More like Pokemon go f@#k yourself!
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Year: 2016-Present
Played on: Android
Also on: iOS
Developer: Niantic
Publisher: Niantic
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Lost potential, I choose you!
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Date posted: October 20, 2017
PREMISE
“I don’t know who created Pokemon Go,” she inquired, “but I try to figure out how to get them get Pokemon Go to the polls.”
Need I say more?
PROS
None
CONS
All of it
FINAL VERDICT
IT STINKS
Okay, okay. Pokemon Go isn’t unplayable, and it doesn’t deserve a Zero. It’s just that its so disappointing, you know? It had what, a year and a half to improve, to get its act together? And what does it do? Stay home all day, smoke weed, and watch Netflix. Oh wait, no, that’s me! Well, it might as well have, let me tell you!
I am going to judge Pokemon Go in it present state, so only features that have been added up until October 20, 2017 will be looked at. Anything beyond, I really don’t care about. It could bring world peace, cure hunger, and give me an actual life, and I still won’t cover it’s new features! No way, no how! (Unless Niantic gives me a bunch of $$$$! Capitalism rules!)
PREMISE
Pokemon is a pretty popular game. If you don’t know what pokemon is, then you have been living under a rock, are a rock, are the Rock, or have been hit by a rock and are now in a coma. My condolences if that is the case.
In an actual Pokemon game, you go around enslaving creatures, making them fight against their will against other creatures. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and have all sorts of types and what not.
Anyway, so guys thought it would be cool if you could go around catching pokemon in real life! A novel concept, i’m sure! So they designed an app that uses GPS and what not, and puts pokemon all around the world! All you have to do is get my your fatass up and walk around everywhere, then exclaiming, “I have to catch how many charmander’s to get a charizard?” before giving up and going home. See the cons section below to see how many disappointments you can catch!
Look! I can actually prove I played the game this time!
To move around, you have to move around in real life, causing your legs to go numb instantly. While you walk around, little monsters pop up. I first, I thought it was Satan, but it turns out their just pokemon. You then use pokeballs to catch the little creatures! Hooray! You can also get various items from places from pokestops, which in real life are usually in parks and landmarks, such as the statue of liberty, or ground zero! What fun! You can also find gyms, were can battle other people’s pokemon for premium currency! How fun as well! You can also evolve pokemon to make them stronger, but this usually means you have capture upwards of 30 of the same pokemon! Hooray for grinding!
This is what the Las-Vegas Strip looks like. Lots of drunk Pikachus await!
PROS
Hey! You have to get out of the house to play this game! God forbid, I you get some excercise! You may or may not meet other people while playing the game! At first, your going to have some fun with the game, as there are a lot of pokemon out there! Pikachus, charmanders, agumon, the 1984 Los Angeles Lakers, Steve Harvey, and more await you! (although most are just pidgeys, rattatas, sentrets, and Steve Harvey are all you’ll usually find.
I swear, If I see this guy in my backyard again, I’m calling the cops!
Another great feature is the egg system, which lets you get new pokemon simply by walking. You just get an egg from a pokestop and start walking. There are 2k, 5k, and 10k eggs, each one hatching after the set number of kilometers are reached. Of course, Niantic actually nerfed the walk rates, and now you have to walk more then the game tells you have to, but I’ll talk more about that later.
I guess the game encourages you to go forth and go to new places, something a lot of games just don’t let you do. You are usually confined to whatever environments are created for the game. Here, you can just go and look for pokemon wherever you want. Well, unless you live in a well populated city. If not your f#@$ed!
CONS
I have so many complaints, I have no idea where to begin. Lets start with the aforementioned population issue. If you try to play Pokemon Go in a small town, you are going to get no where fast. Niantic, in all of their wisdom, decided that people in small towns don’t exist, so your going to get the shaft if you live in say, Muskogee, Oklahoma.
Small towns get shafted harder when it comes to raids. You see, raids, for the most part, require multiple players, and some places, you can hardly get a group together. So when it comes time to take down a legendary pokemon, which needs a staggering 20 players to take down all at once, you think that these small town folk are going to be able to get such a large amount of people in one place to play a mediocre mobile game? But here’s the kicker- you are NOT guaranteed the legendary pokemon in question. Imagine actually getting enough people to take down a lugia, getting to catch him, only for it to escape after you run out of “premier balls”. Why would you punish the player like that? Who’s your CEO, Niantic? Hitler?
You can add Entei to the list of things I’ll never have, along with sex.
But wait, there’s more! A lot of pokemon don’t appear that often, making them incredibly hard to evlove. Do you know how many times I have seen a dratini in the wild? Once. Do you know how many Dratini’s you need to eventually evolve it into a Dragonite? About 42. Given this information, I estimate that it would take me 41 years to evolve finally get a Dragonite. But wait, they can hatch in eggs, right? Well, you can only get them in 10k eggs, so you would have to walk about 410 kilometers. Even then, you would’nt get a dratini everytime, so you could probably double, or even triple it to beyond 1000k! You pretty much to become Usain Bolt in order to get any of the high level pokemon. Thanks Niantic!
Long awaited features, like trading, are still not available! The game has been out for a year and some months, and they are slowly adding new content. But they also keep messing things up. Remember what I said about nerfing the walk count? You used to be able to ride your bike and hatch a 10k by riding 10k, but now, you’re lucky even get 3k by doing so.
There are pokemon you can only get by going to certain countries! Are you kidding me? You want me to go all the way to Australia just catch a kangaroo? What is your problem, Niantic? Did you really think this was an okay thing to do?
FINAL VERDICT
Pokemon Go was an interesting experience that Niantic keeps messing up. There is so much potential for an awarding experience, but Niantic only seems to care about how many lucky eggs they can sell, and not about what the player is feeling. It’s not the worst mobile game I played, but it is the worst case of squandered potential in the last decade. I still open the game when I go on my daily bike ride, but I don’t actively play the game as much as I used too.
I actually still recommend the game, but you will eventually hit a wall like I did, with the atrocious amounts of grinding needed to get some of the better pokemon and such.
Agree? Disagree? Good! Leave a comment about how terrible my taste is in the comments below!
Gamer's Edge 