The Impact Factor

Pokémon No Go

Review

Pokémon GO, Niantic (iOS)

Abstract: Pokémon GO by Niantic is one the most engaging mediocre games in recent memory. Behind the worldwide Pokémon GO sensation is an experience that’s riddled with problems. Pokémon GO is not a good game: it has scarce gameplay, unexplained mechanics, boring monotony and poor optimization. Pokémon GO is also not a good Pokémon game: terrible battles, frustrating candy systems, and a combat power rating that both obsoletes your catches and transforms Pokémon into lifeless numbers. Yet I can’t help but be excited when I find a Pokémon I’ve never seen before. Pokémon GO is something special. I just wish it were special AND good. It’s not.

Pokémon GO is a hit. A global sensation. In the span of only a few days it became one of the largest trending topics across old media and new. Its release was momentous. In one day, it skyrocketed Nintendo’s shares by 25%, the largest one-day increase since the release of the Famicom in 1983. An jump that increased Nintendo’s market capital by $9 billion. Data shows that Pokémon GO is likely earning over $2 million a day for Nintendo and developer Niantic. Just the other night, a Pokémon GO Twitter account tweeted that server issues were due to nearly 48 million users try to log on simultaneously. Regardless of what I write in this review, it won’t change those facts. Pokémon GO is a titan of a release, something to a degree we’ve never quite seen before. My duty, however, is to separate myself from Pokémon GO the cultural artifact and look at Pokémon GO the game. Unfortunately, that’s where everything begins to fall apart.

I wanted to like Pokémon GO. No, more than that. I wanted to love Pokémon GO. Like most children of the 90’s, I grew up catching Pokémon. My nostalgia runs deep. Pokémon Blue is among the first games I can remember playing start to finish. I sat diligently plugging away at my translucent Gameboy Pocket, Pokémon Blue cartridge in tow, catching them all and defeating gym leaders. It was one of the first games I got really deep into. I remember writing up prospective team compositions, moves I wanted my favorites to learn, and strategies to tackle the Elite 4. It wasn’t a passing phase for me either. I have played every Pokémon generation to date: Blue to Silver to Ruby to Diamond to White to X. If Pokémon GO could deliver an experience even a fraction of what I enjoyed before, I would be happy. After playing, I’m not very happy.

If only Pokémon GO were a little more like this.

Let’s first get into what Pokémon GO is. Pokémon GO is a location-based Pokémon catching game that mixes traditional elements of the monster collecting franchise with augmented reality. Like all Pokémon games, you start by selecting your trainer, speaking with a professor, and catching your starter Pokémon. Catching is done by swiping your finger upwards, throwing a Pokéball that must collide the Pokémon. Using the camera, you can have the monster appear “in the real world” right in front of you—sitting on your coffee table or at your work desk or at the park. Seeing the nicely rendered 3D models of classic Pokémon appear in the real world is great. It’s fun to whip your phone around to see where the little critter is hiding. Even 20+ hours in, I still get joy out of seeing a Zubat hovering on top of my stove or outside my lab’s window. Catching and collecting isn’t great, though. Thrown Pokéballs don’t always follow the trajectory of your swipe, resulting in wasted throws. Unlike in the Pokémon games themselves, there is no real strategy to catching wild Pokémon. You just throw the ball and see if the Pokémon decides to stay in or not. There is a timing mechanic, in which you are asked to throw the ball in the middle of a colored circle that expands and shrinks, but at best this marginally affects capture rate.

It's fun to see a Pidgey behind my laptop
at work, even 20+ hours in.

After collecting your starter, you’re off to the real world. There is where Pokémon GO shines the brightest. Following the model of its spiritual predecessor Ingress, Pokémon GO plops you down on a simplified map based on your current location. Pulling from Google Maps data, you can see the buildings and streets and rivers nearby. Certain real world landmarks play important roles in Pokémon GO. Some locations are Pokéstops, places where you can check-in to receive in-game items like extra Pokéballs or potions/revives. Other locations are gyms, places where you can do battle with other players (kind of). Everything else is open space in which to hunt Pokémon. Pokémon spawn in real world locations. A menu shows Pokémon with the closest proximity to the player. Some will be right next to you, others further away as denoted by 1 to 3 footprint symbols under their picture. You can then run, walk, bike, drive, whatever, to get close enough to the Pokémon to capture them. There are common and rare spawns, each lasting for an undisclosed but fixed period of time. The location-based nature of Pokémon GO is fantastic. I love checking in on where I am in the world and seeing what creatures are lurking nearby. Pokémon GO has fun design choices too, like water type Pokémon appearing more often near real world bodies of water, or rock type Pokémon appearing by mountains or deserts. Pokémon GO does a great job at encouraging people to get up and moving, to explore new parts of their city, and to chase their next catch.

Exploring the real world in a Pokémon GO
lens is by far the game's best feature.

As much as I like Pokémon GO’s premise, it fails in so many fundamental ways as a video game. From a gameplay perspective, there is little to nothing to actually do while playing. You walk around in the real world, see a Pokémon, throw a couple balls at it, it gets caught or it doesn’t, and then you rinse & repeat. Collection, Pokémon GO’s central mechanic, is nothing but luck and persistence. The game requires no skill whatsoever, so that even the rarest captures can feel unrewarding. When not catching Pokémon you have a precious few things to do. Candies can be used to evolve your Pokémon. You receive three of that species’ candy with each capture, and one from transferring (deleting) that Pokémon away. To evolve a Pidgey into a Pidgeotto, for example, you need to catch 4 separate Pidgeys. You can also power up Pokémon using candies and Stardust—a resource that’s gained with each capture. Powering up a Pokémon increases its Combat Power, or CP, but I’ll get to that more in a bit. The moment to moment gameplay in Pokémon GO is deeply repetitive. It’s a slow, relatively unrewarding slog.

To make matters worse, Pokémon GO never explains its gameplay nuances to players. From capture experience to differences in a Pokémon’s base stats to gym battles, nothing is told to players. Perhaps this was intentional, designed to get players socializing, but it comes across poorly. Speaking of socializing, for a game that encourages players to interact with one another, Pokémon GO has absolutely no social features built in. No friends lists, no messaging, no leaderboards, no trading. Some of these are allegedly coming in an update, but the launch version of Pokémon GO is devoid of any such feature. Moreover, Pokémon GO feels so poorly coded. Server issues aside (which are maybe excusable due to the gargantuan demand), Pokémon GO just doesn’t run well. I need to hard close the app after nearly every use. I get stuck on loading screens constantly. Sometimes I’ll catch a Pokémon only to have it never appear in my box. The location services are finicky at best. My avatar will pop around a map as it searches, or I’ll be greeted with a giant red bar stating ‘GPS signal not found.’ Trying to actually play Pokémon GO is frustrating, and when the game you’re treated to once everything loads is astonishingly lackluster, it makes the experience all the worse.

Yay it's working! For now. And only kind of.

The issues don’t stop there. Pokémon GO is not only a poorly designed video game, it’s also a bad Pokémon game. Strategy, a centerpiece of the franchise, is replaced with luck and persistence in all facets of Pokémon GO. The candy-based evolution and powerup systems work against the core of what Pokémon games accomplished: forming a connection between you and your monsters. I can still remember by Pokémon Blue team. The Blastoise I raised from the beginning, the Aerodactyl I got from a fossil, the Moltres I found on Victory Road. But in Pokémon GO, every new catch is a checkbox. You need to catch 4 Pidgeys to get one Pidgeotto, and then another 17 to evolve Pidgeotto into Pidgeot. The trademark line of Pokémon is “Gotta Catch ‘Em All,” not “Gotta Catch Several Dozen Of The Same Boring Ones You Already Have.” New catches become numbers on a screen, losing the life and personality of the distinct Pokémon.

You can't see the bottom of this list, but trust
me, it's all Pidgey's and Zubats.

Battling is by far the worst part of Pokémon GO. For starters, battling in Pokémon GO can only happen at gyms. After claiming a gym for the first time, Pokémon GO players can choose one of their Pokémon to stay and guard it. Other players can then come in and do battle against the incumbent gym leaders. Battles are asynchronous, meaning that the Pokémon and trainers you’re fighting against are controlled by A.I and not players. The tried and true turn based battles are replaced instead by real time tap fests. Tapping the screen causes your Pokémon to use its basic attack, swiping can (sort of) be used to dodge attacks, and once your power meter fills, holding down on the screen for a second or two unleashes your big attack. But really, and I’ve seen this in person too, it’s just tapping on your screen as fast as possible hoping to do enough damage before your Pokémon is knocked out. (I should mention, none of this is explained to players, you’re just dropped in). Battling requires no skill, no thought. It is unfun in the worst possible way. What determines victory more often than not is a Pokémon's Combat Power (CP) rating. Perhaps unsurprisingly by this point in the review, CP is another thing I took issue with.

Battling your Pokémon is irredeemably awful.

Each Pokémon you catch has a set CP number. This number can be increased by powering them up with candies and Stardust, or by evolving them. As I just mentioned, aside from exploiting type weaknesses, CP is the biggest determinate in which Pokémon will win a fight. Finding high CP critters is critical. The issues with CP are multifaceted. First, the lifelessness and disconnect you feel with your team is compounded by always looking for the Pokémon with the highest CP. As your profile levels up, you start to find higher CP Pokémon in the wild. That means that those Pokémon you spent candies and Stardust on just the other day quickly become obsolete. Pokémon GO discourages you from evolving Pokémon until your account is a very high level, but that unfortunately means there is even less to do while playing. Pokémon GO has you in the role of a Pokémon catcher, not a Pokémon trainer. I got excited the first time I caught a leveled up a 230 CP Pinsir (a rare find), only to be bummed two days later when I caught a 279 Clefairy and a 240 Pidgey. CP also makes it so that only the most devoted players can control gyms. I’ve tried exploiting type weaknesses and specifically tailoring a team to take out a nearby gym, only to get soundly defeated because the gym’s leader had a 1300 CP Lapras that annihilated my 540 CP Jolteon. Battling is a steep uphill climb I don’t want to make.

Exploiting type weaknesses won't matter - I have no
chance to win. At my level, I can't even get a 1000+ CP Pokémon.

So if Pokémon GO is neither a good game nor a good Pokémon game, why am I still playing? Why did I feel a rush of excitement today when I came across my first Vulpix on my morning walk to lab? Pokémon GO has an indefinable appeal. I want to collect ‘em all. I want to see my trainer be a gym leader for a day or two. Gameplay, design, and coding missteps aside, Pokémon GO offers something so unique and clever I can’t help but suffer through it (for the time being). Pokémon GO is one of the most engaging mediocre, bordering on bad, games I’ve ever played. At times my frustration overrides the novelty and I doubt I’ll still be playing a few weeks from now, but for the moment, I’ll keep going. I wanna be the very best, after all.

Pokémon GO

2/5