Pokémon GO Fever

Pokémon GO is the latest viral game from Nintendo and like many other viral games (Minecraft and Candy Crush Saga) soon you will see all your friends and co-workers playing it. Fans have been begging Nintendo for the longest time to have the game on on a smartphone, and they only concede now.
Pokémon GO is a smartphone game where you stroll real streets and capture cute little animated monsters.

Here's a Quick Guide on How to Play Pokémon GO from Forbes' Paul Tassi

1. You have the option to Choose Pikachu As Your Starter

At the start of the game when you are given the characters Charmander, Bulbasaur, Squirtle choice, choose none of them. The game will jump them over to try and follow you, but by the fourth time you do this, it gets the message you don’t want any of them, and it will give you the choice of Pikachu.


2. If you Want to Catch Higher Level Pokémon It Needs Real Strategy

In Pokémon GO you will think that it's a simple game that just hurl Pokéballs at the faces of wild Pokémon until they give up. But, once you encounter 100+ CP Pokémon in the wild, they will start breaking out. They will now be difficult to catch.

What you need to do is press and hold the Pokéball, a ring around the Pokémon will start shrinking. Wait until it turn in its smallest circumference, then you can throw the Pokéballs, it is easier to capture them. Also, the color of the circle means something. Green is easier, yellow is tough, red will be very difficult.

It is also easier to catch them when you turn off the AR, it maybe fun to see them in the real world, but turning off the camera will stabilize them in the center of your screen and make easier to hit.

3. Battling Is Also Slightly More Complicated Than It Looks

Battling is pummeling your opponents you can also swipe to dodge attacks. Be aware that Pokémon has a meter that builds as you attack, and once it is full you can use it for a more powerful attack. To do this you will need to hold down a finger on your enemy.

4. Egg-Walking Uses GPS so Not Easy to Cheat it

One of the fun part of the game Pokémon GO is that you need to walk around to hatch incubated eggs that will turn into Pokémon. The game tracks your movement through GPS, not a pedometer, so walking on a treadmill does nothing to hatch eggs. Trains or buses or cars do not seem to work either. You need to put hard work and walk around if you want those eggs to hatch.

5. It will not Track When the App Is Closed

If the App is close it will not alert you when Pokémon or PokéStops are near.

6. You Need To Beat A Rival Team Into The Ground Repeatedly To Take Over A Gym

You need beat other players and lower their “gym rep” all the way to zero so that you can make it “neutral” and then you can station one of your Pokémon there. This involves beating a gym multiple times, unless you have some team members around to back you up. If you can heal after each fight, this is actually pretty easy to do depending on your CP levels.

7. Holding Gyms Gives You Free Stuff

For every gym you either lead or support you will get a daily package of a pretty significant amount of currency. You have to control a gym for a full 24 hours.

8. Evolve Non-Primary Duplicates For XP

Once you have a max evolution version of a Pokémon, it seems like you’d want to just upgrade that and not look back. But, for some of the most common Pokémon near you, they can be a bonus source of significant XP. Say you evolved your Rattata into a Raticate but you keep finding eight zillion Rattatas. Well, save a few, and use all that candy to evolve them for 500 XP a pop. There are probably only a handful of Pokémon that you will find this often, but trust me, this is a great use of extra candy which costs you nothing of significance and will really help with leveling. Bonus trick: Save up a number of these XP evolutions to pair them with a lucky egg which will get you 1000 XP for even a 12 candy Pidgey evolution.

9. It’s Tough To Know When To Invest In Pokémon, And When To Hold Off

Once you pump up Pokémon with expensive stardust infusions, but you will soon learn that you can easily find another Pokémon at a higher level, and you’ve essentially wasted your resources.