Two years later… hi! I’m back and a lot of gaming has gone undocumented over the past two years. I’m not sure how I’ll handle revisiting my gaming experiences from the past two years. Xbox deletes my screen captures and recordings after a certain amount of time so many of those things are long gone from my mind. Diablo 4 reigned supreme. Palworld literally made my Pokemon/Ark fusion dream a reality. And Path of Exile 2 made me forget Diablo 4 existed… Not to mention, my Xbox controller collection has grown substantially. I have a lot to talk about, but I guess if we are gonna get back into it, I’ll start with the latest gaming news… my time at the Pokemon Go Tour in Los Angeles.

A lot of people make fun of the nerds still playing Pokemon Go, but you might be surprised to hear how big it is still. My friend invited me to join her for the event and I’m really glad I went! I didn’t really know what was going to be happening so whatever I share is going to be an amateur take. Even though I didn’t know what I was getting into, I went all out on my ticket getting the raid boost, the hatch boost, and a t-shirt (which included a matching one for my avatar).

The event was big and there were lots of people, but because of the nature of the game, it was actually pretty chill and quiet. Everyone is just hanging out, eating good food, walking back and forth between locations and furiously tapping their screens. At the event, there were raids popping off every 10 minutes or so. I probably easily did over 50 raids. The raids were Kyurem, Zekrom, and Reshiram. All local only, no remote raids for anyone. The goal was to get materials to fuse Zekrom and Reshiram into Kyurem.

I was able to get a couple shiny Kyurems and naturally used those for my fusions. Some pokemon had a rare LA background too which was kind of cool. One of my shiny Kyurem had the LA background which makes it even more special. Here are the two Kyurem fusions in shiny colors.

I spammed friend invites after raids concluded and probably added more than 60 people to my list. I’m hoping since they were all nerds at an in-person pokemon event, they’ll be more likely to do gifts so I can get more xp. The grind is painful. Also, let’s take a moment to appreciate my new avatar pose I recently unlocked for winning 50 showcases!

Another cool part of the day was 10km eggs had three regional pokemon in them that are not local to our area: Maractus, Bouffalant, and Sigilyph. I already had Maractus from a trip I took over a year ago, but I was fortunate enough to hatch a shiny one (I’ll have a pic of it later in the blog). I got a bunch of these because the hatch add-on made it so we could cycle through them faster than ever. I walked over 7.5 miles by the time the day was over.

At the event, they had four zones that were all season themed: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Most of the raid locations were in spring and winter, so I spent most of my time there. Each area had a little photo-op spot, but it was largely not decorated. There was just a lot of good food trucks spread throughout. As I walked around, I was able to secure a few shiny pokemon too which was cool!

The event was from 9am to 5pm and with lucky eggs equipped all day, I added another 3 million xp to my character… but once you get up to those high levels, it feels like nothing. All in all, it was a really great time. The weather was perfect, it was a beautiful day, and I had a lot of fun playing. The last time I went to an in-person pokemon event was in like 2017 (I think). It was in Irvine and the first time they brought Kangaskhan to the states. That was back when my brother played, but he has long since abandoned me on the quest to be the very best, like no one ever was.

Anyway, I hope to get back into writing more and sharing my gaming experiences. There are so many good games I’ve enjoyed over my hiatus and many more that I am looking forward to this year! Are you a Pokemon Go player? Been to an in-person event? Let me know in the comments!