On the go with Pokemon Go

Even though this has not officially been released in SA just yet there are still thousands of people downloading and playing this game. In the past two weeks I have been out and about more than I have over the past four months!

Since my boyfriend downloaded it and started playing (I tried but it kept crashing, tears) we have gone walking a lot. Something I had been begging him to do for months. Now he happily asks me if we can go. I am so happy about this you don’t understand.

Pokemon Go encourages walking, in fact, it is a vital part of the game. Finally, a game that encourages actual activity outside the four walls of your room. In order to hatch the Pokemon eggs, you need to walk either 2km, 5km or 10km. Although people try ‘hack’ this by driving slowly or tapping their phone to the fan (as seen on YouTube) the best way is to simply walk the distance.

The app uses your camera and GPS while running the game, so your battery no matter how good does not last all that long. While the game is addictive it does tend to crash often as the servers were not built to be prepared for the volume of people who are playing the game. However, this does not stop the millions of people who are playing. There is a park near where I live that has both a gym and multiple points of interest. If you stand in a certain area you can access four POI’s at once. So there are people who are around 20 and up sitting and standing around just to get the four points when they load (about every 5 minutes).

The park is often busy with the Pokemon Go players ideally spending hours of their time at the park walking from point to point claiming their free stuff from the POI’s and catching the Pokemon that gather around them.
Time is also spent watching the gym change from Red to Blue to Yellow as the different coloured teams fight to own it. The desire to go out and visit different places and shopping centres is high, just because of the various Pokemon you can find in these locations.

To say thanks for reading this post, if you are planning to play (or start a new account) when you start you are given the choice to choose between three Pokemon, Squirtle, Charmander and Bulbasaur. However, if you walk away from them five times without choosing one, Pikachu will appear, you’re welcome.