Pokemon GOing
When Pokemon GO came out two years ago, I didn't download it. This was only because I had an ancient phone at the time and Pokemon GO wouldn't run on it. I wanted to play it -- everyone else I knew was. Even my co-workers were all playing. But I didn't want to play it badly enough to (a) get a new phone that (b) wouldn't have a physical keyboard.
But my old phone was only getting older and all the apps that it used to run fine were being constantly "upgraded" so that they now barely ran at all. I put a new phone on my wishlist in December, and my brother bought one for me.
And I still didn't get Pokemon GO, because by then no one seemed to be playing it anymore.
But after friends-and-gifts were added to the game, I noticed people had started talking about it again.
Yesterday was a lovely day for July in my area, which meant it was warm and too humid but not ridiculously so. I didn't feel like dragging my bike out of the garage and up the hill, but on the way home from writing at the library, I stopped at a tiny park. I intended to walk its tiny loop trail four or five times -- maybe twenty minutes -- on the theory that some exercise was better than none. And, as long as I was walking anyway, I decided I might as well download Pokemon Go finally, and see if I liked it.
I'd walked the loop four times by the time the game finished downloading. It let me catch a squirtle, then told me to go to a pokestop. There was one three or four blocks away, at a little church. "Oh, that's not far," I thought. I went past it all the time when I biked to the library.
I set off for it, and promptly realized that "not far" on a bike is very different from "not far" when walking. But I got there, and spun the stop, and headed back to my car, satisfied that the game had indeed gotten me to do more walking than I would have otherwise. And also discovered that my car was parked next to a pokestop. There were a bunch more pokestops in the area but I was hot and sweaty and wanted to take a shower, so I stopped playing. Even though I noticed when stopping to get a burger for Lut that there were like a half-dozen pokestops ringing the stadium near my house.
This morning, while on the phone with a friend, I walked over to the stadium. There I discovered that almost all of its pokestops were fenced in and behind a locked gate. Well, phooey. Also, it started to rain. I walked home, lazed around for a bit, and then set out for Panera to do some writing.
And also to find out what pokestops were around the area.
I spent about 90 minutes writing, and got in around 1250 words. Then I decided to reward myself by walking over to the two nearest pokestops: one was next door to Panera, and the other maybe half a kilometer away.
And then there kept being another pokestop that was "just a little ways further" so I kept walking. And caught pokemon. And walked. And caught more pokemon.
Four kilometers and an hour and a half later, I finally got back to the car. My feet hate me now. I had a bunch of errands to run, and one of them took me near two different pokestops so ... you know.
I am running low on pokeballs now, despite hitting All The Pokestops and leveling like five times in the game. ;__;
Tomorrow I will bike to work, which should be much more effective for spinning pokestops, even if it's not good for hatching eggs.
I have no idea how combat works in the game. I tried fighting at one of the gyms just to see what combat looked like, and that did not really help any. I really expected a lot more hand-holding than the game gave me. c_c
Anyway, after I'd been sitting around the house for a while, I found myself thinking that there's a pokestop just across the street and I should really go spin it to replenish my dwindling pokeball supply.
My feet and calves did not approve of this idea.
I ended up doing it anyway. c_c But the pokestop gave me NOTHING, so I flounced back to my house and closed the app. HMPH.
Anyway, all of this is to say that I remain weirdly excited by Pokemon GO despite the comparative lack of any real gameplay, and I expect this will encourage me to range away from my usual bike routes so that I can find and hit more pokestops.
Also, if anyone wants to add me as a friend, my trainer code is [reacts ] and I don't seem to be running low on gifts to hand out yet. :D
Update: I have acquired a number of total strangers I've never even spoken to as Pokemon friends, so I took my trainer code offline. Message me if you'd like to add me. I am happy to have more Pokemon friends, just I want to know who they are. XD This entry was originally posted at https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/631431.html. Please comment there using OpenID.