After our articles were voted by the Top 50 readers of the decade, Nintendo Life staff will be selecting their favorite Nintendo games between 2010 to 2009. Today, Ryan looks back at how the smartphone title took the world by storm and showed him he was completely wrong – in a good way …
Hold it, let me leave you there. I know exactly what you think:Pokémon GO I can't even catch a Litwick to something similar Wild Breathing, you are completely absurd ”. Yes, I totally agree with you (except for that last bit, maybe) but I liked it or hated it, Niantic's mobile hips that held the mobile – stayed – something too much special.
As you would expect from a gaming writer, I've spent the rest of my life right up to the wrong time eating old & # 39; s games. Whether it was some great Mario and Zelda epics, or a little Metroid landing and pretty much every single Pokémon game under the sun, I've always been a fan of the traditional, one-player feel more than anything else, as I was six years old.
The latest update has seen Buddy Pokémon accompany you on the map
From that background, the idea of free-to-play games and their limited-fee setup has been grinding my gear. When Pokémon GO was I first announced, I had no interest in playing it and even found the error to ignore. That is the "goal", I would say, to sacrifice whatever pleasure I can offer because my precious Pokémon should not be diluted.
But so did Pokémania. When Go was introduced in 2016, it was everywhere – and I mean all over. Suddenly, everyone who made fun of me for loving Pokémon at school was joking. Suddenly the whole world was playing. It was like how I remembered Pokémon as a kid, with the talk of being polite everywhere you go, and I couldn't resist jumping on it for the first time. I'm happy to do it.
The game finds that the free horrid gaming system isn't realistic in my opinion – I've never spent a dime despite watching hours of it – but as with most titles, the gameplay itself will never appeal to me as the new single-player episode on the game switch couldn't. Instead, my reason for voting for this as my ten-year-old game is down to the pure show of its release and something more original.
Now, I'm going to be brave here and share the fact that I have battled anxiety disorders that focus on moving in and out of the house, and the existing case of depression that brought my life over the last four or five years. I'm sure some of you who read this may have suffered the same, so they will know that one small app will never eliminate such problems, but Pokémon GO has had such a positive impact on my life that I will be forever grateful. I'm not alone, either.
I've been playing it on and off since – – * testing the app * – September 2016, and while I sometimes ignore it for a couple of months at a time, it becomes a way to break free when I'm doing the worst. I vividly remember a time when my chest would get sore from five minutes or so at home; It somehow managed to distract me enough to touch that, with the idea of adding a rare Drake to my collection to entertain enough past stresses that were going through my head. Similarly, on days when I used to get up and couldn't get out of bed, I would wake up nice and start early. I know it doesn't make sense, but it's true.
Maybe & # 39; bug & # 39; it's a great way to describe it. These days, no matter where you are or what you do, you usually have your phone on you and that means GO is only for screen loading. Do you need excuses for exercise? Go play Pokémon GO. Need something to do while standing waiting to be evacuated? Set up your Pokémon in Pokémon GO. Feeling weird in front of someone you're not comfortable with? Come out and talk about Pokémon GO – you know they play it, too. Importantly, the gameplay itself is good enough to make you want to go further, so downloading it often doesn't sound like a chore.
Different people can find, totally different things to help with their encouragement, but there is one last part of this story that is not quite the same as Niantic's world-leading release and it wraps things up nicely. We're used to the MMORPG format these days, or & # 39; many multiplayer online games & # 39 ;, where players from all over the world interact and share the same gaming experience. Through the battles of Go & # 39; s Raid Bat and Community Day, I found myself chatting to complete strangers who share the same passion for me in real life, offering little articles to know as we stroll around the same park for three hours trying to find the shiny Chikorita.
Never before has the game been so wonderfully connected to the world, and I never thought I saw so many people, from toddlers to grandkids, all out playing Pokémon together. From the perspective of someone who has served Pokémon for 20 years, seeing crowds of people roaming my local town, catching everything in sight, it was a bit of a surprise but nice to see. In the years to come, when we look back at some of the key gaming issues of the 2010s, no doubt Pokémon GO will be there – and rightly so.
