Some plucky fan has uploaded footage from the ongoing Pokemon GO beta test, giving us our best look at the game yet. The only problem is that the game looks, well, kinda crappy.
The footage was posted on YouTube by GAME Previews (watch it soon in case someone takes it down). We get a good look at all the big features; character creation, menus, battles, and those all important wild Pokemon encounters.
Granted, this is a beta, so I’m prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt, but it’s looking patchy as fuck at the moment.
I don’t really know what I expected from an AR Pokemon game for smartphones to be honest. It was foolish to assume that the ‘mon would blend seamlessly into the real world, I guess.
Pokemon GO is a free to play mobile title (with microtransactions, of course) that builds off Niantic’s work on videogame/real world hybrids. It’s part of what Niantic is calling its “Real World” gaming platform, which aims to get gamers up off the sofa and out into the real world. Sounds dangerous to me.
Check out the footage below.
Pokemon GO is expected to launch in full later this year. The beta test started out in Japan before being extended to Australia and New Zealand.
There’s a chance it could expand further still, but after seeing this footage I think I’d rather wait for the final product.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.