Posted in: Games, Mobile Games, Niantic, Pokémon GO | Tagged: aipom, Niantic, Niantic Labs, pokemon, pokemon go

Pokémon GO Tricky Pokémon Event Review: April Fool's

This year, Niantic celebrated April Fool's Day with a one-day event in Pokémon GO called "Tricky Pokémon." Let's see what worked with this event and what left trainers wanting more.

What worked in this Pokémon GO event

• Shadow Aipom: Shadow Aipom was highly boosted as the Shadow Pokémon encounter after Team GO Rocket battles, which was a fun and unique feature in an event that otherwise, as you're about to see, was very skippable. The battles were easy of course, as each Grunt had three Shadow Aipom in a row that Fighting-types could punch through, but the silliness of it was nice.
• Increased Team Rocket: Any event that increases the frequency of Team GO Rocket balloons gets points for doing so.
• Croagunk: As a relatively rare spawn, it was nice to see Croagunk boosted for those looking to farm candy or Shiny hunt.

What didn't work in this Pokémon GO event

• Team GO Rocket Research: Shoe-horning the Team GO Rocket research into this event by making it a one-page Timed Research rather than the normal four-page Special Research robbed this month's Giovanni battle of its normal epic scope. Giovanni battles used to feel like the culmination of real work down in Pokémon GO. Here, it couldn't have been more passive. I can't imagine why this change was made.
• Spawns: Croagunk and Aipom were boosted and that's really it. If you weren't interested in those two Pokémon, this event was highly skippable. The last one-day event that worked well was Wooper Watch, where Niantic did a surprise Shiny release of Wooper in Pokémon GO, flooding the game with it at a time when Candy XL was brand new. It was a chance to hunt a new Shiny while also potentially max a Pokémon to Level 50 for the first time. As a one-day event, that set a high standard. This offered limited spawns, a rushed Timed Research and no new content.
• Glitches: The biggest flaw of the event was the glitches. In all of my raid groups as well as on social media, the Pokémon GO community seemed to be experiencing a delay in Team GO Rocket balloons with the app having to be restarted not once or twice, but often three or more times in order to trigger a balloon to arrive.

Overall

One-day events have the potential to shake up a week of gameplay, turning an off-week without an event into something fun and dynamic. This, though, with nothing new to offer, left me eager for the standard Season of Legends spawns to return.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!