Pokémon Go Captures Attention

Pokémon Go – iPhone, Android

Niantic, The Pokémon Company

July 6, 2016 | Free (with in-game purchases)

It’s every Pokémon fan’s dream for pokémon to become real. With its promising and powerful advertisements before release, many pokéfans have speculated that Pokémon GO would finally take pokémon and put them in the world we live in, where we are allowed to find them in the wild and raise them to be stronger. This is what we’ve all been waiting for.

Pokémon GO lets players of all ages use their iPhones and Androids to catch and raise their own pokémon, offering a unique experience to both fans of Pokémon and those who are not familiar with Pokémon. For me, the game did not live up to the expectations that have been raised, but Pokémon GO was a massive hit, easily making it the most popular games of the summer in 2016; it did a fine job at providing a new pokémon gaming experience.

Unlike other popular mobile games, like Candy Crush and Disney Tsum Tsum, Pokémon GO forces players to get up and actually interact with the world in order to progress in the game. It blew other mobile games out of the water and stole the spotlight in the summer of 2016. Some have even said it was the best game of that year. Regardless, the highly respected title has favorable strong points, but also lacks in others.

The game shows the players a map of the player’s current location, which is determined by GPS. With the help of complicated algorithms, wild pokémon randomly spawn, and appear on the map in respect to where the player is on the map. This creates a treasure hunt, where the player can map out exactly where to catch pokémon on the map. Typically, the pokémon that appear aren’t very strong and are pretty common. However, the more pokémon you capture, regardless of its stats, the more benefits you receive in the game.

There are a few currencies in the game. Each pokémon family has its own designated candy; Pikachu and Raichu have Pikachu candy, Ghastly, Gengar, and Haunter have Ghastly candy, and so forth. Whenever you catch a pokémon, no matter its evolution status, you will receive three candies for that pokémon. These candies are used to evolve your pokémon and strengthen them. There are also coins that you can buy with real money to make in-game purchases. And of course, there are experience points, which determine the player’s level.

Pokémon GO doesn’t really have a plot, other than having three different teams – Team Mystic, Team Instinct, and Team Valor – that each has a leader. There’s not a lot of information on these characters, which leaves the plot pretty open and up for interpretation. The lack of story makes it hard for me to continuously play the game.

One of the best parts about the game is its augmented reality feature. Players have the option to use their phones’ cameras to create the game’s environment. If you’re walking in the park, and a wild Oddish appears, you can battle and catch the little guy as if he was actually in the park with you. It’s also really cute seeing parents taking pictures of their kids with their favorite pokémon using the augmented reality feature.

Using AR does eat up the battery though, but the game is already known to be a battery hog in general; this is what probably frustrates players the most. It really does take away from the experience when you always have to worry about if you have enough battery to catch that Machoke that everyone is running at. By doing so, phones overheat faster and become uncomfortable to hold. This makes it really hard to use the game in general.

In the original release, there were only two songs in the game: the map theme and the battle theme. They both have elements of other Pokémon music, but are different from anything we have heard before in Pokémon games. They are not as dramatic and emotional as other Pokémon songs, which I think helps players not focus so much on the music. By doing so, players can focus more on the game, while the music adds a pleasant drive to keep players in the moment. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to the map theme with headphones, do so now or you will miss out on a catchy tune that’s simple, yet can get stuck in your head for days.

I won’t lie. I expected more out of Pokémon GO. After it was first announced, I was looking forward to catching pokémon in real time in real environments. While my hopes were let down, the game still provides a fresh new way to catch and raise pokémon, and really brought a diverse group of players together. Pokémon GO is worth the free download.