One of my favorite pieces of Pokemon universe lore is not only do these children capture and train monsters to battle for fun sport but they also fight against villainous organizations who use the monsters for crime. Team Rocket is a Pokemon-powered Mafia run by a dude literally named a Giovanni. I was hoping Detective Pikachu would tease Team Rocket in the next live-action movie like Joker in The Dark Knight.
That didn’t happen, however you can now take the battle to Team Rocket yourself thanks to a new Pokemon Go update.
Before, teams in Pokemon Go had been friendly groups of rivals players join like Team Mystic and Team Valor. But now if you approach a dark Pokestop you’ll do battle with a criminal member of Team Rocket. Do Pokespots still vaguely correspond with their actual real-world location? New York City has got to be one huge Team Rocket lair right?
Instead of taking cues from the mainline RPGs, these Team Rocket battles recall the pseudo-RPG modes of GameCube Pokemon console spin-offs Pokemon Colosseum and Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness. After defeating Team Rocket’s shadow Pokemon you’ll purify the poor thing and recruit it to your team where they eventually make for very powerful allies.
As much as I’m not a fan of the “games as a service” mode, Pokemon Go is an example of its success in action. Thanks to a steady stream of exciting new features here we are still talking about this game years later. Yeah I could turn my attention toward new augmented reality games based on Minecraft, Dragon Quest, and Stranger Things. But there’s still one week left to catch Armored Mewtwo in a raid battle and make Team Rocket blast off again.
For more on Pokemon learn more about another upcoming mobile game Pokemon Masters and read our hands-on impressions of the upcoming Nintendo Switch games Pokemon Sword and Shield.
