Gotta catch ‘em all? Pokémon Go First Impressions | Mobile

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So, there’s been an awful lot of chatter about Pokémon Go over the past few days, but the real question is - is it worth your time (when it eventually becomes available in the UK)? To answer your question, potential Pokémon Trainer, we have braved the terrifying underbelly of the internet (otherwise known as the comments section) to get hold of the game for ourselves.

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by James Michael Parry

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@James_Parry

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First impressions are important, and the first reassuring thing about the game is that it feels like Pokémon. Developers Niantic worked closely with The Pokémon Company to put the game together, and as a result the pokémon themselves look and behave as you would expect, the icons and aesthetic all matches up with what you would expect from the current generation of 3DS titles. The important thing to keep in your mind here though, is while it doesn’t look like a cheap knock-off (though the game itself is free, bar in-game microtransactions), it’s far from the depth of experience you might encounter in the Hoenn region on Nintendo’s flagship handheld.

This game is very much made for mobile devices and, as such, is far more simplified than the level of complexity you can come up against in the full games. Catching a pokémon for example, is as simple as a swipe of your finger - no weakening of your opponent necessary (or, indeed, possible).
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Training pokémon is based around candy, specific to that pokémon - which you can only build up by catching more of the same - and stardust, which you build up as you capture pokémon. Evolving takes purely candy, sometimes as many as 50 or more, which means you have a lot of wandering to do.

To back up for a moment, Go is described as an augmented reality game, and to an extent that is true, using the real world surroundings to construct the world and superimposing the pokémon themselves on the world through your smartphone’s camera when you try to capture them.
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There are two main types of location which you need to look out for as you begin wandering around your area - Pokéstops and Gyms. Pokéstops are the game’s equivalent of Pokémarts, gifting the player fresh pokéballs and other items when you visit them, while Gyms are where you actually fight other pokémon with your team. The latter are closed off to new players, as you need to be level 5 before you can take on the challenge (as Professor Willow charmingly informs you).

The process of actually finding pokémon is as much up to luck and perseverance as anything else. The game gives you a vague indication of how far away certain pokémon are and you keep a keen eye on your phone as you walk along to see if they get closer or far away. The best places are grassy areas, just like in the game, but really anywhere that isn’t a road will do.

The actual pokémon you’re likely to find all come from the original 150, arguably the most well-known and most loved set of creatures, and the excitement of discovering a new one and starting to fill out your Pokédex shouldn’t be underestimated.

There is a bit of patience needed to get the most out of the game. Not only do you need to spend quite a long time wandering to find wild pokémon quite often, but if you truly want to catch ‘em all then you’ll need to travel further than the end of your road, as different physical climates (near water or thick forest for example) don’t turn up everywhere. How the game decides gyms and pokéstops seems to be quite random - nearby the closest gym is a roundabout with a distinctive totem pole and there’s one pokéstop which is a sculpture of a giant pigeon (it really exists...don’t ask). Once you have a route which takes you past a few of these however, you can find very different pokémon, even revisiting the same area at different times.​

So far there’s a lot of fun to be had with the game, but whether it will have the staying power to hold people’s attention in the long run is what will truly be the test of its success.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to try to evolve my Pigeotto.