“Ya wanna see mah pokemons?” – Medic Finally Tries Pokemon GO!
Once again, Medic is late to the bandwagon, to the point that most people have already gotten off the bandwagon. Luckily, Pokemon GO ties an incredibly popular franchise to something insanely simple and easy, to the point that it’d be hard for this silly mobile game to ever fall completely out of favour. Especially when there are a billion copycat games desperate to take its place. So yes, I finally tried Pokemon GO out properly. Technically, this is my first official Pokemon game, now I think about it.
But yeah, how can you not like something that’s so simple? You walk around, getting notifications that Pokemon are nearby, then you attempt to throw Pokeballs at the Pokemon’s heads in a vague attempt to catch them. Exercise AND gaming, rolled into one, and not in the same way things like Wii Sports and Dance Dance Revolution are. All you need is a smartphone (preferably Android) with location data turned on and some way to access the internet, either WiFi or Mobile Data.
Ah, uh, here’s our first hurdle.
I don’t actually have a very big mobile data plan. I get about 100MB a month and that’s it. To be fair, I don’t normally use it outside of the odd work thing. Most of the time I’ll just go to one of the many cafes scattered around where I live and use their WiFi if I really need to do something online.
But today I decided fuck it and decided to play a little with my sister, since we were in town. The town center actually has quite a few Pokestops and Gyms, so it was a perfect place to get me started. Turns out I’d downloaded the game a while back so after downloading the app in a nearby cafe, I found myself already signed in and using the name Psiksi (which I changed to Phovos just so people can pronounce it…). That kinda meant that I didn’t have a tutorial and I already had a Charmander just sitting there doing fuck all since 2017 when I originally installed the game.
Either way, we quickly found some Pokemon. Due to the weather and lots of sweat, I managed to drop my phone while flicking Pokeballs at an Ekans, but at least I caught it. I also caught a bunch of other Pokemon, my best catches being a Persian and a Granbull with 523 CP (which stands for Combat Power and not Cheese Pies).
After a little effort and three Pokestops all right next to each other, I managed to get to level 5, enough to be able to stick some of my Pokemon in gyms. One of which, at the time of writing, had managed to remain in a gym for a good 5 hours or so before being kicked out after a raid. Probably because its low level ass are sat next to Pokemon with CPs of over 1000. But they’re not dead yet, which is saying something. I tried my hand at a low level raid but all six of my Pokemon (chosen by who had the most CP) got their asses kicked by a massive Charmander. I got it down to about 1/3 health but there’s only so much a bunch of <100 CP morons can do against something that’s 4000 CP.
I’ve managed to get to level 6 by doing some Research tasks which are obtained by going to Pokestops, and from them I got a Pikachu and a Magicarp. Looking at my sister’s stuff and my current progression though, it’s clear that I’ll have to farm for a long time to even begin to climb. She’s been playing for a while and is level 23 I think, but she’s still missing lots of stuff. She’s also not got as many Pokeballs and I’d have thought. It seems that you get less and less the more you play. Which probably explains why I’ve got over a hundred, even after wasting 20 on an insanely high Crobat which I failed to capture.
I also joined Team Instinct because the helping mascot leader guy seemed way chirpier than the other two. Plus I like yellow.
Pokemon GO’s a really fun little game, and I can totally see why it’s so popular. You don’t need to be even remotely good at games to be able to play Pokemon GO. Just having an ability to move around and a stable internet connection will do. The latter isn’t always doable though. I noticed quite a few times that the GPS would repeatedly bug out, with either my character wandering off or not going anywhere, despite 4G mobile data. I actually got warnings that I was going too fast and that I shouldn’t play while driving even though I was standing still.
Speaking of driving and playing, the messages and warnings you get are weird. It’s all common sense. But they’ve had to shove all these warnings in anyway because people are idiots. Super idiots. I know some of these warnings are for kids, because kids know better, but come on, “Don’t Drive and Play” is clearly there for dumb adults.
The only thing really holding me back from playing more is that most gyms and Pokestops are really, really far away from where I normally live and work. In the center of town and the tourist areas it’s fine, but literally only 5-10 minutes away and it’s like a barren desert. It’s even worse at home, there is literally nothing.
Just emptiness and the occasional lifeless road.
Which is a shame really, because Pokemon GO is genuinely fun and actually not that tedious if you don’t have any specific goals in mind. You just need to be in the right place if you want to be able to play at a decent pace.
