‘Pokémon GO’ Is A Terrible Pokémon Game, But An Augmented Reality Home Run
Am I having fun? Yes. Is this a very good Pokémon game? Absolutely not.
Pokémon GO is weird.
It’s simultaneously a huge disappointment and also something that has exceeded my expectations. Those two things sound mutually exclusive, but I’ll try to explain why that isn’t actually the case. I’ll start with the bad.
Pokémon GO is a pretty awful Pokémon game. It lacks everything everyone likes about Pokémon other than the existence of the Pokémon themselves. Everyone knew the game would be simplified to some degree for AR gameplay, but what we’re left with is just…such a bummer.
The only one of these points I’m willing to concede is the capture system. Given that the game is about walking around (hence the “GO”) if I had to stop and fight every single one of the 80 Pokémon I’ve caught in the last day with my Poke-team, that would have been a lot of standing around in the middle of sidewalks for an extremely long time. To keep things moving, I think the “headshot them with a Pokeball” system is actually not all that bad as a compromise.
Also unforgivable is what Pokémon GO has done with battling. Turning Pokémon battles into a button-mashing tap-fest is just embarrassingly bad.
And yet, the game is crazily addicting, a lot of fun, and possibly the most significant advancement in the battle against obesity in recent memory. I’m not kidding.
But for all the health benefits, I worry about a few of the health risks as well. For as much cardio as you may get from Pokémon GO, because the game essentially forces you to keep the app open and check it constantly, you are really not paying attention to where you are much of the time. Add in headphones, and the game can feel downright dangerous because of how much it engrosses you.
See the full story here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2016/07/08/pokemon-go-is-a-terrible-pokemon-game-but-an-augmented-reality-home-run/#50aedce55b1c