Review Pokmon Go Is an Ingenious Idea With Too Many Rough Edges
"DaddyI mean Bulbasaurthere's a Pokmon over there!", My almost-4-year-old sonI mean Jigglypuffis holding my smartphone with one hand and stabbing the air with the other, like someone who's just spied a talking dog. We've codenamed each other with the monikers of our favorite Pokmon, the adorable little monsters at the heart of Nintendo and The Pokmon Company's blockbuster critter-snatching franchise. I glance at the smartphone's screen and spy a tiny, lemon-lime caterpillar bopping near some real world shrubs a few feet over. We're tinkering with the augmented reality game for iOS and Android devices by former Google startup Niantic called Pokmon Go. As in get up and go, because there's no game to play if you're not physically up, out and walking around. That's because Niantic's mapped a fantasy world brimming with Charmanders, Squirtles, Weedles and more onto real-world streets, parks and buildings by employing a miracle of algorithmic wizardry and realtime location data. Players, or "trainers" in game-speak, can team up to square off against others for dominion over virtual turf mapped onto real world landmarks churches, sculptures or museums. Imagine bug collecting meets king-of-the-hill meets Google Maps. This novel amalgam of beloved franchise, smartphone technology and free-to-play business model has turned Pokmon Go into an overnight, international hit in a matter of days since its July 6 release. "Okay Jigglypuff, but hold my hand," I tell my son, who darts out the door to the shrubs and starts swiping his finger on the phone like someone trying to strike a wooden match. Each swipe lobs a tiny red-and-white sphere called a Pokball at the caterpillar. After three or four tries, the ball connects, and both he and the game go nuts. There's shouting and jumping, then the screen tells us the creature's name. "Daddy, we got Caterpie! We got Caterpie!" he squees. In my mind, a.k.a. "augmented reality 1.0," a parental "mission accomplished" banner has just unfurled with a rewarding thurp. Off we stroll from our cabin on the banks of the Mississippi where my family is spending a lazy summer vacation. It's turned out to be a strangely amusing mid-afternoon lark, weaving between cottonwoods and cattails, a park activity gym and a ranger station. At one point we almost veer into the weeds where poison ivy lurks. At another, my son wants to climb the steps to the deck off the back of the ranger station "Because please daddy please, there's a Pokmon up there!" Yes, Pokmon Gos exalted reach extends even to Nowhereville, Flyover Country. As soon as my son figured out there were water-based Psyducks and Poliwags and Krabbys lurking around a nearby river, Pokmon Go became an obsession. The game as experienced by someone a bit older, on the other hand, probably won't. Instead of fighting to "capture" wild Pokmon in chess-like, stat-riddled battles as in the older Game Boy and Nintendo 3DS games, players have only to get close to wherever the app indicates there's a creature lurking. Find one and the screen shifts to camera mode, at which point you'll see a colorful Ivysaur or Rattata or Pikachu mugging near whatever your camera's scanning, be it your couch, someone else's front lawn or in front of the Supreme Court. Swipe to flick your Pokball, and presto, your collection swells, though it's hard to miss, because this is a game that doesn't want you to. It's as if Niantic, having laudably asked players to get up off their duffs and wander upwards of miles in the real world to make headway in the game, doesn't want to offend by piggybacking a bona fide game on top of its stealth exercise regimen. It's a paradox You're enticed to get out and notice things in the real world you might otherwise blow past a good-verging-on-grand thing, but in the guise of an experience that doesn't feel much like a game at all a dawning disappointment the more you play.