It finally happened. After a long wait, "Pokémon GO" is finally here, and it came at the right time. Released on varying days over the course of last week, millions are now Pokemon trainers.
Upon its release, "Pokémon GO" had people of all ages excited. It’s unclear who the target audience was, because if we’re being honest, it sure wasn’t the people who are usually cooped up in their rooms playing Xbox or Playstation. But then again, maybe it was made to get them out of the house, and get others off the couch.
"Pokémon GO" is definitely going to change the daily routine of many and probably even lead to some accidents. The current app sees people, including myself, staring directly into their phones and not paying attention to the world around them. This could lead to people walking into oncoming traffic, other people, and walking into dog poop especially if you’re in more urban areas such as New York City (like me).
Hopefully the creators release an update that allows you to be notified of when a Pokémon is nearby, instead of having to buy the bracelet, which should be released soon.
Of course since it’s only about a week old, there are many issues with the server, which can happen at beyond-inconvenient times, like when you’re just about to catch Pikachu. There are also issues wth the GPS not registering sometimes, which is very important because the GPS is the essential piece for the game to work. But a few days after the initial release, they have improved a lot! As the days pass, the issues with the server are far fewer than before, and the GPS issues are becoming a little less common. As time moves on hopefully they become more and more rare like some of the Pokemon you're trying to catch.
But the frequent server issues are nothing compared to the full experience everyone who has played "Pokémon" in the past gets now. You’ve always wanted to live in the Pokémon World and now we sort of get that because we have to go out and walk around in hopes of finding all of the Pokémon they have released so far. Maybe you’ll be able to battle someone you’re sitting next to in Starbucks without having to be a certain amount of feet away from a gym. Also, we can only hope players will be allowed to trade Pokémon. It’s a great thing "GO" made its debut during the summer, because when school resumes in August, full-time college students may be actually screwed.
The best part is that it’s free. So if you find yourself home all the time and are looking for a reason to go out and be active, Pokémon go is a short download away of assuring that for you. You never know which Pokémon you’ll come across on a morning jog.