Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question:
What Are You Playing This Weekend?
At this point, it’s abundantly clear that Russia—or at least people in Russia—organized an endlessly elaborate scheme to influence the presidential election, partly by purchasing misleading and manipulative ads on Facebook and Google. Now, a report from CNN has revealed that the endlessly elaborate scheme was somehow…
Watching someone play Pokémon Go is a bit silly, since it really just looks like walking around while focusing on your phone very intently, but things would probably get exponentially sillier if the game involved any interaction beyond tapping and swiping. As silly as Pokémon Go can be, then, a new Walking Dead mobile…
Even at the height of its popularity, Pokémon Go wasn’t exactly known for its stability. For a lot of people, it was a game that they tolerated because it seemed like fun, not a game that actually was fun. Unsurprisingly, this weekend’s Pokémon Go Fest in Chicago’s Grant Park was similarly troubled, with servers and…
It may seem like it was a decade ago, but it’s only been about seven months since everyone in the smartphone-having world became obsessed with Pokémon Go (and six months since everyone got tired of it), and now the developers at Niantic are finally adding the new batch of pocket monsters they’ve been teasing for a…
Every December, instead of searching for a group consensus, Gameological looks back at the year in games through individual perspectives. These are the staffers’ personal takes on a few games that have stuck in their minds for whatever reason—big or small—and does not represent any sort of institutional expression.…
The “Fuck 2016” meme didn’t emerge from a void (although it could have, given the current media climate), but rather from the ceaseless parade of jaw-dropping absurdity that’s delivered primarily on social media and is still technically referred to as “the news.” If 2015 was a year defined by outrage, the prevailing…
Reminding us that “catching them all” is as futile a goal as anything else in our dumb, distraction-prone lives, developer Niantic has announced that it’s finally adding new monsters to Pokémon Go. Pokémon from the second generation of the long running game series—Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal—will now hatch from…
For a couple of glorious weeks in July, Pokémon Go was a global cultural phenomenon, inspiring think pieces, Parliamentary misconduct, hate crime accusations, Yelp updates, muggings, and death—as well as millions of darn kids (and darn adults) getting outside and enjoying some fresh air, for once. Then, as suddenly as…
It seems like the halcyon days of Pokémon Go have come and gone. No longer do you see street corners filled with people trying to conquer gyms, nor do you see reports of crazed mobs running for a Vaporeon. But the effects of the fad may linger, according to a new study done by Microsoft coming to us via CNN.…
The life of a Pokémon is not easy, essentially a gauntlet of fear, indentured servitude, and violence that only ends with a creature’s death. But the indignities do not even stop there. A talented but twisted artist named Christopher Stoll has been imagining what it might be like to dissect the little buggers and take…
Parkour is kind of insufferable and Pokémon Go is kind of insufferable. But put them together and they’re, well, that’s probably a matter of taste. But, regardless of how annoying you find either trend, this “Pokémon Go Meets Parkour In Real Life!” video is an impressive feat of both humanity agility and …
Pokémon Go is ubiquitous. And now instead of just catching Pokémon, you can eat them, too. According to Mashable, the new Pokémon burgers from Down-N-Out, a restaurant run by Hashtag Burgers in Sydney, Australia, are “too freaking adorable to even eat.” But after one glance, we have come to a different conclusion:…
Shocking nobody who’s ever cleaned the distinctive leavings of grease-stained fingers flicking a Pokéball off of their otherwise-pristine iPhone screens, it turns out that Pokémon Go players really like to eat fast food. A recent opt-in survey has revealed the most popular grease dispensaries for players of the…
For those who’ve decided to go whole hog on the game, Pokémon Go can be fairly time-consuming. After all, those Dratini aren’t going to catch themselves. But for those who need even more Pokémon in their lives, Cornflix TV has launched a 24-hour Pokémon Go-themed channel. It’s a curated, non-stop collection of YouTube…
Oliver Stone has warned that Pokémon Go paves the way to a totalitarian state. Rihanna and Iran banned it. Russia is wary. But one brave catcher of ’em all has stepped up to say we shouldn’t be banning the game, we should be embracing it and making it even more user friendly. Simone Giertz—also known as the Queen Of…
The Guardian reports that Iran has become the first country to ban Pokémon Go, in part because the app developers failed to apply the “catch ’em all” directive to securing all the necessary permissions to launch there. The order was handed down by the head of Iran’s supreme council of virtual space, Abolhasan…
What does a champion-level British snowboarder do during the dog days of summer in a year with no Winter Olympics to train for? Well, for one thing, Jamie Nicholls does what the rest of the world is doing: playing Pokémon Go on his smartphone. Only, Nicholls adds his own totally extreme twist to the insanely popular…
Playing a game on one’s phone, be it Candy Crush or Angry Birds, has become a classic method for disengaging from society even when surrounded by other people, those irksome pests. It’s visual shorthand for “Please leave me alone. I am doing something of vital importance, and you simply cannot be a part of that.” This…
There’s a lot of competition when it comes to the most useless Pokémon. Pidgeys and Rattata are overpopulated, Metapod and Kakuna just sit there, and Psyduck is kind of a hot mess. But if there’s one pointless Pokémon that takes the cake, it’s Magikarp—the flopping goldfish that’s pretty much useless unless you manage…