Who Actually Plays Pokemon GO with Sound on?
The other day, I was having a bit of trouble with Pokemon GO. For some reason, it wouldn’t believe I was connected to the internet or had access to GPS. So I decided to reinstall the app on my phone. Of course, doing so reset all my settings. So all the sound effects and music, which I normally have turned off, all turned back on.
Damn, this game is loud.
Like, really loud. Every single tap of the screen seems to produce a noise. It’s very, very distracting. The sounds also make it super obvious what you are doing. Sure, you could wear headphones or earbuds, but that’s not the safest thing to do. After all, if you’re walking around, you need to be wary of your surroundings. And Pokemon GO requires enough multitasking as it is.
Pretty much no one in my local group plays with sound on. The only person who does is a kid, and really he’s just tagging along with his parents anyway.
I’ll be honest though, the Pokemon cries are probably the best offenders. At least, for older generation Pokemon. It’s so jarring, hearing 8-bit screeches. Okay, I get it, these are all the noises from the Pokemon games. But still, the default settings are really loud. And I feel it’s kinda unnecessary to have a sound every time you tap a Pokemon.
Even vibrating is too loud.
Back when I lived in a place with no spawns, I actually had vibration turned on for Pokemon GO. All the vibration setting does is make your phone vibrate whenever a Pokemon spawns nearby. When you just have one or two Pokemon nearby, then you get one or two vibrations. But if you have a lot of Pokemon spawning nearby, then the vibration goes on for ages.
Does depend on the phone, but that much vibrating can get annoying. Especially if your GPS is wonky and you’re not actually seeing new Pokemon, just the same ones respawning over and over. Vibration is definitely more useful if you have your phone in your pocket or something. But I’m often loathe to do that unless I have Power Saving on, which makes Pokemon GO’s screen dark. However, that only works at certain angles, and I’m always worried that I’ll accidentally tap on a Pokemon or open some research or something.
It’s a shame, really.
Pokemon GO’s music is actually pretty good. Repetitive, yes, but it’s the Pokemon style. Heck, one of the things I liked the most about the Kanto Tour was the music. For remixes of the original sound track, they absolutely nailed Gen 1 music. But I couldn’t really listen to much of it, since I was out and about. I’d need a pair of headphones, and even then, it’s still about a minute of music on loop.
Sure, I can listen to music on loop, but a track has to be 3 minutes long minimum to do so. Pokemon GO does actually have a few different tracks, but most of the time, the same handful are used. More event music would go a long way. Alternatively, could just use that Kanto music more often.
We really need some volume sliders.
If we could control the volume of each setting individually, that’d be great. I could have the music on really quiet then, just loud enough for me to hear it. Could also have different sounds you can turn on and off. After all, Pokemon cries aren’t too bad, but hearing that same noise every time I tap on a Pokemon in my bag is quite annoying.
That being said, I’d probably still play the entire game on mute.