On Games 5: Updates to Pokemon Go

I hate to say it, but my enthusiasm for Pokemon Go has waned in recent months. Sometimes I feel like I'm the last person playing it, even more so now that I'm working from home and no longer have access to my old workplace's raid group. And being depressed on and off is not conducive to leaving the house to catch things. But now I live on top of a PokeStop, so I've started checking the game more, and the latest round of updates is actually pretty cool.

The biggest thing they've added is a quest system, in which players do research for Professor Willow (who, by the way, competes with Pokemon X and Y's Professor Sycamore for most attractive Pokemon Professor) and are rewarded with experience, items, and in theory, access to legendary Pokemon. You get one set of quests from visiting PokeStops and another directly from Willow in short cutscenes. This update has gotten me back into playing regularly, and even looking forward to going outside. (Doesn't hurt that it's spring, and therefore sunnier and warmer out.)

The in-game community events have also become more regular. Every two weeks or so, a particular Pokemon will appear more commonly than usual for a couple of hours. These are often at odd times, especially if you work full-time but if you can get outside at the right time, they're worth it. And yesterday was the start of a weeklong event focusing on Gen 1 Pokemon, which allowed me to finally evolve a Sandslash and an Alakazam and get very close to evolving a Dodrio. I hope to see Scythers and Charmanders later in the week.

One thing that does bother me about all the new content in Pokemon Go is that sometimes it doesn't look like the developers are spending enough time refining existing systems. The big one of these is the weather system that was added in the last major update, which makes certain types of Pokemon more powerful in certain kinds of weather. The in-game weather is supposed to match the real-life weather, and it often doesn't. Better weather data would help the game meet its goal of being "like real life but with Pokemon!" But until they make that more precise, I'm happy enough catching Pokemon that like rain on sunny afternoons.