Pokémon Go

it's a shame niantic were so clueless at first, but nothing was gonna ruin this dream of a premise for me, and it's a much better game now than it was then, albeit still riddled with flaws. i'll always remember the first day at the local park searching for a pikachu, tracking an onix beneath prague castle, walking around town at 2am stumbling onto a haunter and vulpix. among the most exhilarating times i've ever had with a game. fuck the haters etc

This was a game that everyone and their moms were playing. Never would I have thought that my mom would be more into Pokemon than I was. It was a lot of fun going out to parks and meeting other people who were playing the game. I don't think there is any other game that had gotten so many people to go out.

This game made me start exercising again. Have to give it some bonus points for that.

Used to love it but got tired of all the crap Niantic pulled slowly rolling back all of the quality of life updates that had come out during Covid.

It's hard to rate this because I was never into for anxiety reasons, and it's not technically an amazing game. I think experience and uniqueness matters, it's hard for me to give this a score that it probably deserves as a game (maybe a 50) because despite it being basic it took over completely and the simplicity didn't seem to matter. I see that it has improved and it would have been cool had other mechanics been implemented earlier, but I'll settle on an 80. Will always remember the frenzy.

So much wasted potential. But it's the first game to convince people to get out and about, so that's something.

it's funny how this game combines in me a healthy desire to go outside and move around and an unhealthy and deeply intense fomo

I've been playing this game consistently for three years so it must be doing *something* right. It's a good way of satisfying collector-brain, finding ways of giving you fresh goals and continuing to move forward even when you've caught most of the currently-available ones. The mechanics could, and probably should, be deeper, but at the same time, the simplicity allows me to just check in, spend ten minutes making sure I get daily goals, and stop there on low-energy or busy days.

Great concept for casual gamers to go out "in the wild" but offers very little other than some good walking exercise. Comparing this to the "actual" Pokemon game (and you'll be the judge of how productive it is to compare apples to oranges), this has like 5% of the content. At least with the version I played. Future updates might offer more content. But hey - it's free!

Go is nothing more than the gimmick it seemed to be when it was announced. It'll eat up data and battery life and the whole thing is ruled by the superfans who don't leave a lot of room for casuals to succeed.