Pokémon GO: First Impressions
Pokémon GO just released, but what do we think of it? We share initial thoughts and impressions as we try it out, and show off footage of the first part of the game.
Pokémon GO has just released for a number of countries and devices. Here we share our initial impressions of the game with initial gameplay footage to give you an idea for how Pokémon GO starts. We then go in-depth into how you ‘go’ about in getting the game to run!
VIDEO: Meeting Professor Willow and Bulbasaur
By Jake
Check out the first bit of gameplay here, where Jake managed to catch himself a Bulbasaur!
Credit to Achromatic for editing and creating the video from the footage by Jake.
Downloading and Starting
By bobandbill
Here I’ll focus solely on the the downloading and installation process. I have an Android phone, and so used the Google Play Store. Furthermore, this is from Australia.
Searching for the app via ‘Niantic Pokemon Go’ gave me the right page instantly. Downloading the app took a bit of time, simply due to a lack of memory space on my phone which I had to clear out first. It should be noted that it requires 58 megabytes of space to be downloaded according to Google Play Store, but going by my phone the size is closer to 104 MB post-installation. This is not a small app by any means, but not super huge either (smaller than Miitomo, for example, which is nearly 800 MB in total size with its updates).
Once I had cleared the space it turned out I also had to enter in some payment details to Google Play Store. This was a minor annoyance, especially as the game is free-to-play (albeit with optional micro-transactions). However, once this was done I was able to download and install the app without problems on my end.
Loading the app was another matter – despite being fairly confident on what my Trainer Club ID username and password was, I was unable to authenticate my existing account (even after logging in separately on my laptop to tick a ‘accept terms and conditions’ page on said Trainer Club account). Happily the Google account I had worked fine straightaway. Perhaps there is merely some connection problems with the Trainer Club account system for now.
I had some minor delays in being able to use the game, as I was told the servers were struggling and to try again later. This isn’t very surprising given the launch occurred in multiple countries at once. A few minute wait was all it took before I could meet the next professor named after a tree, so this seemed fairly sensible. Loading the app from scratch a second time did take a while however.
Happily, the text, while small, is printed out very quickly for each screen. No waiting for the professor to say his piece! The GPS connection status was meanwhile displayed sensibly in a drop-down icon on the top of the screen to keep me informed with that. I was well on my way to exploring GO gameplay.
Have you given Pokémon GO a, well, go yet? Let us know your thoughts on what Pokémon GO is like! We may share more gameplay footage and opinions as we explore the new app/game in full.
Video by Achromatic. Footage by Jake.
