After several month of playing this game as I figured there just isn't enough content for it to stay interesting.  I've all but stopped playing it every day and some time I do open it up for a few seconds and then close it down again.  Even on a few pokemon runs I have done in the past couple of weeks it has really lost the appeal it originally had.

The new features that have come out like the extra experience and prized for captureing a pokemon once a day for seven days is a cool feature but this was something that should of orignally shipped with the game.  Not supprising they also added it to the pokemon stops but lately even these seem more buggy.  Several times I have swished the poke stop and got noting or come back later error message.

I know they needed to do something to help stop people from playing the game while driving but this feature has really become more annoying then helpful.  Several times while walking around the city it pops up and tells me not to drive while playing.  First of all I'm walking so this is annoying.  Second the only answer is I'm a passanger, they should give a couple more options like I'm not in a car and they need to fix this feature.  Damn legal department adding an annoyance to the game because people don't understand driving and playing polemon is a bad idea!

The new feature that now rates your pokemon in my opinion is a wase of coding time.  Most of the time it doesn't give you any decent information about your pokemon.  Like my best character it said was a little small which was more then annoying then helpful.  Size so far hasn't mattered much in the game and should really just be dropped until they actually make it functional.

I do like the feature that now when you go to a team gym and train you can train with more then one pokemon.  Originally when you faught a team gym you only got one pokemon and trying to fight thorugh 4 or more levels became impossible.  Now that we have six I've seen a lot more higher level gyms around the city.  The down side is if you go with someone and attack an unfridnly gym it still is fairly easy to bring down a level 10 gym.  I think the last time I did this one maybe 3 of my own pokemon died.  Again this is dependent on the quality of pokemon in the gym.

Overall the game is boaring and there isn't much to do.  There just isn't enough veriety in the game yet to make it more interesting and something players will continue to want to play for months or even years to come.  There is a lot of cool features and game ideas but it still is very lacking in fun game play.  The use of Google maps to provide the game world was a great idea but now they really need to make a game and not just a technology.

After many days of total frustration I decided to create a new account and link it to one of my G-Mail accounts instead of use their built in authentication system.  Now there is no longer that dreaded days on end can't login error message.  Don't get me wrong there are times when I still get the can't login message but usually all I have to do is close the game down and start over.  9 times out of 10 it will then work without complaint.

The game is still really buggy and with the new release of the game it has fixed a few things but also broken several other features.  If you’re like me and want to save your batter by turning on the Battery Saver then you'll find the game crashes a lot more when switching between regular mode and battery saving mode.  When I was walking around the city the other day I had to restart the game several times because it just crashed so in the end I have turn this feature off for now.  Hopefully this will get fix but not like the way the fixed the other issue with the foot prints.

The foot prints bug has been fixed or kind of fixed since the developers just flat out removed this feature from the game.  This is the one feature many players relied upon before it got broken to track down and find specific wild Pokémon.  Since it has never worked I'm not sure how helpful it really is.  According to other sources on the internet it was supposed to show 3 footsteps for Pokémon that are fairly far away and as you got closer the footsteps would get less.  When I started the game the footsteps always showed three steps and now it shows none.

The great news now though is how long the game takes to start.  It used to take anywhere from 15 seconds to over a minute.  Now with the new update it is very quick.  And when it isn't there probably is a connectivity issue.

Now then to the next part of the update.  How well is the game play?  My first impressions were very tainted because the game was very difficult to get logged into but with that issue behind me here are my game play thoughts:

Catching wild Pokémon seems to be a bulk of the game.  If you’re first starting get used to catching a lot of crappy wild Pokémon.  My advice here is if you’re under level 12 don't get to attached to the wild Pokémon you catch.  Save your stardust for Pokémon that have a CP over 800 or even greater than 1000.  This is because stardust can be hard to get and it costs a lot to upgrade your higher leveled Pokémon.  For example my top Pokémon takes 2800 stardust to move him to the next level.  So don't waste your stardust on crappy lower level characters.  It just wastes candy and stardust.

Gym fighting is one of the main attractions.  After participating in several gym fights I have to say Niantic made some good choices.  Since gyms take away direct player vs player contact it helps keep the community safer.  Since we are talking about a combat type game it amazes me there haven’t been more real fights because someone got beat by a better player.  This may say a lot about the community at large and even the game play mechanics.

Gym fighting can be a lot of fun with friends.  My wife and I tackle gyms we normally by ourselves would run away in fear.  This is because if we are attacking it at the same time the one Pokémon in defending their gym has to deal with both of us.  It is really cool to see my wife on the other side of a Pokémon as we are taking down a gym and know she is there helping me through some of the tougher Pokémon.  With that said this is also why you can’t stay in a gym sometime for more than a few minutes.

The longest we have owned a gym has been for a little more than 18 hours.  This was partly because where the gym is located they closed off all public access to the location of this gym.  This also does make it difficult for you to earn some gold to help upgrade your character because each gym awards you with 10 coins every 20 hours it make it difficult to collect on more than one gym at a time.  This might be a good thing so Niantic get players buying there coin packs instead of playing the game for free.

If you’ve just reached level 5 don’t think jumping into a gym is going to be all it is cracked up to be.  You may need to find a friend with a higher level and willing to thrash on a like gym to open a spot for you.  Most gyms are fairly difficult to get into at lower levels so plan on doing a lot of hunting and upgrading of Pokémon until you get a decent Pokémon to fight in a gym.  I didn’t get my first gym ready Pokémon until I was level 13.  Even then its max CP power was over 900 and still had a difficult time.  But once you hit level 17 things really start to take off.

Overall the game is a lot of fun and does get people out of their homes to play and collect stuff from the pokestops.  If you haven’t tried this game I would recommend you go grab a copy of this game.  Hopefully as updates come out thins will start to work better and they will have fixed several of the major game play issues.  Good luck and happy Pokémoning!

The buzz in Reno and probably just about every city in the world is playing this new game.  Just about every place I’ve gone for the past few weeks have people playing this game including my wife.  Since it was so popular I decided to give it a try.

First impressions:

Cool the game takes people to the real world in search of a lot of cool things. It like having an RPG mix with the real world and oh don’t forget a treasure hunt.  I liked this idea and many years ago I had though what a great idea this would be if a game mixed with the real world and got people out of their house.  Pokémon does just this and gets gamers walking around or in my case driving special places to get explore the game. 

The down side is if you live in a section of the city away from a lot of land marks there isn’t much to do with this game unless you want to fork out a lot of money.  But even if I could pay to play this game I can’t because their service has been telling me I can’t login for the past couple of days.  This is partly due to the popularity of the game couple by a bunch of hackers attacking their systems.  The end result for me is time to uninstall and move onto something different.

Pokémon stops are a great way to get people exploring historical sites in a city but again if your city is spread out be prepared to do a lot of searching.  I do like this aspect of the game and they also include a nice picture of the stop to help explain why it is important to the real world.  When you spin a medallion it will dump out items for you to use in the game.  This helps those who are adventurist to take advantage of the game and play for free.  The down side is they don’t give out a lot of items so I found myself searching for hours and avoiding Pokémon because I just didn’t have enough items to capture one.

Game play is very crude and difficult to understand.  The basic instructions given really don’t make it clear on how you use the ball to capture wild Pokémon.  Even though the game play is basic I do admit there is an allure and addiction to it that makes you want to continue.  I do see it getting old quick and will start to turn players off because there isn’t much else to do.

Gyms seem like a great idea but I was never able to enter once since every time I was close to one either the app crashed or I could login to the game. There are far greater explanation from other players on the internet but again this whole issue of being to busy to login players has really detracted from the game.
For now I wouldn’t recommend you waste your time with this game. I’ve uninstalled the game because it has become very frustrating to play for me. Even when I did get a chance to play it seemed very simple and lacked any decent game complexity other than their codex is large and mysterious.

The basic premise of the game is great just their execution is lacking.  And for a game that is bringing in billions of dollars they should really be providing a better experience.  Just goes to show you a franchise like Pokémon can get away with stealing their customers money and time.  Maybe in a few months once the cool factor has worn off I will try it again but until they address the login issue it will stay off my devices.