What the hell is this? I've seen numerous stories around it in the past several days and am curious if anybody knows what it is...and is anybody actually playing?

It requires you to go outside, so I doubt I'll spend any time with it. :P

I have played it (and its progenitor Ingress) but don't understand either.

Basically it is an AR app. You walk around with GPS on (sucking up data and battery life like whoa). Occasionally, a Pokemon may appear. When they do you look at the screen and try to catch it. There are other landmarks you can visit on your local map which allow you to control a Pokemon gym or get free items.

There is no actual battling as far as I know in the game. This is NOT Pokemon for mobile but a very simplistic app. All you do is catch Pokemon in a minigame. Also if you run out of items then you can pay to buy more Pokeballs and such with real money. It is such a boring thing that even my collector-ness is not managing to hook me.

I just know that my feed on Facebook has lit up with all kinds of posts about their stuff and just random stories about how people are causing accidents trying to find these things.

It's rather appalling to me really. The amount of bandwagon fandom that has sprouted because of its release is somewhat absurd. I find the HUD to be far too simplistic and ugly, as if no creative spark was even put into the project. It seems more of a gimmicky "hey look we know you like Pokemon so here" kind of app that I estimate will only live out a few sparked months. As mentioned, there really isn't a battle system to the game either, but rather a tap-tap-tap fest whenever a confrontation actually happens at gyms. I'm not a fan of Pokemon really at all but I don't blame my biased opinion on my negative review. It's simply not a good thing. The best thing I could compare it to is a less interactive, less polished Nintendogs...and that's really saying something. At least with Nintendogs you can actually interact with your pets. With Pokemon Go you don't even get that luxury. But of course you can pay with real money to see arbitrary numbers accumulate, so who cares?

Aside from the Pokemon name recognition, I think it may be exciting a lot of people because this is their first time playing an AR game. To be fair, seeing a Pokemon "in the real world" is cool, and pretty funny when they're posed in weird locations. But that's all there really is to the game.

I never understood Ingress either, but that has its devoted fans. I do hope most people will tire of Pokemon Go soon because Niantic really put very little effort into the release. They didn't even fix bugs that existed in the beta - just rolled the game out there.

I'm checking it out for the "Hey, it's free." factor. Not high enough level for gyms or anything like that yet, but it is kind of neat to "catch Pokemon" around the local neighborhood.

I actually like this game. Yes it has a lot of bugs, yes it's a fairly simple game, yes it drains the crap out of my battery, (not sure about the data issues, I have unlimited data) but its fun trying to catch and level up the 151 possible pokemons.

There actually is a battle system within the game. You battle at one of the Gyms located in various places on the map. The battles aren't like the ones you are used to in the game boy games but it's still fun.

I would hope improvements would be on the way especially given how popular this game has become.

I like this game too. Of course this is coming from someone who never played any of the Pokemon games before, but I've really enjoyed how it's brought people together and kind of spans the subcultures we're used to seeing. I work in a downtown corporate environment and I see people around the office outside playing all the time! It's bringing people together which is very neat. It's fun when you and a group of random people all end up in the same place trying to catch a rare Pokemon.

As stated above, the battle system itself is pretty basic and not all that entertaining, but the augmented reality aspect is the most enjoyable, IMHO. I like finding Pokemon in random places and taking pictures of them. Catching them is always very satisfying! The fountain outside my office building is a Gym that we battle for dominance for all the time.

It's definitely in like it's beta beta testing phase and they've announced several planned improvements to the game. If those go as planned, I can see this continuing to be fun!

I was wondering when we would see people who comment here about enjoying the game. Obviously there must be many out there or Pokemon Go wouldn't be the social phenomenon that it is! As long as folks play safely (not catching Pokemon while driving or what have you) then it's all good.

Maybe it is MY weirdness but I personally find it a little unsettling to see folks playing Go outside, especially in groups. I would rather not be recognized as playing the game because I don't want to super interact with total strangers. That could be a part of why I'm not enjoying the game, beyond the lack of traditional gameplay elements in and of itself. Ah well, at least others are finding the community building aspect to be awesome. :)

PS: Freyasaurus, I like your Mitsuru avatar (P3 is one of my favorite games)!

I traveled to Cincinnati, OH yesterday for a brewery tour and decided that going there provided a good opportunity to download and try this out.

Initial reaction:
This is pretty addictive and fun. I can see why it's so easy to get caught up in it. I was in a group of four and I felt like that made it even more fun because we would celebrate when we'd catch something new. As someone that has NO clue what Pokémon is about or doesn't have any prior knowledge, this game is perfect because it doesn't require any. It just requires catching things.

Today, I tried to play this game by myself....It wasn't nearly as fun. Still addictive, but I felt strange playing the game without the group.

Long Term:
I don't see this being something that I play for too long into the future. I could be wrong, but it might just be that thing I open up when I'm with groups of folks doing stuff like we did on Saturday. We'll see, though.

I haven't been playing, but my wife has. I will admit that I think the AR concept is interesting and I can see a definite difference in my neighborhood of the number of people out walking since this has started. It drives me a little crazy though when we are out for a walk and my wife or daughter are playing this game and we have to stop walking to catch a pokemon. I just hope that this doesn't end up making Nintendo decide that with the success of this thing that ever one of it's properties needs to have some similar application and that they permanently shift their entire focus in this direction. Can you imagine the super mario version of this with people jumping o top of random objects that look like warp pipes etc. I agree with jwcooley for the long term. I think this is a fad and 90% of it's players will move on in 3 months time.