When Pokemon Go was all the rage I did not have a smartphone and I rather did not care about missing out on it. While it looked kind of cool that players were going all over the place to find and catch Pokemon. I never thought I’d join in on the fun.

I’ve always been a PC person. Any time I’ve ever played a game that required a smartphone I either found an emulator or in many cases those games had a web browser version you could play.

Since many people who seem to want to use an emulator when it comes to playing Pokemon Go are looking to exploit the game. It only made sense this was not something that worked well when I tried running it on the computer a few years back.

It also made zero sense either as it’s not like I’m going to strap my computer to my back and get a wifi connection to it as I move around trying to catch Pokemon and hatch eggs miles away.

This year however I plan to do some traveling. To make things a bit easier and so I’m not so chained down to a PC as that would be a nightmare to try and drag it around. I got a smartphone. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to do everything I need to while I’m out and about. As I rather not have to get a laptop as well.

While I did not get a smartphone just to play video games on it. One of the allures of it is that it now opened up a new world to me that I had quite limited access to in the past.

It could also help solve the downside of traveling. The waiting around and downtime you experience when doing so-- boredom. This is where a game like Pokemon Go for me comes into play. It seems I can do a lot of short activities on it here and there as I go about it. That sounds amazing.

Not to mention since I’ll be going to a lot of different locations. The varieties of pokemon I find I would hope would different as well. Almost like these two kinds of activities are rather made for each other.

Pokemon Go also seems like a great excess to use to go out and be more active as well. I’ll be doing a lot of walking this year and it just so happens the game allows you to hatch eggs based on distance walked.

Right as I was a brand new player in Pokemon Go and knew very little about the game I decided it was time to battle-test my theory of using this game. As well as test out a lot of the features of the smartphone I had just gotten. It was time for a trip.

I ended up going to a very large casino. I was in utter shock when I opened up the Pokemon Go app on my phone. I wish I had at the time taken up how to take screen captures. At least you get these postcards of stops you have been at. it was like I was in Pokemon Go Haven.

Standing in a single location I found myself within the distance of two Pokestops, gyms, and more Pokemon than I had Pokemon balls to catch. I also did not know at the time how unusual that was.

This was a spot that had a lot of paid advertisements with so many Pokestops so close to each other. This is also when I first interacted with a Pokestops as I had never seen one before in my local area.

I was in even more shock over gyms. Since I knew nothing of them at the time after checking one out I was intimidated enough to leave those alone for the remainder of that trip. Next time I’ll know to try them out.

I loaded up my inventory with Pokemon balls, eggs, berries, and so many other things. This however was not my main reason for going to the casino. It was just a fun little activity while waiting on my group or for a machine to open.

I had no idea even that Pokestops could be spun every five minutes. Not till I went to sit down for breakfast after walking around the casino floor for around eight hours.

I noticed the spot I was at while waiting for food had two Pokestops I was within range of. I spun them for some free stuff. I then put my phone down and waited a little while. I then thought why not check it again? To my delight, I could re-spin the Pokestops yet again in such a short time frame.

I’m kind of glad I did not know at the time how fast they reset. Otherwise, I might have spent a lot more time than I had intended looking at this game and then enjoying what I was doing at the casino. It is however good to know in the future.

While there I did end up catching quite a few Pokemon as well. I found it rather enjoyable that I could just flick across the screen by dragging my Pokemon ball sending it at a creature. A few times it would break back out of the Pokemon ball but more times than not I’d catch something new and add it to my collection.

The casino was also the first place I got to not only see other Pokemon Go players but interact a little bit with them as well. For the most part, I always run into rather friendly people at casinos. While I’m not much of a talker it is nice to get out and interact with others on such rare occasions even more so when I have something of a shared interest with that person.

Not everything during that trip ended up being a success. Although I walked a good ten times the amount in a single evening than I tend to do in a week. I had gotten very little credit for the distance traveled toward hatching eggs.

It turned out that to try and save battery life I did not have permissions set up right for Pokemon Go to get that data when the app was closed. Even after I fixed the issue it did not go back and fetch that data. This I was a little disappointed about.

One nice benefit of playing at the casino was the fact that a lot of the slot machines had wireless charging stations on them. At the time I did not care so much about using up the battery as I could charge right there on the spot.

This did leave me a bit nervous about leaving my phone out and just sitting on the slot machine right next to my hands charging. Casinos are quite busy and we even ran into someone who was looking for a phone they left behind somewhere at a prevues slot they were playing at.

While that was a nice short adventure. I still had a lot more questions and things I wanted to test out. Since Pokestops are not where I am I wanted to see if while being a passenger in a car if I could spin them. I ended up testing that out on a different trip elsewhere.

This was quite a hit or miss. Most of the time I’d not even get to spin a Pokestops even if I had them open and ready to go at a distance spamming my fingers across the screen trying to spin it. At other times under much slower speeds they seemed to be easier to get.

It seems like this used to be a lot of a bigger thing to do. At some point, they nerfed people's abilities to do exactly what I was trying to do. This is a bit of a shame as I plan to take some long train rides this year and I do hope I’m still able to play while the train is in motion.

At the very least I know passenger trains tend to spot at a lot of stations. I’m hoping there will be something to do at most of those stops. I however won’t know till much later in the year when I start doing those sorts of things.

There was also another trip in that I went to a state park. This allowed me to see that I had the distance I was walking getting reported to the app correctly. This was also my first time walking with one of the Pokemon.

You first had to spawn the Pokemon in AR or as I used for this screenshot a quick feed option. I then tossed him some berries till he was full and ready to walk with me.

My plan somewhat worked and somewhat did not work. I was hoping there be some Pokestops around the state park. It seemed there was one at the entry. That was it though. Almost like they were not welcome inside. As with all the walking around I did, I could not find another.

The other issue I ran into was I was in the middle heavily forested area. The Pokemon Go app took forever to load if it did not just fall entirely. I just could not get a decent enough internet to connect to play a lot.

That lack of getting internet connection also got me to think about how to approach my travel plans. As this will not be the last time I suspect I’ll have an issue getting a decent enough connection trying to use an app.

After these trips, my adventures with Pokemon Go went to a grinding halt. I don’t usually go anywhere often. I have at least been logging in daily to try and catch some Pokemon to gain experience points and level up a bit.

This is also when I discovered some other features of the game. Not everyone lives in a highly dense population area. When you are not it seems can make this game a bit harder to play since you are not getting all the Pokestops you could ever need.

I found out that when you have 30 or fewer Pokemon balls in your inventory if you use the Daily Adventure Incense you get 30 Pokemon balls. So even when I did not plan to go on any walks as I rarely do. I’ve been using this information that I discovered.

On top of that once I got through my massive surplus of gifts to exchange with other players to the point I had none left. I started to notice daily the Pokemon I had selected to walk with me will give me some gifts to give out.

Just finding out those two things right there has allowed me to advance a lot more in this game than I thought I would. Even more so when the levels started to slow down and I thought that would kind of be it. As it seemed like it would be a struggle to get Pokemon balls unless I went out to a heavily populated area with a lot of Pokestops to farm for more.

There are also other things to do than catching pokemon and spinning Pokestops. One thing I can do from anywhere in battles with trainers, or other players.

While I feel this game will fit in perfectly when I do a bit of traveling this year. There are also some things I’m not a huge fan of. Most notably all the location information you can be giving away just by sharing screenshots of this game or giving out say gifts.

I even turned off as many location settings as I could find in the app itself. Along with some stuff on my side of things when I won’t be using it much.

As a result, this won’t be something I post regular updates about playing. Unless I’m a decent distance away from where I live. In addition, I’ll wait till I’m no longer in that area that can be seen. These however don’t matter much when I’ll be traveling anyways.

Final Thoughts

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Pokemon Go.