationary position, like at work, and you turn on the game, it will walk around because of how inconsistent the games tracking system is. This works wonder when you want to hatch eggs, but have to work that 9 to 5.
Speaking of tracking, as of the latest update it has been turned off. Not that it was of any use before that, but at least then it gave you a vague idea of how close or far off the Pokémon were. The worst part is that there was never any indication of what direction you needed to travel to cause an encounter. It was all hope, blind luck and patience, which all players were quickly running out of. Luckily, there are apps and websites that have heard our cries and created an exact way to track the location of Pokémon and how long they will be there. My site of choice is pokevision.com, and it was an absolute game-changer when I discovered it. Gone are the days of wondering how far that Dragonite really is because all you have to do is check the site for an exact location. The only downside is that it is currently linked to the dreaded Pokémon Trainer Club, and every time it goes down, so does the website. Unless one of Pokémon Go’s future updates has a radical change in their tracking system, I don’t foresee ever using it again when there are better, more efficient options.
Advertisement
Gym Battles
Now we’ve come to the aspect that is the closest to our original Pokémon: gym battles. Your Pokémon only know 2 two moves, which is 2 moves less than the original games. The moves vary and depend on the Pokémon, and seem to occur randomly in evolutions. The first attack is the basic one that you use to power up your secondary attack. From my experiences, gym battles aren’t turn-based, but more of a quick tap attack sequence. For the longest time, gym battles were pointless because there was a 1HP glitch that would never let you finish off the other Pokémon. You would have to force restart and know better than to try again. Now you can actually knock out opponents with only a 20% chance that the game will freeze right before you start your battle.
The entire gym aspect is ill-explained. Being the savvy gamer that I am, I used my tried and true approach of button mashing to try and figure it out, only to realize I knew how to win, but still didn’t understand the mechanics. Like how do you level up a gym and add your Pokémon to a gym already owned by your team. It wasn’t until recently that I learned that in order to put your Pokémon in your team-controlled gym, you needed to battle it and fill a little bar to level it up. It’s the same problem with the Pokéstops and the Lures. You click on a stop and somehow you’re supposed to figure out that to activate it and get the items, you needs to make it spin by sliding your finger horizontally across it. Or that the little white oval above is in fact not just a part of the design but where you can activate any lures you own. It’s unexplained components like these that stare you in the face and hinder you from fully enjoying the Pokémon Go experience.
Advertisement
Updates
Update one introduced a more stable build with a lot fewer server crashes. The amount of app crashes and freezes while capturing Pokémon have dropped significantly. Now it only happens a couple of times a day at the most. I’ve noticed that the servers go down usually during peak hours like after the end of the work day and even on weekends. The game isn’t usually out for long, but it always seems like the game goes out just to spite your plans of taking control of that gym across the street after you get out of work. It also fixed the 1HP gym glitch so that players could now experience gym battle as the poké-gods intended. Basically, all the upgrades were stability upgrades to make the game actually playable rather than just somewhat tolerable. Update one brought the game’s finished quality level up to what most people would consider as beta testing. What was released to the public should have never seen the light of day because it was not a finished product.
Update two was about as disappointing as hatching a 10km egg and it being a low level Magikarp. It didn’t add or take away from the build’s stability from Update one. Aside from some text changes, it actually saw the death of the game’s attempt at a tracking system. It is not loving referred to as the Three Step Glitch because since Niantic turned it off, every Pokémon now has the same three steps for their distance. Enter third-party Pokémon locator apps and sites.
- GPS Adjustments: Obviously the entire fluctuating chaos that is known as the GPS tracking needs a good overhaul to make is actually more accurate. I drain my battery every time I use the app because I have it set for to the highest possible accuracy, which I don’t even do for Grindr. If fixing that will take longer than expected, then Niantic needs to increase our characters area of effect to compensate for the often-wonky location positioning. That way, when the game says you’re a block further than you actually are, your character will still be able to interact with the item or Pokémon you intended it to.
- Pokémon Trading: This one has already been confirmed as an upcoming feature at San Diego Comic Con, but it honestly should have been an aspect incorporated since the very beginning. This is a major stable in all of the Pokémon games, but hearing that it is on the way it a good first step. Depending on how this is incorporated, whether you need to be physically next to the player to trade or whether you can do it remotely, I can think of a few problems it will have beyond the technical ones. I see a future where people train and sell Pokémon for real money, making the strong stronger while the people who only play because it is free being marginalized by the pay-to-play players.
- PVP Battles: This one has been an unverified rumor floating around, but it was not even mentioned at SDCC. Like the gym battles, challenging other Pokémon trainers to battle is a necessary part to the creation of any Pokémon universe. It would also liven things up because battling gyms can only take you so far.
- Pokémon Centers: I know the game is free and their intention is for people to need items so badly that they are willing to spend real money to buy them, but the fact that there aren’t any Pokémon Centers around where you can go heal your Pokémon just feels like a disgusting cash grab. I’m not saying they have to have a Center on every block, but at least having some where hospitals are in real life would be a nice start.
- More Accessibility: Everyone who doesn’t live in or near a major city will have a drastically different and diminished gameplay experience. Not only are they stuck with probably encountering the same few Pokémon, but they are also have a much fewer options when it comes to obtaining items since their pokéstops are very sparse or they are forced to buy their items and pokéballs with real money. Also, lack of accessibility isn’t limited to rural areas since the game comes off as ableist. Pokémon Go has probably forced more people to go outside and walk around for hours than Michelle Obama has been able to do in 8 years. Everything from hatching eggs to visiting pokéstops hinges on going around to various locations. Even trying to get a good variety of Pokémon is impossible if you can’t go far from your current location. The game needs to become more accommodating by cycling through different Pokémon in the same area and having an alternate way to hatch eggs. Any of that would be a good leap in the right direction.
- Pokémon Eggs: First off, the hatching process is tedious enough without us having to do the math and figure out how many miles in a kilometer, so that needs to be changed right away. Also, I hate wasting my time hatching 2km eggs. There is currently no way to dispose of unwanted eggs except through the time consuming task of hatching them. Just like the “transfer” button for unwanted Pokémon, there needs to be a similar button for eggs. It can also “transfer” if it wanted, but I would be fine if it gave me options like “scrambled”, “sunny-side up” or “omelette”. I just need to be able to dump low-level eggs like I can with Pokémon.
- Achievement Rewards: All players love some good, old-fashioned positive reinforcement, but we rarely get that in this game. For every landmark achievement I make in the game, I get rewarded with absolutely nothing. No potions, pokéballs or even any berries. If there are no rewards for any of the achievements, then why even keep track of them. At least give us an incubator or two so was can start taking care of the 2km eggs likely plaguing all of our baskets.
- Team Dynamics: Being from Team Instinct, there is hardly any representation in my area. It is all predominantly Mystic or Valor, which make its bothersome when you’re trying to take control and hold down a gym. There needs to be a way to control the numbers in areas so they are at least close to an even keel to make the experience fair and enjoyable for all. If that is too much to ask, at least give the players a chance to change teams at least once.
- Battery/Data Drain: Efficiency is the name of the game and Pokémon Go is an unapologetic, guzzling juggernaut that doesn’t care if you need to use your phone for important things later. The messed up GPS, along with dozens of other problems contribute to you having your phone on the game longer than necessary. Having tried the battery saver option in the game (yes, there is one surprisingly), I can safely say that it does absolutely nothing. This needs to be remedied immediately.
Niantic shoved its baby bird, Pokémon Go, out of the nest much too early. Since then, it has been on the defensive, trying to fix all the damage it has caused while trying to introduce new features into a flawed interface. Despite the staggering number of technical issues surrounding the game, its effect is undeniably overwhelming. On a personal level, this game has created a phenomenon that I never would have expected from it. I spend more time outside, getting significantly more exercise in the last few weeks than I have in the last few months. I have met new people and made more friends through random Pokémon-related encounters on the street than I have in random bars. With that sort of inspiration, I can’t help feeling anything but optimism for the future of this game. Not enough optimism to go out and buy the Pokémon Go Plus accessory, especially knowing how bugging it will likely be, but enough optimism to keep playing. Not only has it brought a community sharing the same fandom together, but more importantly, it has done this for free. Did I mention it’s free to play?
Rating: ★★★★★★ (6/10 stars)
Advertisement