Pokémon GO Plus is finally out in the wild, even units are a bit difficult to find. It’s a slick little device that’s relatively easy to use, but it’s still a bit of a new concept. It’s a $34.99 physical add-on for a free-to-play game, and while it’s miles from necessary for the experience, you still might want one if you’re a very particular kind of player. So here are four things to know before you decide whether or not to buy:
You still need your phone: Pokémon GO Plus is not designed to replace the main game, merely to augment it. Basically, it’s a single bluetooth button that pairs with your phone and allows you to perform simple ingame actions while the app runs in the background. So you’ll still need your phone whenever your playing, but the ability to run the app while the phone is locked means it won’t be nearly so hard on your battery, and you won’t need to be staring down at your phone the whole time.
You can’t really catch Pokemon: Pokémon GO Plus is good for a couple of things, but it’s terrible at catching Pokémon. Whenever you encounter a Pokémon in the wild, the device will throw a single regular Pokéball at it, and if that doesn’t work the creature will just flee. Anyone who’s played the main game knows that won’t really work, and my first day with the thing saw a flee rate of upwards of 70%. I managed to rack up a few weedles, caterpies and pidgeys on my walk, but don’t expect to catch anything worth having.
It does track distance, though: There was a lot of pre-release speculation about whether or not the Pokémon GO Plus would track distance or not, and we can now confirm that it does. This is going to be the main way you use the device: to hatch eggs, get candies through the buddy system and check into PokeStops. It makes sense: the device still has to know when you’re near Pokémon and PokéStops in order to function, and so it uses the same GPS-based distance tracking that the rest of the game does. It’s not a pedometer, unfortunately, so don’t expect the tracking to have improved at all.
It’s basically a fitness app, just a weird one: I tried to explain the device to someone who had never played the game before, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If you look at Pokémon GO Plus itself as a game, it’s basically a game where you hold a buzzer and click it sometimes. Doesn’t sound very fun, does it? It’s because Pokémon GO Plus basically strips all the “game” elements out of Pokémon GO and turns it into a pure fitness app, albeit one with a lot less functionality than most fitness apps.
VIA - forbes.com
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