Jump to content
  • entries
    610
  • comments
    1,306
  • views
    415,722

Catching 'em All


Ta-metru_defender

616 views

Essays, Not Rants! 225: Catching ‘em All

 

Like many people my age, I grew up playing Pokémon. And man, I caught ‘em all. Literally all of ‘em. At least in Yellow and Gold; I got close in Ruby and that’s where I stopped.

 

So when Pokémon Go was first announced last year I thought it seemed really cool. Like worth upgrading my four-year-old phone for. In case you haven’t heard, here’s the skinny on Go:

 

It’s Pokémon in real life. You go places, your phone tells you there’s a Pokémon there, you catch it. Certain landmarks are gyms where you can battle people and other landmarks give you items. Again, it’s Pokémon in real life.

 

Now, the game is very much in its infancy. It’s a drain on battery and there isn’t much in the way of depth to the game (there is no way to traditionally level up Pokémon, which means you’ll probably find yourself releasing your starter). Then there’s the awful server lag currently present that makes playing chancey at best. A game’s not great if you can’t really play it. It’s a mess.

 

And yet.

 

I’ve found myself walking through Washington Square Park, looking for Pokémon with friends, and running into other people also looking for Pokémon. I walked to the Arch to challenge the gym there and, upon seeing that someone had used a Lure Module on the Gibraldi Statue, sat around there catching Pokémon with a handful of strangers. And then all of us getting excited when a hitherto uncaught Ekans showed up.

 

I think this is where the beauty of Pokémon Go, even in its nascent state, shines. There’s an excitement in the traditional Pokémon games when a random encounter yields that one Pokémon you’ve spent ages searching for (I’m looking at you, Tauros). Same with when that egg you’ve been walking around with forever finally hatches. Go takes that feeling of success and translates it to real life. When an egg hatches it’s because you’ve carried it for five kilometers. Not your digital avatar walking around Johto, but you, in real life, walking around your town. When you, at last, finally get a Pinsir it’s because you decided to walk to Starbucks for coffee instead of spending your break inside. That joy you got in the games is made visceral. Now your ability to catch ‘em all is a direct result of your own exploring — you’re looking for Pokémon.

 

It helps that the simple mechanics (go somewhere, find a thing, get a thing, look for a better thing) is bolstered by the pop culture familiarity brought on by Pokémon. It’s no coincidence that the available Pokémon are the original 150, the ones people my age fondly remember from growing up. There’s an appeal to the familiar, and man, it’s working — I don’t think I’ve been this excited to find a Bellsprout since I was seven. There’s an implicit invitation in the game to be a kid again, to look around your world with a wonderment because that mural on the wall could be a Pokémon Gym and there’s a Bulbasaur down that road in the West Village.

 

Pokémon Go still has a lot of room to grow — and it’ll have to to keep people interested over the long term. But for now, just a couple days out of the gate, it’s a whole lotta simple, magical, fun.

 

Except for those Rattatas. I am so sick of finding freaking Rattatas.

  • Upvote 5

5 Comments


Recommended Comments

I like this game for nothing more than I can now describe Ingress as "Like Pokémon Go, but without Pokémon." :P

 

 

 

:music:

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment

I really like the idea behind this game, but they made some strange design choices. How far away is three paw prints? What does that mean? Is that"Somewhere on the visible map" or something else?  It's just really unclear on how to find them. I've seen people say that going to the rustling grass areas will work, but it doesn't seem to, as I can be right on top of them and nothing. or it'll vanish and reappear based on my proximity to it. I've also had a lot of trouble with throwing pokeballs, it seems to  vaguely correlate with how I'm moving my finger rather then actually being dictated by it. I burned more than 20 of them trying to catch a pidgiot because around half of them just kind of lazily fell off the screen. the other half it escaped from or where actual misses. And that's when I can actually find them, and you need a lot of them to be productive.

 

None of this is helped by the fact that it's currently above 100 degrees here so going out and exploring isn't really that fun. That and the nearest point of interest is a half mile away and the nearest gyms are probably a mile out. 

 

The game is fun and they've got an OK start but it really needs some work.

Link to comment

I really like the idea behind this game, but they made some strange design choices. How far away is three paw prints? What does that mean? Is that"Somewhere on the visible map" or something else?  It's just really unclear on how to find them. I've seen people say that going to the rustling grass areas will work, but it doesn't seem to, as I can be right on top of them and nothing. 

Not saying these aren't strange and not well explained, but I can help with that! The paw prints system is more a "hot/cold" system than anything else, with three being furthest and zero being the closest. As such, you use the number of paw prints to get a general estimate, and then walk around to see if you get closer to it and the number decreases. The leaves are similar, in that the number of leaves in an area depicts how likely that there are Pokemon in that area, not necessarily where within that area they are! 

 

Really kinda silly, but the guesswork of it all kinda makes it more adventure-y, which is pretty fun in my opinion. I just wish it was all better explained in app. xD

Link to comment

Right, I get that, and that would be fine if I was in a field, but doesn't work in a neighborhood unless I learn parkor. And it's not efficient for mass gathering anyway.

Link to comment
Guest
Add a comment...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...