Why Pokémon Go is the best thing you can take for a walk
Pokémon Go (2016)
Pokémon Go (2016)
Good mother of God, it’s all finally caught up to me. No, don’t worry, I’m not talking about anything sordid from my past, but my problem does stem from a long time ago - my birth, in fact. You see, those tricky old buggers called genetics have dictated that I am prone to having high cholesterol.
Who, me? The most healthiest man in the world? Early to bed (maybe), early to rise (maybe not), always doing fun-runs (definitely not), that kind of thing? Well, yes, it’s me. And no, I’m certainly not alone in this regard.
It’s only when you get a nudge and a stern look from your doctor that you start to behave. I suddenly realised that, yes, I do actually like fruit and vegetables after all, doctor. And I must tell you that I no longer feel the need to be snacking on chocolate all the time. And, oh, what was I thinking, eating juicy steaks every week? Forgive me doctor, for I have sinned!
As the saying goes, when doctors say you need a change, a pint of plain is your only man. Actually, no, that’s not it. Diet and exercise, they’re your only men. For that purpose, I always say to people that walking is the bomb.
Of course, this is just one of those things that I say, but never actually put into practice. I like to tell people that knowledge is the bomb as well, but you’ll never catch me going out there and learning stuff.
And wouldn’t you know it, the doctor recommended that I get more exercise. They always do that, don’t they? But one needs an incentive to actually get out there and start meandering around, especially if the weather is bad, which it usually is in Ireland. The somewhat pressing need to reduce my cholesterol is one such incentive, sure. But you need to change things up before they get mundane, and what better way to keep my interest in walking than by re-installing Pokémon Go?
Ah, Pokémon Go. I’ve been waiting a long time to properly talk about this game. Honestly, I expect this game to keep on running and running; the Pokémon Go you’ll be playing on your phone in 20 years might be hugely different to the one I’m talking to you about today. The game might not even be on phones anymore, but rather some dastardly neuro-chip that projects the world of Pokémon all around you.
Even so, perhaps you’ll indulge this old-timer with nuclear cholesterol as I regale you with the launch of Pokémon Go, back in the summer of 2016. God, it was hotly anticipated, and must have been downloaded millions of times in the first hour. Sometimes you think Pokémon may finally be waning in popularity, then all of a sudden it comes storming right back.
It seemed that zillions of players were out walking their local area, all trying to catch Ekans and Drowzee. Going back to neuro-projectors and technological insanity, I reckon a large proportion of those zillion players really thought they were going to see an actual Pikachu in the grass in front of them; in a way, you can, thanks to the app’s Augmented Reality features. How nifty is that?
What a wonderful time that was, the Pokémon Go launch. It was a little two-week-long moment in time where Pokémon was back in faddy fashion, firmly returned to the collective consciousness, and us kids-at-heart all thought we were gonna be Pokémon Masters once more.
It really did have a strange, arresting impact on us. Local churches and shops reported their highest footfalls and sales for some time, owing to the presence of all-important Pokémon Gyms and Pokéstops there - areas where you could battle foes and acquire in-game items.
Obsessive online nerds took it a step further, as you’d expect. They started spoofing their phone location and IP so that they could pick up a Tangela in Timbuktoo, a Pinsir in Paris, and return home for a Seel in San Diego, all without leaving their bedrooms.
Since we’re friends, I suppose I can reveal my own spate of embarrassing Pokémon Go behaviour: for a mercifully brief spell, when I simply wasn’t arsed walking around the block to hatch my eggs and encounter new monsters, I took to driving very slowly around my work’s industrial estate instead, swiping away. How sad and dangerous is that?!
I should explain, to those of you now fully lost, that Pokémon Go is a geo-caching game which you play on your phone. The game world mirrors the real-life world around you, and your task is to walk around (or putter around at 2 miles an hour if you’re me) and catch Pokémon who frequently pop up.
In between catching, you’ll also be hatching Pokémon eggs, while also battling, trading and walking all around your local park. Keep doing all of this to receive items, level up, and gain access to even better Magikarps.
That’s essentially the flow of the game, although there are problems, not all of which have been resolved in between the frequent times I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled this game. Firstly, I mentioned trading and battling, but those features weren’t always in the game.
No, the game was pretty bare on features on its initial release, which would have been fine if not for it being plagued by a myriad of glitches, crashes and bugs. Most memorably, a week or two after Pokémon Go’s worldwide release, and when everything beneath the app’s hood was on fire, an update from game developer Niantic made reference only to “minor text fixes”. You can imagine that one went down extremely well with the famously patient Pokémon fanbase.
Even with those features added, everything is incredibly simple. Of course it has to be, it’s marketed towards kids and it’s on mobile phones. But if you’re expecting some kind of involved, complicated battle simulator, forget it. This one is strictly casual.
And speaking of phones, you’d better have some strong hardware. Even then, you could be in trouble. I’ve never been one to roll around with the absolute latest phone model, but God, you should have felt my phone in the summer of 2016 - the thing was getting so hot, it was giving me calloused fingers. The flowers and ants were burning up beneath me, like I’d focused a magnifying glass on them.
Not only that, my battery was hardly lasting ten minutes. Even today, that hasn’t really changed - I’m convinced that this game does permanent damage to your phone’s battery. Downloading the Pokémon Go app represents a point-of-no-return for your device.
That’s definitely a potential barrier to entry with this game, and because I seem to destroy any phone battery I’ve ever used, this is probably why I’ve fallen in and out of love with this game so many times over the years. But you might be wondering about another potential barrier to entry with Pokémon Go, which is the cost to play.
Well, as you’d perhaps expect from a mobile game, it’s the freemium model, or free-to-start. That’s always ominous, but please believe me when I say that you actually can play this game for a very long and very fun time, and never have to spend a copper coin. I know, because I’ve done it.
Of course you can pay money to make things easier for yourself, but by choosing not to pay, you won’t be missing out on any features or anything. The game really is quite generous. Still enormously profitable of course, but as ever with these things, that’s all thanks to the whales, and when have you ever wanted to be one of them?
Making progress in Pokémon Go without paying anything does mean that you’ll have to get up off your butt and walk around, though. Living or working in a major city wouldn’t hurt, either. But once you’ve done that, and since you’ll have your phone with you anyway, all you have to do is load up the app, start walking, and try not to bump into too many people and vehicles.
If you’re out of new music, audiobooks and podcasts, and your dog is being extra lazy, then I’d say that Pokémon Go is the next best thing you can take with you on your healthy walk. After all, don’t they always say that the best things in life are free? Well, that’s what I thought too, until my anti-cholesterol diet led me to trying fat-free butter for the first time.
5 July 2024