Pokemon Go: Get that lazy gamer ass off your chair and walk around

Pokemon Go!

Back when the first Pokemon Go trailer hit the internet from Nintendo in September last year -- or thereabouts -- I laughed. It's a cool concept, integrating the Pokemon capturing system with real life, going around capturing Pokemon on your phone based on GPS and your camera, aiming it at, well, where the Pokemon is and capturing it by flicking pokeballs at it. I thought, 'man, there will be a lot of retards going around following the directions on their phone to capture that Pikachu!'

Ten months later, I am one of those retards.

But, man, how can I not? It's a Pokemon! I honestly wasn't sold with the concept for the game up until I installed it a couple of days ago. I mean, I have captured not just the original 151 Pokemon, but nearly all up to the 721 we got at the end of Generation VI, and when Sun & Moon comes out at the end of this year, I will capture them all. But man, there is just so much fun to be had actually walking around your local neighbourhood, watching the little trainer sprite walk in the neighbourhood with you, and have like a Rattata and a Spearow jump out at you. 

The gameplay itself is comically simple -- walk around, Pokemon comes out, flick pokeballs at it until you catch it. There aren't NPC trainers or Pokemon Centers or Pokemarts. Local important spots like statues and malls are these 'Pokestops' that periodically shit out pokeballs and potions and a random egg or two. It's a very simple game, but it's very charming especially in its simplicity.

And the best part is? The GPS system actually works! The locale around the place I work have a lot of the common Route 1-4 Pokemon because it's a grassy area in a town. I've got Caterpies, Weedles, Rattatas, Spearows, Pidgeys, Doduos, Nidorans, the odd Poliwag or Pinsir or two there. Around my home, which is relatively close to the ocean, I find more water-types like Staryus and Psyducks and Magikarps. Near the wharfs I found Tentacools and Omanytes. It appears that the population is set based on what the local terrain is, and it really motivates you to go around the city. And the algorithm is set so that Pokemon spawn in, well, near-public places which I assume is determined by the locations tagged on the GPS, so you won't find kids wandering into someone's backyard and get kidnapped by Jason Vorhees or some shit like that.

There's these gyms, too, which kind of set it up to be some kind of gang war. You select one of three teams: Blue, Red or Yellow, based on the three legendary birds. #TeamBlue. And then some important locales serve as gyms that you can tag and place a powerful Pokemon in for your team. It's simple, very competitive and, well, when you put random people in the same colour and team you do get to build a sense of friendly rivalry over who gets control of what.

But the best part of it all? The sense of community. See, everyone above the age of ten knows what Pokemon is at this point, otherwise you had one hell of a shitty childhood. Or maybe you just don't like Pokemon and that's fine (you absolute freak) but a majority of the people my age, the 20-30 year old bracket, have at least heard of Pokemon and played a game or two, and nostalgia is as much a selling factor of this game as it is the concept.

I mean, hell, you now get to run around the forests and cities and beaches in search of Pokemon, instead of doing it just from a handheld console! The sprites are 3D and awesome (and, yeah, lifted directly from XY, but not everyone played XY) instead of pixelated and slightly deformed! And the fact that it's released on smartphones -- literally everyone has a smartphone -- instead of the 3DS ensures that this will reach the largest audience that it possibly can.

I've literally bonded with random strangers while checking out Pokemon Go while doing work at my local Starbucks. It's like "Pokemon?" "Pokemon." There's this great sense of community and fun as you talk a bit about this common ground, about what Pokemon you can find, about what Pokemon you have captured. The team rivalry between the three colours help with this, too, because I've gone and gotten together with a bunch of acquaintances from work to try and beat up the local mall's Team Red scrubs and their horrifyingly powerful Pidgeot. 

I really wished there was a bit more to evolution than to spam-capture as many Pokemon as I can, though I recognize that it's needed to foster the gimmick of, well, capturing Pokemon. You evolve Pokemon by capturing many more of their species to get enough 'candy' for their evolution, or to power up their CP to beat up Team Red scrubs. Predictably, Caterpies, Weedles and Pidgeys evolve really quickly. And the sheer awesome power boost you get from evolving a Pokemon is absolutely cool.

It's a shame that there isn't much more interaction between the Pokemon you have captured -- Bob the Bulbasaur, my starter, haven't done jack shit ever since I captured him, and I honestly thought they could've implemented a Poke-Assist type thing that they did with Pokemon Ranger if they want to make the game centered on capturing and not traditional battling. 

And, well, the centering on capturing is indeed awesome. The thrill of finding a random Nidoqueen showing up at the workplace (I guess she's mad we captured all her Nidoran babies) and getting to capture it, or walking down the riverfront and, gadzooks, is that a motherfucking Dratini? Yeah. The thrill of capturing a rare Pokemon is multiplied a hundredfold when you're actually walking down the locations in the flesh instead of, well, going "okay, Goomy spawns in these grass places in this route. Let me go back and forth and catch one."

But, shit, Pokemon Go is awesome. It's not just that the concept is executed brilliantly, but the sense of community it builds and the sheer awesomeness of replicating the Pokemon hunting experience in real life is marvelous. And it's a game that actually requires you to get up and walk around physically (or drive, that works too) to find the Pokemon you want, and it's pretty rewarding too -- you get nothing if you just sit and do nothing, and it's not too demanding because from your home to work, or just waling around the mall, nets you a decent variation of Pokemon.

And the sheer requirement of walking doesn't extend to just encountering Pokemon either. You have to walk to Pokestops to get pokeballs and other resources. You have to walk around to hatch eggs, and to get to gyms. And considering Pokespots are all public areas (good job on the GPS system for executing this near-flawlessly) it definitely encourages you to get that lazy ass off that sofa and actually walk around.

Plus, yeah, by walking around to the riverside, I get to hatch eggs and encounter a motherfucking Dratini. Quite rewarding, I would say.

Happy 20th birthday, Pokemon, you beautiful bastard. This is a wonderful game that invigorates my interest in Pokemon more than anything else, and I cracked open my copies of Pokemon Alpha Sapphire last night and walked around to capture some stuff. Maybe I'll get to finally capturing every single legendary in Alpha Sapphire after all. Oh, and I just got a Shaymin from Nintendo! XY and ORAS has a giveaway of a Legendary Pokemon every month in celebration of the 20th anniversary, and I didn't realize that was happening. I missed out on getting Celebi, Jirachi and Manaphy (no big loss on the first two, having gotten a Celebi from the Pokemon Bank and owning a Jirachi from... somewhere back when I played Gen IV/V), but I got Shaymin, which is cool! In the following months to come, Nintendo will be releasing Victini, Keldeo and Meloetta, which are all event-exclusive Pokemon, so yeah, damn right I'll be getting them all. Victini and Shaymin don't rank among my favourites, but it's definitely awesome to own them. I kinda hate Keldeo and Meloetta but... gotta catch 'em all, right?

Anyway, in honour of Pokemon's 20th Anniversary and to help bring the hype up for Pokemon Sun & Moon, I'll be doing at least one Pokemon Top Ten article every month. Stay tuned!

It's not bad for an idea spawned off an April Fool's joke, yeah? In 2014 Google released this trailer which was literally an April Fool's joke, but they took the concept and ran with it.

Well played, Nintendo, well, played.