Pokémon GO released 3 years and 3 months ago and Pokémon GO lost basically all its mainstream momentum 3 years ago. There have been a few attempts to take the Augmented Reality game throne in the years since, but none have succeeded [sorry, Garfield go, you never got your chance.] This many years down the line it finally has a real competitor stepping up to the plate. Before we get into all that, i wanted to selfishly tell a few stories about what GO can do with its potential.
At the release of GO i was having my first go at car life in western america. I can confirm that those first few months were something special. Shortly after release i spent a couple hours figuring out the base game mechanics near Fountain, CO with a theater kid while she played the Hamilton soundtrack off her phone and walked her dog. I register this as my first encounter of oh so many with that Lin-Manuel joint.
Shortly afterwards i spent a day in Woodland Park trying to conquer all the gyms because Team Valor doesn’t rest until conquest is ours. Shoutout to the gang of three kids on scooters aiding in the glorious red fight. As i passed by the Taco Bell in town an employee on his lunch break joined my party and showed me the hot spot in town where he got his ghastly. Unfortunately the ghastly i caught had bad stats so i don’t have it anymore.
When i was up near Seattle i found my way to one of the parks at around lunchtime and it was absolutely flooded with people trying to be the best like no one ever was. The park had a circular path with a grassy field in the center. Around the ring people paced stocking up on all the items they could get before joining the mob in the center that ebbed and flowed towards the hottest spawns. One of the last ones i followed them to was a beefy tentacruel who carried me in many battles in early game. Unfortunately he got outmoded and sent to the candy machine. On that day i partied up with a guy who was wearing a cookie cat t shirt and i kept him out of work for an hour or so longer than he should’ve.
It was thrilling, having all these interactions from a silly Pokemon game but hey there are so many pieces about the cool things it did right around launch. There are also a lot of pieces about how lackluster its features were. So let’s jump forward to 2018 when they had finally patched in basic things, like legendary Pokemon. Also after they’ve added interesting events called Community Days. Also also they added in all kinds of Pokémon jargon.
One of my good friends+her family in MI is more active in with GO than i am. We both got a fancy ex raid pass that let us do this Mewtwo raid event [just look at all that jargon remember when this game was approachable]. It was February in MI so you know it was snowy and slushy and very very cold. Still, as both the raid time and myself approached the raid location i found about 25 people all staring down at their rectangles into the Pokemon world. Turns out there’s an online chat group for the local area where passionate GO players organize and coordinate these things. I got cordoned off into my group of Team Valors because the team that helps the most in the battle gets more chances to catch the dang thing at the end.
The battle started and 3 different sets of 6 of my best battle lads got plastered within seconds, as this giant psychic demon casually waved his hands and i poked my screen idly. All the fantastic godly birds and dragons everyone else brought to the fight held their ground and looked pitifully as i trotted out some golbat i caught last year because i literally didn’t have anyone else competent in my squad. The battle was a victory no thanks to me and i successfully caught me #150: the terrifying cloned abomination Mewtwo and named him twerklord.
Later that year when the weather became pleasant we returned to that area for a Community Day. These days usually last a Saturday afternoon, and the game goes haywire spawning just one kind of pokemon so you can easily reach the ludicrous price of evolving some of these guys to their final evolution. They also usually debut the shiny variant of this one pokemon, a hot color palette change. Shinies are so rare in the mainline pokemon games that over my almost 20 years playing them i still haven’t seen one.
We roll up to the park and boy howdy it looked like summer 2016 all over again. The sidewalks were positively packed with these thirsty trainers chatting about all the nitty gritty minmaxing they’ve been doing. By this point GO had added in a friends system and gives rewards if you make enough friends. So shoutout to this 10 year old kid named astroteemo who still gives me gifts from the Plymouth Canton area sometimes. At the end of the event they even debuted a new Pokémon from the next mainline game, and it was real cool seeing and hearing people coming to this realization.
Last week i spent almost a full day exclusively playing GO. In a small town in CO, Georgetown, i moved in and started asserting myself. Five gyms over a few blocks, with the most action packed one at the visitors center right next to the highway. That one required of me the most babysitting, but i still had a lot of downtime when i reigned supreme.
They added in a cute little team rocket random encounter (that should’ve been present near launch) that crashed my game. I tried to do a raid and it crashed my game. I actually got into a raid and it froze up when I won the battle, so i got to helplessly watch the timer tick down and it told me i lost. I was constantly hurting for resources so i had to pass on a lot of wild Pokémon encounters. I was usually cool with that, since a lot of encounters it gave me were for dudes i already caught and fully evolved. A lot of other encounters i got were for dudes from the 4th generation of mainline games, which segues nicely.
There’s too many dang Pokémon. This is a problem that the mainline series is currently dealing with, and now GO is facing. I’ve been casually playing for almost the whole 3 years and i still don’t have all the original 150. With the addition of timed raids, the prospect of getting legendaries seems impossible since i don’t have a crew or the patience to check every hour or two to see if i’ll even get the chance to try to catch one of them. There was just a timed event that let you hatch eggs to get Europe and Australia exclusive guys. None of my eggs got me any of them and that didn’t feel great.
Boy this took a sour turn, huh?
also welcome back, me, to this website
lol not really, future me here, i’ll be gone for another few years oops
man i dunno 