I wasn't ever much of a Pokémon guy, I had a backpack in Kindergarten that had Pikachu on it but even a decade later I could never say that I had ever caught a Pikachu. I had some'a the Pokémon spinoffs, Pokémon Ranger Shadows of Almia for example, and while those were a fun time I never really got too deep into them. Pokémon was something elusive to me that I've always wanted to try and never quite had the time. This is still true for me today.

It has been over 5 years since one of my cousins convinced me to play the recently released
Pokémon GO. I played Pokemon GO in 2016 for less time than I had played the Pokémon Rumble demo. It just didn't click with me, the only mobile games I played were those tapping Piano games, Flappy Bird, Temple Run... the standard Phone Stuff.

I tried it again earlier with my Girlfriend encouraging me to play it, she is a much bigger Pokémon person than I am. I gave the game days of time instead of minutes this time, but the concept still struggled to have me go back to it, in fact 90% of the reason that I kept going back to it was because my Girlfriend was leaving me gifts in the game frequently.

Now comes Pikmin Bloom, developed by the same folks. I downloaded it the day I went to an Olive Garden. Olive Garden gave me food poisoning in 2016, so I wasn't excited. We were going to get our food in about 20 minutes, so I figured I may as well step out of The Hell House and I decided to walk to the local Goodwill with Pikmin Bloom in hand.

Goodwill is so lame now, back then I'd see game consoles there and games like Trauma Center for cheap. The only thing of note that I saw this time was a copy of Halo 3. But I guess that is still awesome! Eventually it was time to reenter Hell's Garden, and I had walked thousands of steps without realizing it. Olive Garden didn't give me food poisoning this time.

By the time for my first Daily Lookback, it had dawned on me that the reason this had clicked for me Pokémon GO didn't is because of how much more passive this game is. I don't have to go to a PikminStop or whatever, I just walk and bring my Pikmin with me. It encouraged me to walk so much that I had decided to walk to my friend's house which was a ways away, something that I had actually never done before as my parents usually drive me. It was fun!

All the Pikmin blend so closely together though, I kinda don't try too hard naming them if I can't pick em out through a crowd. Hopefully my eventual children don't end up being twins.

Nevertheless there is still a ways to go to draw me in, Pokémon GO had my attention for 15 minutes and this game had my attention for a couple of weeks. The Olive Garden Food Poisoning Incident had my attention for a few days while this most recent encounter only had my attention for an hour. Something this time was missing, and that something was the food poisoning. Something is missing here too, I feel like the game doesn't do enough to give itself true longevity for most players, something that Pokémon GO certainly succeeds at. After the Harry Potter Niantic game got shut down after only a couple'a years of service, I can only hope this game gets the chance to find what it's missing. I'll follow up with the game if that happens

Some of the music tracks remind me of system-music of the Wii U and 3DS. I didn't realize that I missed that