Here in Montreal we had a Dragonite spotting that caused a lot of people to show up downtown at 1am. Cops showed up and had no idea what was going on. Was hilarious.
sciencemile The BLM activists involved are immigrants, and the community has universally condemned the action because Toronto's people actually like the police (in fact they are a large part of the parade). BLM in Canada is a purely imported thing.
Pretty unnecessary. I wish people didn't feel the next to put politics into everything. Yes if you agree with him of course you love it and will say it's no big deal but if he made some pro Trump statement the same people would complain. How about we leave politics out all together?
+MartyMcFly It isn't really political. It's the place where the second KKK was founded, and where a massive confederate memorial sits. Calling it a racist recreation park really isn't that crazy, lol.
The experience of going outside with a group of friends and running into others playing your favorite game is the social element that a lot of "social" games are missing out on. It reminds me a lot of going to the arcade.
"The civil war started because of..." t. someone who didn't pay attention to the 6 separate occasions they shove the civil war into your face throughout school. The war was fought over the limits of federal power in a union of states. The north did not care about slaves for any reason other than the threat to their economical structure. It wasn't about race, they still saw blacks and Chinese as less than human. The majority of slave owners were also Jewish immigrants and even other blacks. Thinking anyone back then believed in racial equality shows a high level of delusion.
***** That's not true but so what if it is? That doesn't go against anything else I said about it having nothing to do with racism which is the meat of the argument and the only part that's related to the OP at all.
I'd like to thank you for being the best review I have seen so far (done by an actual game reviewer too) of this game. You hit on all the important parts and actually went out and made a serious effort. So many of the other reviewers I normally rely on have utterly failed to deliver on properly explaining the mechanics, strengths and flaws of this title and you really hit the nail on the head. It seems many that are part of the traditional group of game reviewers I enjoy are so adverse to this type of activity normally that they just cannot do it the proper... leg work to properly explain what is it they are even doing. I mean as much as I enjoyed watching Jim Sterling huff and puff his way around a park while his skin was slowly dissolved by the sun, it was clear he would never put enough time in to the game to really "play it" (and to his credit, be basically said as much). So thank you, for "doing it right".
Also your phone is shit, I had none of those FPS problems with my, now several years old, note 3. ...But the fact that you had trouble may well be a perfectly apposite criticism because the game really does not look demanding enough to be as resource intensive as it is.
"The risk of freezing on catching a pokemon, makes you really not wanna catch pokemon on this game all about catching pokemon." That pretty much encapsulates what this game really is.
The coolest thing for me is seeing kids as old as I was when Pokemon first came out going around to the pokestops I added to Ingress! I made their childhoods better!
It's crazy how this game brings people together. I live in a small town of around 8000 and there are more people chilling downtown every afternoon than anyone's ever seen just because of fucking Pokemon. Its pretty great.
Pokemon Go maybe be still technically unfinished but in my opinion.. It's ok.. It will be finished and even then it has literally brought the entire gaming world together.. Kids are outside again, people are laughing and meeting each other, depression in children is beginning to be less common... This game is the definition of "Innovating and game-changing" It's absolutely amazing
Wouldn't be hard , but irrelevant for the type of product that GO is and technicaly it could in fact generate a lot of issues, mainly in term of gameplay and reward feeling.
+Captain Yenyen I fill like the free roam could work just as fine people go into search mode to only fight near by Pokemon or go mode where running into someone's battle zone cause you to go head to head of course with the option to run fight or trade Ijs
The Pokémon company doesn't wanna cannibalize the main series. I believe their thinking is by hooking up people to the app, they're gonna be more willing to buy a 3DS for the upcoming games. Who knows if it's gonna work, but I gotta say I've started to pay heed to Pokémon related news -including the new generation- because of Go. By keeping Go so barebones, they're basically advertising the main dish, Pokémon Sun and Moon.
+Zappandy that's a leap I played Pokemon last called soul silver on my Pc I hacked it because one I'm not buying ds for one bs game In addition Going pass 300 Pokemon you lose easily 40% of your client list
Heero Abdulai No, that's a real marketing concern and it makes sense. Do you really think the mainstream market would bother emulating instead of purchasing a product? Those people want the quick mobile experience. The fact of the matter is Pokémon Go is advertising for their IP, be it other games or the anime.
I'm a librarian at a public library, and as soon as we all figured out how Go works (meaning: I told everyone how it works, I'm the youngest staff member they have) we put up signs, made badges for the staff, did everything we could to get those kids and not-so-kids wandering in the building for our pokestop also use the library. Guess what. It worked. Our foot traffic has increased dramatically. People set up lures and then lounge around, using computers or reading books while looking for catches or waiting for the pokestop goodies to refresh. To the library, this is 100% an excellent thing. We couldn't make this kind of interest spike on our own in a million years. PEOPLE ARE COMING TO THE LIBRARY FOR POKEMON. Thank you Nintendo, this is the best free advertising we've ever had.
Super Bunnyhop you and JoeysWorldTour are the only youtubers i even bother watching anymore. Watch you for entertaining but also useful videos filled with information. And joey for when i need to laugh my ass off.
Squirtlesquad rolls deep. I love how the teams which aren't different at all mechanically speaking in game have taken on a life/personality of their own.
This game makes me want to get my friends and dress up like team rocket, create alt-accounts to join team valor, name our selves rocket grunts and just take over gyms with zubats and rattatas. Maybe the occasional grimer and ekans.
In my small hometown in Sweden, wherever I go and wherever I look people are playing. The trainers are anywhere between 10 years old to 40 years old. This game is huge.
He's on a /budget/ mannn Jokes aside I wish I could into this game if it weren't for the fact I live in 100+ degree weather. The fire type pokemon are not worth it.
The sad thing is: This app mainly makes me dream about what kind of app I actually want to play. When I walk through my small town, I can find a fairly large number of Zubats and Pidgeys, and sometimes Drowzees... but it doesn't seem to depend where I am, as long as I'm somewhere within the center of my town. But when I leave, and go into the woods close to my house... I get nothing. Literally, I can walk there forever. Then I go to a nearby small lake, and again, Zubats and Pidgeys. And it doesn't matter if I go at dawn, noon or in the evening, it's always more or less the same. I would love to have an app, where I actually can controll what I want to catch what Pokemon, and apparently it is programmed that way, but it's just waaaaaay too ambiguous.
pokemon go is honestly genius, and you nailed the ending. I don't personally enjoy this (because it's hard to play where I live) but I can't understand people trying to spin this game as a bad thing. it's about as good as it can get in terms of what it's trying to do.
You look quite concerned at some points. Also quite surprised at how fluffy/bouncy your hair looks :-) Your voice is always very calming. It's methodical and somewhat like you have a script at all times.
I would certainly love to enjoy this game, but it takes a few hours of coaxing and small animal sacrifices to get the game working for a few minutes at a time, and even when it does work, there's two pokestops and one gym within reasonable walking distance from my home. It also means that I can't even try challenging gyms, because they're locked down with pokemon thrice as strong as my own, and it takes so much effort just to get a pidgey or rattata that I can barely bring myself to pull up the app anymore. The playerbase in my area also seems to be primarily middle schoolers, so there's not even much of a community for me to get into. I'm really glad that other people are able to enjoy it, but everything seems to be working together to keep me from getting anything out of it.
The whole "what team?" segment reminded me of Game of Thrones. "I was in the battle, at Blackwater! I was a captain and a knight." "And serving which King?" "The one true King of Westeros" "..." "Stannis Baratheon"
you say that, but people are going outside for this. It's now regular for me to see over 20-30 people at the shopping center my theater is at. You just make sure to stay hydrated and make frequent stops. haven't done walking in my neighbour yet, but I've seen plenty of people do it. (and if I had the spare money, Dynamo's are doing something to let you go on the field after the game. which sounds awesome)
I just can't get behind it because of the gameplay. I can enjoy games with bad gameplay, but they need to have something very good to compensate, usually a narrative or characters. I'm sure socializing is fun for some people, but I generally am introverted, so that's not really a plus for me. Despite my own personal dislike for socializing, I'm really failing to see how the social aspect makes up for the lack of gameplay, at least from the perspective of a person who normally plays video games. I totally get why normies pile on though, socializing is their bread and butter and much like a new generation of Star Wars, popularizing something this much can take it from being a point of ridicule, to the hot new thing (much like gaming itself, really). I guess what I'm getting at is, it's cool some people can enjoy it, but I also feel kind of put off that none of these people can just like something on their own without a billion people telling them it's okay now because it's popular.
Same and hell, the socialization aspect is still plenty there in the real games if you participate at all in the online format. The only thing this brings to the table is the AR and GPS aspects which lose their novetly after a while
I went to the pub crawl in Columbus that he talked about. This app is a really good ice breaker since everyone at the crawl was playing the game. I met a lot of new people and it was a really fun time!
The framerate is bad because you're using a bad phone. You get what you pay for. In this case, you're using outdated hardware. Works fine on the phone that I have.
if you understood anything about memory management or computer science. you'd understand that Pokemon Go is a bloated app, that requires way more processing power than something like that should. it also kills your battery because of how inefficient it runs .so even on your fancy IMO impractical 1000 dollar phone, it still kills the battery way faster than it should.
My issue with the game, apart from the omnipresent bugs and server issues, is the fact that it doesn't really provide a strong incentive to walk because of the way pokestops are distributed in my town. Specifically, there are a few "islands" of densely-placed pokestops, but those islands are distanced far enough apart that there's no advantage to walking between them. If there's a cluster of 4 pokestops within 30 seconds walking distance of each other, which should I spend 7 minutes walking to the next cluster a few blocks over? Let alone spend 5 minutes walking to a single pokestop. This dynamic just makes the game into typical energy management/waiting game. If the 'stops and gyms were more evenly distributed, there'd be more incentive to walk around. Or they could give the pokestops bigger yields but put them on a much longer cooldown. I suppose there is an incentive to wander around to catch different Pokemon, but so far I go through Pokeballs way too fast to spend Pokemon Go excursions doing anything but spinning Pokestops in the most time-efficient manner possible.
I don't like pokmeon, and I don't like mobile games, and I don't play pokemon go, but that doesn't stop me from loving it, I always take midnight walks with my friend and now we actually see people outside, in the middle of the night!!! This game is fantastic and we need more of it.
I kinda got back into Pokemon GO after being mostly on and off after the initial period and honestly aside from the unappetizing big tech wannabe Niantic graphic design, it really grew into what it could've been all along. Technically it actually freaking works and even low end phones today chew it up easily. Better balancing with more Pokemon and ways to make them appear, more Pokestops and general activity even in small places (used to be really tough to stock up on anything in a small town). Background fitness tracking is extremely useful, it doesn't eat up your battery in an hour. And aside from that all the mechanical features, actual quests with a tiny bit of context to give more structure, Battle Leagues, raids, ACTUAL TRADING?!?!(HOW WAS THIS MISSING AT LAUNCH????). In retrospect it's kinda embarrassing how shoddy of state it was in when it launched, but it was an experiment. Makes you think how cool a full """"""AAA"""""""(in mobile terms) geo location based game could be, like say Pokemon Masters which is of course an extremely opulent mobile game due to its high earning gacha systems. I can only imagine how cool GO would be with all the story, more traditional battle mechanics, cool animations and classic characters from Pokemon Masters, but then it wouldn't have probably reached anywhere near its initial success which was in large part thanks to its simplicity. But I really want a full on sequel, the original is showing it's age in many ways. But then again, I'm not expecting The Pokemon Company ever to do more than the bare minimum considering the state of even the main series. I would at least appreciate if Dragon Quest Walk ever got localized as it seems like the most fully featured game of this type.
It doesn't take cynicism, it takes a "bah, I was exploring the city before these whippersnappers came with their furry pocket monsters to ruin my quiet time! Curse you, Nintendo!" attitude. :P
The biggest issues I have with Pokémon Go: 1- They take "Gotta Cath 'Em All" a little TOO literally (Catch ALL OF THE DROWZEES) 2- Trading and fighting among trainers isn't a thing (yet?). This removes me from the most fun I had with Pokémon; Building a team and fighting with friends. Training your Pokémon is also no longer a thing, you just catch 48 Zubat, mash them together and you get a Golbat. It kind of ruins it for me. 3- Building your Pokedex has never been so difficult, especially with the aforementioned catching 48 Zubats issue. If they implemented some sort of battle option, at least with the wild Pokemon to level up your Pokemon. Beat them up, get experience. Catch them, get candy. That would make it more fun. 4- Living in Canada, I only got the game about 5 days ago, however people have downloaded the game a month in advance, making gym battles basically impossible. My strongest Pokémon is a recently captured 300 CP Jynx and the nearest gyms are held by 1000+ CP Pokémon. Kind of ruins the fun. Plus I heard you have to fight them multiple times before you can take on the gym. Fuck that. 5- Without incense, catching Pokémon has never been more frustrating (Especially with the "near" system being non-existent) All in all, I think it is a very neat game with huge potential for the future of gaming and AR, but with terrible handling of the release, plus all the crashes and bugs we encounter make it less pleasant. I haven't encountered any issues with the Pokestops, but I have had the game crash on me several times.
Great video. Personally I haven't touched the game, and yeah it's nice to see that it has brought so many people together; but I'm not sure how long it'll last, personally. The game barely has any of the depth needed for the longevity that it would need to last longer than it already has, and I think one of the biggest reasons that it is this big is purely because nostalgia; and how long can nostalgia hold before people start realising that the game isn't all that deep or well made in the first place? That's the reason I haven't played it. I did play Pokemon when I was younger, but I don't have that sense of nostalgia to go and get the app, and with all of its problems with depth, it being a technical mess etc, I have no reason to. I don't play mobile games at all anyway which is probably a big part of why I didn't buy it anyway, but I'm interested to see how long this will last.
Longevity can also come from just pure fun. I still play older games to this day just because they're fun. Pokemon Go is a blast to play, its even more fun with friends, so I think its safe to say that it will last for awhile, that and it should be getting more Pokemon through updates.
Niantic is planning on releasing major, periodic updates to expand the game. I think this is pretty genius, since the game, currently just the bare minimum of what it has to offer, is already a massive phenomenon. I expect it to last a while of they actually deliver on these updates.
If you have caught the pokemon and it freezes, go into your journal and check first. sometimes if the journal logged that you caught it then the pokemon will appear in your inventory.
"Headed over to a park because someone had dropped a lure module and there was a bunch of kool kids hangin around with speakers playin V A P O R W A V E" nice
I have a Moto X (2013). My phone is 3 years old. It runs PokeGo with no slow downs in any menu or the AR camera running (though I normally don't use it for battery reasons).
Pokemon GO really is the perfect storm, and I don't think it could ever be replicated. Only with pokémon could you bring such a wide gamut of invested players outside and into new communities. And not just only with pokemon, but only with the first 150 pokemon. The nostalgia, relatability, and sense of discovery, and especially the sense of community that's so sorely needed in these times of ideological opposition, really makes this into nothing but a source of goodness. I think we will look back to this moment in time as something special, and hopefully the summer of 2016 will be remembered as the summer of Pokémon GO rather than the summer of Trump vs Clinton.
Nearby wasn't broken at launch. It worked pretty well the first few days. Although at some point it just got busted entirely to get the permanent 3-step state. I remember the first weekend it actually was doing the thing it was supposed to do.
Very nice review and so true! I couldn't even play the game because of my old phone. I've read that even if you got a newer phone you still might not be able to play because the game isn't supported on all brands. However I do agree that this could be the start of a new interesting game genre :). The social part of this game is one of the things I do love, people seem to be talking to each again or take part in playful banter if they are a part of a different team.
Great video as always. The waterfront area in the city by me has a huge crowd regularly at night. It's really wild to see all these people coming together to play Pokemon. Also, George do you play ukulele?
There's a Facebook post lying around about this dog shelter that started a "rent-a-dog service" for adults being embarrassed about playing Pokémon Go Basically you would pay a nominal fee to take a dog out for a walk so you can pretend that you're just out to walk your dog It turned out to be so popular that almost all fo the dogs in the shelter ended up being adopted and the extra income allowed them to remove the adoption fee entirely Personally that's what made me change my mind about the impact of Pokémon Go on society
Note: All the server issues have recently been fixed. Since 2 days ago, the servers have steadily been better. And now there are barely any server issues.
In the game's defense, it's still only in its beta. It isn't even 1.0 yet. Considering that, I think it's great that they're letting that public test for glitches and such, as the public knows best.
the one good thing pokemon go did was remind me of actual pokemon games i used to play. i hope more people start playing the good ones on their phones like firered/leafgreen/emerald....
"What should we do after we catch all 150?" I really hope they add an update for Gen 2, and further updates add new generations. That'd give you incentive to head back out again.
I'm sorry, but no App, not even Pokémon Go is gonna make me go walk outside on a 116 degree day, I can do without the skin cancer and dehydration thank you very much.
How much? Well the facebook comments on Finnish news site's articles regarding Pokemon go seem to have just the right amount. I'm just happy that the riverside and parks in my *smallish* town has some other use than just people getting wasted. Like the park near me has 2 pokestops overlapping and a gym on the steps of the cathedral about 100 meters away, and that place is like THE gathering place now. Through the night there are people there, even cars parked around it filled with people. It is crazy and somehow wonderful.
Can we all agree that there are way too many Rattatas, Pidgeys, and Weedles? I've seriously lost the excitement of feeling my phone buzz when a Pokémon spawns because of how often it's purple vermin I've already caught hundreds of times.
If you look at the ninantic website they seem to be hiring senior developers and for management position. It looks like they didn't have the team in place for development at launch time
I don't know if this sense of wonder will last throughout the upcoming months when more Pokémon generations are announced. Regardless, the Pokémon Company and Niantic have done something really clever, attach kids to gen 1 Pokémon. When they get older, they'll probably have this same nostalgia we have for the original starters, Mewtwo, Arcanine, Gyarados etc.
I tried Pokemon Go for the first time today and while it kind of fun I dont like having to walk around with my eyes locked at my phone's screen. It hurts my neck after a while and also im a person that actually enjoy taking long walks but not if im not going to be able to enjoy seeing the surroundings. I agree with George that they need to add more to this game if this is going stay popular for more than just over the summer.
hey George! When you mention that there won't be anything to do after completing your pokedex don't forget that by the time sun and moon come out they'll have something like 650 more Pokemon to add. How they'll do that without ruining their game? No clue! But I think they'll try
I'M JUST OVER HERE IN EUROPE TAKING UP ALL YOUR BANDWITH SO YOU CAN NEVER HAVE FUN POKEMON ADVENTURES MWAHAHAHAHA
oh wait brexit
oh
Europe =/= EU
yiff in hell furfag
***** I think you're just MASKING your true feelings for me
You monster Frisbee!
tfw you miss a huge societal phenomenon because you have a windows phone
f
Kek I don't have a phone.
But cotana is cool
Nice user photo
for real, i've had to tether my ipad to my phone get anywhere in the game
Here in Montreal we had a Dragonite spotting that caused a lot of people to show up downtown at 1am. Cops showed up and had no idea what was going on. Was hilarious.
Until they opened fire on the crowd
sciencemile Not particularly amusing. We don't have that people vs police mentality here like the yankees do.
dave19941000
Didn't BLM shut down a gay pride parade in Toronto because they objected to the police being allowed floats? I think you do
sciencemile The BLM activists involved are immigrants, and the community has universally condemned the action because Toronto's people actually like the police (in fact they are a large part of the parade).
BLM in Canada is a purely imported thing.
+sciencemile dude the police as a whole aren't what's wrong, and hating the police is stupid. There are way more good cops than bad cops.
"I got a Samsung Galaxy On5"
You fucked up, you fucked up real hard!
What's the better option that's equivalently cheap?
Moto E, though I don't know if I could use anything less powerful than a Moto G.
Moto G 3rd gen is only like $120. It was for me.
an Iphone 5S or a equivalent Galaxy on sale on Ebay daily deals for $80 bucks w/ no contract. Buy it now, free shipping with money back guarantee.
+Ranting Raven Network
I have a first-gen Moto G and it still wasn't having issues with framerates. I'm wondering what was up with his phone.
I like shorts! They're comfy and easy to wear!
But what if it's cold out?
Fucking youngster.
Lmfao
+Strideo1 Then don't go outside, of course!
hmm i thought that was Hotel Dusk reference
"Local racist recreation park" very funny joke George. Stone Mtn. has such a weird history, it creeps me out.
Pretty unnecessary. I wish people didn't feel the next to put politics into everything. Yes if you agree with him of course you love it and will say it's no big deal but if he made some pro Trump statement the same people would complain. How about we leave politics out all together?
+MartyMcFly What politics? No politics were mentioned at any point in that comment. Only a joke about the confederate flag.
reactionary pls go
I'm glad someone's finally taking a stand for racist confederate monuments
+MartyMcFly It isn't really political. It's the place where the second KKK was founded, and where a massive confederate memorial sits. Calling it a racist recreation park really isn't that crazy, lol.
"Comfy, easy-to-wear pair of shorts"
10/10 George.
Good to hear that walking conveys a constant sense of movement and progression.
The experience of going outside with a group of friends and running into others playing your favorite game is the social element that a lot of "social" games are missing out on. It reminds me a lot of going to the arcade.
"Society never trained me to properly react to a Ponyta report."
I love this line, haha
6:09 "local racist recreation park"
>shows confederate flag
It's an older meme, sir, but it checks out.
That wasn't really a meme...
geez, this guy is a betacuck. how is the Confederate flag racist?
geez, this guy is a betacuck. how is the Confederate flag racist?
"The civil war started because of..." t. someone who didn't pay attention to the 6 separate occasions they shove the civil war into your face throughout school. The war was fought over the limits of federal power in a union of states.
The north did not care about slaves for any reason other than the threat to their economical structure. It wasn't about race, they still saw blacks and Chinese as less than human. The majority of slave owners were also Jewish immigrants and even other blacks.
Thinking anyone back then believed in racial equality shows a high level of delusion.
*****
That's not true but so what if it is? That doesn't go against anything else I said about it having nothing to do with racism which is the meat of the argument and the only part that's related to the OP at all.
"Screw you Europe" - Super Bunnyhop
I like how camera montage makes George like a creep stalking children with camera
god the first 2 weeks or so of this game were amazing. just rolling around with some friends and shit talking other teams
I'd like to thank you for being the best review I have seen so far (done by an actual game reviewer too) of this game. You hit on all the important parts and actually went out and made a serious effort. So many of the other reviewers I normally rely on have utterly failed to deliver on properly explaining the mechanics, strengths and flaws of this title and you really hit the nail on the head.
It seems many that are part of the traditional group of game reviewers I enjoy are so adverse to this type of activity normally that they just cannot do it the proper... leg work to properly explain what is it they are even doing. I mean as much as I enjoyed watching Jim Sterling huff and puff his way around a park while his skin was slowly dissolved by the sun, it was clear he would never put enough time in to the game to really "play it" (and to his credit, be basically said as much).
So thank you, for "doing it right".
Also your phone is shit, I had none of those FPS problems with my, now several years old, note 3. ...But the fact that you had trouble may well be a perfectly apposite criticism because the game really does not look demanding enough to be as resource intensive as it is.
"The risk of freezing on catching a pokemon, makes you really not wanna catch pokemon on this game all about catching pokemon."
That pretty much encapsulates what this game really is.
The coolest thing for me is seeing kids as old as I was when Pokemon first came out going around to the pokestops I added to Ingress! I made their childhoods better!
It's crazy how this game brings people together. I live in a small town of around 8000 and there are more people chilling downtown every afternoon than anyone's ever seen just because of fucking Pokemon. Its pretty great.
Bunny hop doesn't disappoint again. You are the TH-cam champion
Pokemon Go maybe be still technically unfinished but in my opinion.. It's ok.. It will be finished and even then it has literally brought the entire gaming world together.. Kids are outside again, people are laughing and meeting each other, depression in children is beginning to be less common... This game is the definition of "Innovating and game-changing"
It's absolutely amazing
How hard could it have been to make this a traditional rpg turn base game with geo location I mean a 1st gen game boy did it
Wouldn't be hard , but irrelevant for the type of product that GO is and technicaly it could in fact generate a lot of issues, mainly in term of gameplay and reward feeling.
+Captain Yenyen I fill like the free roam could work just as fine people go into search mode to only fight near by Pokemon or go mode where running into someone's battle zone cause you to go head to head of course with the option to run fight or trade
Ijs
The Pokémon company doesn't wanna cannibalize the main series. I believe their thinking is by hooking up people to the app, they're gonna be more willing to buy a 3DS for the upcoming games. Who knows if it's gonna work, but I gotta say I've started to pay heed to Pokémon related news -including the new generation- because of Go. By keeping Go so barebones, they're basically advertising the main dish, Pokémon Sun and Moon.
+Zappandy that's a leap I played Pokemon last called soul silver on my Pc I hacked it because one I'm not buying ds for one bs game
In addition
Going pass 300 Pokemon you lose easily 40% of your client list
Heero Abdulai No, that's a real marketing concern and it makes sense. Do you really think the mainstream market would bother emulating instead of purchasing a product?
Those people want the quick mobile experience. The fact of the matter is Pokémon Go is advertising for their IP, be it other games or the anime.
I'm a librarian at a public library, and as soon as we all figured out how Go works (meaning: I told everyone how it works, I'm the youngest staff member they have) we put up signs, made badges for the staff, did everything we could to get those kids and not-so-kids wandering in the building for our pokestop also use the library.
Guess what. It worked.
Our foot traffic has increased dramatically. People set up lures and then lounge around, using computers or reading books while looking for catches or waiting for the pokestop goodies to refresh. To the library, this is 100% an excellent thing. We couldn't make this kind of interest spike on our own in a million years. PEOPLE ARE COMING TO THE LIBRARY FOR POKEMON. Thank you Nintendo, this is the best free advertising we've ever had.
One year later, and the app still suffers the same problems it did at launch.
Games Played Badly yep
Super Bunnyhop you and JoeysWorldTour are the only youtubers i even bother watching anymore. Watch you for entertaining but also useful videos filled with information. And joey for when i need to laugh my ass off.
I wish you would've covered Ingress. It's still available but a few years older than pokemon
Squirtlesquad rolls deep. I love how the teams which aren't different at all mechanically speaking in game have taken on a life/personality of their own.
This game makes me want to get my friends and dress up like team rocket, create alt-accounts to join team valor, name our selves rocket grunts and just take over gyms with zubats and rattatas. Maybe the occasional grimer and ekans.
I don't play but it gets my friends to come on more walks with me. 10/10 for getting my favorite nerds off their couches
In my small hometown in Sweden, wherever I go and wherever I look people are playing. The trainers are anywhere between 10 years old to 40 years old. This game is huge.
>gets a cheap ass phone
>complains about the game running badly, with low framerate or freezes
Dude.
He's on a /budget/ mannn
Jokes aside I wish I could into this game if it weren't for the fact I live in 100+ degree weather. The fire type pokemon are not worth it.
>Tries to greentext on TH-cam
>Saying Pokemon Go doesn't run like garbage on most phones
>Bruh
He said the AR didn't work on his phone and he tried it on friend's phones where it ran like garbage, I believe? Maybe these people have good phones?
>meme arrows
A game should not run with < 1 fps in a menu nomatter the phone
The sad thing is: This app mainly makes me dream about what kind of app I actually want to play.
When I walk through my small town, I can find a fairly large number of Zubats and Pidgeys, and sometimes Drowzees... but it doesn't seem to depend where I am, as long as I'm somewhere within the center of my town. But when I leave, and go into the woods close to my house... I get nothing. Literally, I can walk there forever.
Then I go to a nearby small lake, and again, Zubats and Pidgeys. And it doesn't matter if I go at dawn, noon or in the evening, it's always more or less the same.
I would love to have an app, where I actually can controll what I want to catch what Pokemon, and apparently it is programmed that way, but it's just waaaaaay too ambiguous.
Great video man, very insightful and loaded with great points.
pokemon go is honestly genius, and you nailed the ending. I don't personally enjoy this (because it's hard to play where I live) but I can't understand people trying to spin this game as a bad thing. it's about as good as it can get in terms of what it's trying to do.
With your talk of forming virtual gangs, I received a sudden vision of GTA GO. And yea verily, 'twas glorious.
"grabbing a comfy easy to wear pair of shorts." What a subtle refrence, I didn't even catch it on my first viewing. nice.
You look quite concerned at some points.
Also quite surprised at how fluffy/bouncy your hair looks :-)
Your voice is always very calming. It's methodical and somewhat like you have a script at all times.
I would certainly love to enjoy this game, but it takes a few hours of coaxing and small animal sacrifices to get the game working for a few minutes at a time, and even when it does work, there's two pokestops and one gym within reasonable walking distance from my home. It also means that I can't even try challenging gyms, because they're locked down with pokemon thrice as strong as my own, and it takes so much effort just to get a pidgey or rattata that I can barely bring myself to pull up the app anymore. The playerbase in my area also seems to be primarily middle schoolers, so there's not even much of a community for me to get into.
I'm really glad that other people are able to enjoy it, but everything seems to be working together to keep me from getting anything out of it.
The whole "what team?" segment reminded me of Game of Thrones.
"I was in the battle, at Blackwater! I was a captain and a knight."
"And serving which King?"
"The one true King of Westeros"
"..."
"Stannis Baratheon"
I'm sure this game will be much more popular when Houston stops being an oven outside. So sometime in January I guess.
you say that, but people are going outside for this. It's now regular for me to see over 20-30 people at the shopping center my theater is at. You just make sure to stay hydrated and make frequent stops.
haven't done walking in my neighbour yet, but I've seen plenty of people do it. (and if I had the spare money, Dynamo's are doing something to let you go on the field after the game. which sounds awesome)
It'd be better for Houston but for other parts of the US January would be absolutely shit due to the freezing frostbite weather.
Houston trainers unite!
I just can't get behind it because of the gameplay. I can enjoy games with bad gameplay, but they need to have something very good to compensate, usually a narrative or characters. I'm sure socializing is fun for some people, but I generally am introverted, so that's not really a plus for me. Despite my own personal dislike for socializing, I'm really failing to see how the social aspect makes up for the lack of gameplay, at least from the perspective of a person who normally plays video games. I totally get why normies pile on though, socializing is their bread and butter and much like a new generation of Star Wars, popularizing something this much can take it from being a point of ridicule, to the hot new thing (much like gaming itself, really).
I guess what I'm getting at is, it's cool some people can enjoy it, but I also feel kind of put off that none of these people can just like something on their own without a billion people telling them it's okay now because it's popular.
Same and hell, the socialization aspect is still plenty there in the real games if you participate at all in the online format. The only thing this brings to the table is the AR and GPS aspects which lose their novetly after a while
I went to the pub crawl in Columbus that he talked about. This app is a really good ice breaker since everyone at the crawl was playing the game. I met a lot of new people and it was a really fun time!
I have not experienced any frame rate issues at all even with AR. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 5
He used an absolutely atrocious phone. My OnePlus 3 runs it perfectly with no slowdowns too.
I have a galaxy 4 and it doesn't lag either
If you buy a pile of chunk on the other hand...
Nexus 5X lags quite a bit.
I think the more interesting thing is that I'm slooowly realizing that history is repeating itself...
"history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme"
I'm glad you weren't robbed, stabbed, or hit by a car George.
Glad you got it out on time.
The framerate is bad because you're using a bad phone. You get what you pay for. In this case, you're using outdated hardware. Works fine on the phone that I have.
if you understood anything about memory management or computer science. you'd understand that Pokemon Go is a bloated app, that requires way more processing power than something like that should. it also kills your battery because of how inefficient it runs .so even on your fancy IMO impractical 1000 dollar phone, it still kills the battery way faster than it should.
Orion Rodriguez who said anything about battery life though? He was talking about the framerate.
Really hope that I wasn't the only one who caught the shorts reference. Well played, Super Bunnyoungster
My issue with the game, apart from the omnipresent bugs and server issues, is the fact that it doesn't really provide a strong incentive to walk because of the way pokestops are distributed in my town.
Specifically, there are a few "islands" of densely-placed pokestops, but those islands are distanced far enough apart that there's no advantage to walking between them. If there's a cluster of 4 pokestops within 30 seconds walking distance of each other, which should I spend 7 minutes walking to the next cluster a few blocks over? Let alone spend 5 minutes walking to a single pokestop. This dynamic just makes the game into typical energy management/waiting game. If the 'stops and gyms were more evenly distributed, there'd be more incentive to walk around. Or they could give the pokestops bigger yields but put them on a much longer cooldown.
I suppose there is an incentive to wander around to catch different Pokemon, but so far I go through Pokeballs way too fast to spend Pokemon Go excursions doing anything but spinning Pokestops in the most time-efficient manner possible.
A year later and the game is still plagued with problems and little content . Make an update video .
I'm so glad someone else noticed the gang war analogy.
George mentioned vaporwave. It's official, I'm subbing to you now.
I don't like pokmeon, and I don't like mobile games, and I don't play pokemon go, but that doesn't stop me from loving it, I always take midnight walks with my friend and now we actually see people outside, in the middle of the night!!! This game is fantastic and we need more of it.
I kinda got back into Pokemon GO after being mostly on and off after the initial period and honestly aside from the unappetizing big tech wannabe Niantic graphic design, it really grew into what it could've been all along. Technically it actually freaking works and even low end phones today chew it up easily. Better balancing with more Pokemon and ways to make them appear, more Pokestops and general activity even in small places (used to be really tough to stock up on anything in a small town). Background fitness tracking is extremely useful, it doesn't eat up your battery in an hour. And aside from that all the mechanical features, actual quests with a tiny bit of context to give more structure, Battle Leagues, raids, ACTUAL TRADING?!?!(HOW WAS THIS MISSING AT LAUNCH????). In retrospect it's kinda embarrassing how shoddy of state it was in when it launched, but it was an experiment. Makes you think how cool a full """"""AAA"""""""(in mobile terms) geo location based game could be, like say Pokemon Masters which is of course an extremely opulent mobile game due to its high earning gacha systems. I can only imagine how cool GO would be with all the story, more traditional battle mechanics, cool animations and classic characters from Pokemon Masters, but then it wouldn't have probably reached anywhere near its initial success which was in large part thanks to its simplicity. But I really want a full on sequel, the original is showing it's age in many ways. But then again, I'm not expecting The Pokemon Company ever to do more than the bare minimum considering the state of even the main series. I would at least appreciate if Dragon Quest Walk ever got localized as it seems like the most fully featured game of this type.
That quote at the end was golden.
I live in a rural small town so I can't really get the same experience unless I make a trip towards the nearest city.
It doesn't take cynicism, it takes a "bah, I was exploring the city before these whippersnappers came with their furry pocket monsters to ruin my quiet time! Curse you, Nintendo!" attitude. :P
The biggest issues I have with Pokémon Go:
1- They take "Gotta Cath 'Em All" a little TOO literally (Catch ALL OF THE DROWZEES)
2- Trading and fighting among trainers isn't a thing (yet?). This removes me from the most fun I had with Pokémon; Building a team and fighting with friends. Training your Pokémon is also no longer a thing, you just catch 48 Zubat, mash them together and you get a Golbat. It kind of ruins it for me.
3- Building your Pokedex has never been so difficult, especially with the aforementioned catching 48 Zubats issue. If they implemented some sort of battle option, at least with the wild Pokemon to level up your Pokemon. Beat them up, get experience. Catch them, get candy. That would make it more fun.
4- Living in Canada, I only got the game about 5 days ago, however people have downloaded the game a month in advance, making gym battles basically impossible. My strongest Pokémon is a recently captured 300 CP Jynx and the nearest gyms are held by 1000+ CP Pokémon. Kind of ruins the fun. Plus I heard you have to fight them multiple times before you can take on the gym. Fuck that.
5- Without incense, catching Pokémon has never been more frustrating (Especially with the "near" system being non-existent)
All in all, I think it is a very neat game with huge potential for the future of gaming and AR, but with terrible handling of the release, plus all the crashes and bugs we encounter make it less pleasant.
I haven't encountered any issues with the Pokestops, but I have had the game crash on me several times.
Great video. Personally I haven't touched the game, and yeah it's nice to see that it has brought so many people together; but I'm not sure how long it'll last, personally. The game barely has any of the depth needed for the longevity that it would need to last longer than it already has, and I think one of the biggest reasons that it is this big is purely because nostalgia; and how long can nostalgia hold before people start realising that the game isn't all that deep or well made in the first place?
That's the reason I haven't played it. I did play Pokemon when I was younger, but I don't have that sense of nostalgia to go and get the app, and with all of its problems with depth, it being a technical mess etc, I have no reason to. I don't play mobile games at all anyway which is probably a big part of why I didn't buy it anyway, but I'm interested to see how long this will last.
Longevity can also come from just pure fun. I still play older games to this day just because they're fun. Pokemon Go is a blast to play, its even more fun with friends, so I think its safe to say that it will last for awhile, that and it should be getting more Pokemon through updates.
Niantic is planning on releasing major, periodic updates to expand the game. I think this is pretty genius, since the game, currently just the bare minimum of what it has to offer, is already a massive phenomenon. I expect it to last a while of they actually deliver on these updates.
If you have caught the pokemon and it freezes, go into your journal and check first. sometimes if the journal logged that you caught it then the pokemon will appear in your inventory.
"Headed over to a park because someone had dropped a lure module and there was a bunch of kool kids hangin around with speakers playin V A P O R W A V E"
nice
"local racist recreation park" had me crackin up. good video, dad
I have a Moto X (2013). My phone is 3 years old. It runs PokeGo with no slow downs in any menu or the AR camera running (though I normally don't use it for battery reasons).
DID YOU SAY YOU LIVE IN ATLANTA?
Atlanta, Georgia. Perfect, never heard that before.
Pokemon GO really is the perfect storm, and I don't think it could ever be replicated. Only with pokémon could you bring such a wide gamut of invested players outside and into new communities. And not just only with pokemon, but only with the first 150 pokemon. The nostalgia, relatability, and sense of discovery, and especially the sense of community that's so sorely needed in these times of ideological opposition, really makes this into nothing but a source of goodness.
I think we will look back to this moment in time as something special, and hopefully the summer of 2016 will be remembered as the summer of Pokémon GO rather than the summer of Trump vs Clinton.
Pretty cool that I live like 30 minutes from Atlanta, so I'll be coming for your gyms SBH
Finally someone with good taste in Teams.
I can't live without knowing if they actually did play Vaporwave. I _need_ to know.
Nearby wasn't broken at launch. It worked pretty well the first few days. Although at some point it just got busted entirely to get the permanent 3-step state. I remember the first weekend it actually was doing the thing it was supposed to do.
Very nice review and so true! I couldn't even play the game because of my old phone. I've read that even if you got a newer phone you still might not be able to play because the game isn't supported on all brands. However I do agree that this could be the start of a new interesting game genre :). The social part of this game is one of the things I do love, people seem to be talking to each again or take part in playful banter if they are a part of a different team.
The menu fps slow down is because its still rendering the map in the background.
Great video as always. The waterfront area in the city by me has a huge crowd regularly at night. It's really wild to see all these people coming together to play Pokemon. Also, George do you play ukulele?
There's a Facebook post lying around about this dog shelter that started a "rent-a-dog service" for adults being embarrassed about playing Pokémon Go
Basically you would pay a nominal fee to take a dog out for a walk so you can pretend that you're just out to walk your dog
It turned out to be so popular that almost all fo the dogs in the shelter ended up being adopted and the extra income allowed them to remove the adoption fee entirely
Personally that's what made me change my mind about the impact of Pokémon Go on society
Note: All the server issues have recently been fixed. Since 2 days ago, the servers have steadily been better. And now there are barely any server issues.
In the game's defense, it's still only in its beta. It isn't even 1.0 yet. Considering that, I think it's great that they're letting that public test for glitches and such, as the public knows best.
You are cool to us, George.
the one good thing pokemon go did was remind me of actual pokemon games i used to play. i hope more people start playing the good ones on their phones like firered/leafgreen/emerald....
I want a Jet Set Radio AR game to capitalize on that whole "imaginary gangs" thing
Apparently, they're gonna be gradually adding Pokemons from later gens.
I feel bad that the thing I got out of this is that you know and potentially enjoy vaporwave, which got me excited
"What should we do after we catch all 150?"
I really hope they add an update for Gen 2, and further updates add new generations. That'd give you incentive to head back out again.
i'm getting smooth frame rates on my IPhone 5S, but there are some freezing issues
I'm sorry, but no App, not even Pokémon Go is gonna make me go walk outside on a 116 degree day, I can do without the skin cancer and dehydration thank you very much.
You just need lots of sunblock and water!
Do you happen to live in southern AZ?
CT I You mean hell on Earth? Yeah.
Redgrave192 Yeah me too.
+CT I I was just about to ask that.
"The local racist recreation park"
I found this funnier than I should
How much? Well the facebook comments on Finnish news site's articles regarding Pokemon go seem to have just the right amount. I'm just happy that the riverside and parks in my *smallish* town has some other use than just people getting wasted. Like the park near me has 2 pokestops overlapping and a gym on the steps of the cathedral about 100 meters away, and that place is like THE gathering place now. Through the night there are people there, even cars parked around it filled with people. It is crazy and somehow wonderful.
"At that Moment i Realized i Will Never be Cool Again" *shrug face*
"Maybe even millions" the game had 48 million people try to sign in a few days ago
What's wrong with the colors? Forgot the IR-cut filter?
Can we all agree that there are way too many Rattatas, Pidgeys, and Weedles? I've seriously lost the excitement of feeling my phone buzz when a Pokémon spawns because of how often it's purple vermin I've already caught hundreds of times.
George, I just want to say I got the same phone around the time Pokemon Go came out and find it works pretty well for what it is.
The two most popular phone apps for two years in Japan was overtaken by Pokemon GO in mere hours. Makes you think.
Dude! Stone mountain had no rock types?! Niantic totally dropped the ball there.
On point as always, George
If you look at the ninantic website they seem to be hiring senior developers and for management position. It looks like they didn't have the team in place for development at launch time
I love Stone Mountain! did you get a funnel cake?
I knew that gaming would make the world a better place...
I guess we all knew it, in our hearts!!!
'It won't dump its garbage all over me' quoted for posterity. ;)
So what is everyones guess on the ETA to the first pokemon go murder? How long until I see "Instinct team user murders Valor team" in a headline?
I don't know if this sense of wonder will last throughout the upcoming months when more Pokémon generations are announced. Regardless, the Pokémon Company and Niantic have done something really clever, attach kids to gen 1 Pokémon. When they get older, they'll probably have this same nostalgia we have for the original starters, Mewtwo, Arcanine, Gyarados etc.
I tried Pokemon Go for the first time today and while it kind of fun I dont like having to walk around with my eyes locked at my phone's screen. It hurts my neck after a while and also im a person that actually enjoy taking long walks but not if im not going to be able to enjoy seeing the surroundings. I agree with George that they need to add more to this game if this is going stay popular for more than just over the summer.
God dammit george, you are adorable. Keep up the amazing content buddy!
hey George! When you mention that there won't be anything to do after completing your pokedex don't forget that by the time sun and moon come out they'll have something like 650 more Pokemon to add. How they'll do that without ruining their game? No clue! But I think they'll try