Ever felt like being overly excited about a new single of your favorite artist which sounded really good in the song teaser and spent many sleepless nights refreshing your social media accounts for updates of the full release of the song, and when the artist dropped his single in the music scene your excessive fanboying or fangirling went down the drain in less than a split second because the song you thought that was supposed to be the song of the century badly sucked? Yes, you get the picture -- that’s how horrible I felt after the release of Pokémon Go in the Philippines.
Ever since Niantic announced the launching of Pokémon Go prior to July 2016 in selected countries, thousands and even millions of nostalgic and “real” die-hard fans of the Pokémon franchise were frantic over the upcoming release of the game series everyone loved during their childhood days and went rampant on social media due to how much the game looked promising and realistic, and even to an extent that some official content of the gameplay were leaked such as a video catching an Ivysaur off a 3D environment and some anonymous users releasing an android application package (APK’s) of the game even before the game was made available in selected countries. As much as the trailers and sneak peeks were able to tap everyone’s curiosity, I would have wished it was something that just remained as a trailer. Before getting down to the real business, the game, though, still managed to highlight at least some decent features introduced only in this mobile application; let’s talk about the good points this game has made aside from making a lot of media coverage prior to its launching:
The game had a potentially clever concept – “Hey, let’s make this Pokémon game push augmented reality to its limits!” the developers might have said after brainstorming. I have to agree, the need for real movement by walking across roads and places of interests, the usage of the player’s own geographical location and the device itself as a GPS to track, locate, and capture virtual reality animals in the game called “Pokémon” and using key landmarks represented as Pokémon Stops and Pokémon Gyms was a nice incorporation to virtually materialize the tale of the beloved protagonist trainers’ Pokémon journey in the past installments. But that’s about it, and I’m about to tell some things why I had to let the good things of this game come to an end in a short while.
Now, after the spotlight of its greatest points (or point), comes the upsetting features I have noticed during my own experience and others’ gameplay experience of the mobile app:
There are no Pokémon battles prior to capturing a Pokémon – “I have a great idea! Let’s ditch the battle system and random encounters in the Pokémon hunting portion of the game and let our players throw and waste dozens of pokéballs before they capture a Rattata. Physics!” A developer might have suggested while trying to “innovate” the gameplay experience. Seriously, where are the good times when we all were trying to weaken the monster using our beloved Pokémon before trying to capture it with a Pokéball? All we get now in this game is to spam-swipe across the device in order to throw Pokéballs until we get the right angle and finger strength to finally get that pocket monster. Such cheap physics we have now haven’t we?
The leveling system is painful – “Remember the time when made our players spend hours leveling up their Pokémon by fighting off other Pokémon? Guess what? We bid that gameplay mechanic goodbye.” One developer might have said after secretly slipping into the game’s gameplay mechanics after the other one fell asleep. Okay, leveling the player level up was a bad idea because in the past games, all the franchise games stood proud and strong without it and the idea wasn’t even needed from the start, but for “something new” to spice things up, they needed to put a player leveling system; heck there isn’t much anything to do to level up aside from spinning Pokéstops, capturing countless of identical Pokémon, and winning insanely difficult (most probably hacked to the top) player gym battles. Say goodbye to the leveling up of Pokémon and say hello to Combat Power (CP) which is also varied according to the player level and improved by feeding them stardust and candies.
There are no tutorials for the sake of beginners (and even long-time players) – “We practice independence in all forms and actions.” Probably a drunk developer told his colleagues as their new motto only made a few seconds ago. Not everyone has had Pokémon as a nostalgic favorite, so why be inconsiderate to the newcomers? Even the self-proclaimed Pokémon masters in all installments were caught off guard by Pokémon Go suddenly slapping us into the 3D augmented reality environment without any idea what to do. So what’s that waving ring surrounding me? Where are the Pokémon? Where’s the menu? What’s CP? Candies? Stardust? Why am I on Google Maps? Yes, you might encounter the same dilemma on your first play through. The answer you ask? Let google make the tutorial for this mobile app device.
Rural area players are restricted – “You live in a province? No problem, if we don’t think of ‘em.” One lazy developer could have said. So far, I have to agree that the game’s distribution of Gyms and PokéStops and appearances of Pokémon in rural areas are close from thin to none. How can one become a Pokémon master if one has nothing but plain roads and forked paths on my GPS?
Heavy lags and tons of freezing – “So, how do we fix this?” A developer might have asked another developer to another. “Okay so I begin my game creating my avatar, finally I can start my journey to be the very best like no one ever was. Okay swipe. Swipe? It’s not moving!” This is a normal circumstance. I don’t know if my device is not up to par with the graphics, but I’ve played dozens of games with heavier and visually-stunning graphics. The game itself lags a lot and freezes every now and then (at least for me).
Finally, Almost everything in the game is half-baked – “Okay, we have a mad good concept everyone will surely love from the beginning, but let’s leave it like that.” The developers could have said after the premature release. The gameplay mechanics were perfect – we are given the chance to create our own avatar as a representation of us as trainers, we walk around with our hand-carried devices looking satisfyingly stupid swinging our hands, turning lefts and rights, rolling over, searching every shelves and corners of the room or anywhere just to locate those nearby cheeky little pocket creatures, retained gym battles where one may challenge another trainer in a Pokémon battle to test their mettle, and a leveling system through gym battles and various in-game activities. We all get to do this in this free-to-play app, but then what? First of all the character customization is a restricted. It kind of feels like making an excessively used joke still sound funny. I mean, come on – there were barely enough hairstyles and clothing to choose from, in the end we just all end up having identical clones of avatars wearing outfits of different colors. The next one is that the game features only Generation I Pokémon (Kanto region Pokémon), and the developers sure are having their sweet time updating, because before the game manages to include the Johto or the Generation II Pokémon almost every player might have already caught a dozen of identical legendary Pokémon (Yes, that was over exaggeration, but the game rarely updates). At least feature the Generation II prior its release to avoid quick saturation before the game skyrockets to its great potential. Plus the battle system. Seriously, just look back into the mentioned bad points, it’s really hideous.
Not all of us were fans prior to Pokémon Go hype and all, but to play this game who has been a fan of the franchise was almost an insult to my childhood. The past Pokémon installments or the franchise itself is a novelty treasured by many but this game is easily forgettable and you get easily saturated capturing tons of the same and identical pocket monsters. All the colorful gameplay mechanics such as real Pokémon battles and random encounters, element strengths and weaknesses between Pokémon, hundreds of fair trainer battles, internally fulfilling victories in gym battles, and fighting through the elite four and defeating the Pokémon champion – gone in a single game. The game can standalone as a free-to-play game, the newer mechanics are workable, the missing more or less 600 Pokémon can be salvaged by quicker updates and the bugs may be remedied if given some effort. But for now, I’m not digging the game.