Team Review: Pokémon Go (Mobile)

We’re not going to review Pokemon Go here at Vooks, not in our traditional way anyway. Pokémon Go is an every evolving game, one that’s played outside, by yourself or with a group of friends. At the moment Pokemon Go is a huge social experience, one that can’t be boiled down to a score or should you play it or not. It’s free, try it for yourself. 

Instead we’re going to share our experiences with the game, we all live in different parts of the country, have played it different and have a different view on it in that regard. We’d love to hear your experience with it as well.

I had already planned where I was going to take my first walk with Pokemon GO, weeks before it came out. There’s a park near my place, a little way out, but still walking distance.There’s a corridor of trees, plenty of hills and winding paths, and a small creek that runs through it all.

Then one fateful morning, I wake up earlier than usual. I check my phone, and there it is. Pokemon GO has been released in Australia. I download it, jump out of bed, and head straight out the door. I stop off at the shops for food, catching a Goldeen on the way, perfectly hovering above a puddle from the rain the night before.

I get to the park, and excitedly start my journey. A few Pidgey here, Weedles there, plenty of Rattata too. I get closer to the creek, full and rushing with water, and find a few Magikarp limply flopping mere meters away from the water. I get the hang of the candies and evolving, and even stumble upon a gym in the middle of the park. All of this went on for three and a half hours, and ended with me being lost in the middle of a suburb I rarely visit.

Since then, I’ve been going for a walk every day, sometimes to places I haven’t been to before, sometimes to places I haven’t seen in ages. Sharing advice, trivia and anecdotes with fellow trainers and friends, remembering all the original Pokemon, and just feeling like a kid again. While the app is slow and buggy at times, the sheer power of nostalgia has been amazing for the last week and a half.

Outside of the first few seasons of the cartoon I’ve never really had much interest in Pokemon. I tried to play some of the main titles in the series but didn’t really get too far. Pokemon Go is the perfect game for someone like me; a fan of the original 150 pocket monsters. It’s casual enough for me to play daily and caters to the nostalgia of what is familiar to me and many fans of the early days.

I admit, at first I didn’t think I was going to give the game a shot. It looked interesting enough but probably something I wouldn’t quite understand and that more or less is the truth. When I loaded the app for the first time I didn’t know what to expect. I customised my character and was dropped into the world of Pokemon. All of a sudden a Bulbasaur appeared. I didn’t know that there was also a Squirtle and Charmander to choose from. I didn’t see them there. If I did I would have chosen Charmander.

The next thing I saw was the weird blue cubes about the place. Suddenly I realised that what I was looking at was a map of my neighbourhood. This was MY world of Pokemon! I tapped the closest blue cube and the PokeStop circle appeared. To my surprise it said “The Grapevine Italian Restaurant”. This blew my mind a little. It’s a restaurant up the road from where I live and just happens to be somewhere I worked for a year or so during my Tafe days. Once I had learnt what a PokeStop was, I was pretty chuffed to have one right there. Then I noticed there are five within easy walking distance!

I didn’t go overboard. I caught the few Pokemon that appeared in my house and left it at that. I didn’t go scouring the neighbours gardens at midnight like most people did. Over the next couple of days I left the app running whenever I left the house. I caught a bunch of Pokemon and discovered I can name them! My Bulbasaur is now Plantback. I have a Pidgey called Piggy. There’s also SPEAROW! because spearows always seem angry. Zubeedubeezu, Coffee, Staryu-smell… And a Pidgeotto with an unsavoury name I’ll leave to your imagination.

When I hit a level 5 thought I’d give a gym battle a try. I had no idea what I was doing. My Pidgeotto was out first. I didn’t know what to do. All of a sudden he was practically dead. I changed to Piggy. He did die. My Rattata called Splinter Jr. died next. So did the others. I haven’t attempted a gym battle since.

While looking at my Pokemon I noticed there were eggs too. I tapped one and it told me to put it in an incubator. I had totally forgot about it until a couple of days later when a Jigglypuff hatched. I was pretty happy with that.

As we speak, I’m a lowly level 8 on team Instinct, the team that seems to get bagged out by everyone. I just chose it because it was yellow. So far I’ve only missed one day of playing, but when I do I travel too far. One time I did go to the beach and caught a Caterpie. I wanted a squirtle but couldn’t figure out how those damn footprints work.

All in all Pokemon Go has been an enjoyable experience, albeit frustrating at times due to server issues and what seems to be constant bad press in the media and hate from people who just don’t get it. Frankly it’s Rock n’ Roll.

I like the concept of Pokemon GO far more than I like actually using it. I was sceptical that Niantic would deliver on the promise of the initial trailer, but between Pokemon hunting, Gym battles, and the AR I think they’ve actually done a great job. When the game works it’s a lot of fun. Just last week I was in Olympic Park and helped another member of Team Valor take a Gym from Team Mystic. It was crazy seeing this Gym constantly change hands between all three teams within the span of a few minutes, and knowing that allies and enemies alike were hiding in plain sight nearby was an exciting thought. A few days earlier I met up with a friend after work and we walked around catching Pokemon and taking Gyms. It’s a great social activity that would be a lot of fun if you could get a regular group together to play.

The problem is that the game has rarely worked for me. Regular server issues have prevented me from even getting into the game, but even when I manage to these issues affect the game in other ways – the amount of times I’ve had the game lock up while catching Pokemon, or not work out whether I’ve actually dodged an attack or not are ridiculous. I work full time so the main opportunity I have to play GO is on the way to and from work. But if the servers don’t work then I pretty much have to wait until the weekend to do anything. Most of the time on weekends I’ll be at home, and the area near me is totally barren when it comes to PokeStops and Gyms. It’s a 15-20 minute walk to the nearest Gym, and because they’re so rare in my area it’s currently being squatted by a full team of 1000+CP Pokemon from another team. I have a Vanilluxe’s hope in Mt. Chimney of taking that any time soon. I’d love to be able to spend an hour or so taking my dog for a walk around the block, tagging PokeStops and Gyms along the way, but instead I have to go for a drive pretty far away from home just to play the game properly, which is a nuisance to do regularly.

Once the server issues are sorted out Pokemon GO will be much more enjoyable to play, but right now I’m hesitant to pull my phone out when there’s a good chance my items will be wasted every time I do (if I can get into the app in the first place).

Two things stand out to me when I think about my experiences with Pokemon Go: community and technology.

My first real opportunity to check out Augmented Reality was with the launch of the Nintendo 3DS, which was bundled with six AR cards featuring famous Nintendo characters, as well as the AR game Face Raiders. That was back in early 2011 and seemed to be no more than a gimmick that was quickly forgotten.

Now, in 2016, with Virtual Reality being all the rage, as well as one of the main focuses of the big three gaming companies, Pokemon Go is released and becomes an overnight AR sensation.

What this tells me is that it is always the killer app, and not the technology being used, which gets people interested. I’m betting that a large percentage of Pokemon Go players have never encountered AR before, making it a potentially eye-opening and groundbreaking experience for them.

I can’t wait to see what Pokemon VR will be like.

As for the community aspect… how exactly do I put it into words? In the two weeks since the release of Pokemon Go, I’ve had more conversations with strangers than I probably have in the last two years. Last night, I drove for half an hour to hit a popular Pokemon Go spot in Melbourne, and while it was not as packed as it usually is because of server issues, the 15 or so people that were there were super friendly and super helpful.

“Hey guys, there’s a Dratini and a Squirtle over here!”, someone shouted from across the road. Ten of us ran over and thanked him.

“Is anyone Team Mystic? I need help with this gym.” I obliged. We claimed the gym in the name of Team Mystic.

Everyone is more than happy to give their tips, the locations of where to find rare Pokemon, and, most importantly, to spark up a conversation with anyone around them. The inclusiveness of everyone also astounds me. All kinds of people that wouldn’t usually find themselves talking to each other are now making friends, carpooling to new locations, chatting on social media and just generally helping each other be the very best. Like no one ever was.