It’s 
hard to tell which company PETA is more upset with in its latest PR battle: McDonald’s or Nintendo.
The animals rights advocate group has developed a flash game called Pokemon: Red, White and Blue, featuring Pikachu and other Pokemon who revolt against caricatures of Ronald McDonald, the Hamburglar, and maniacal slaughterhouse workers for killing and eating animals.
Yeah. It’s creepy.
If 
you’re one of the 800,000 federal workers with a lot more extra time on your hands these days, Good Ol’ Games would like to help you fill the hours.
The classic gaming service has introduced the Shutdown Promo, a collection of seven titles that it manages to tie to the current squabbling in D.C. And, in a classy move, GOG.com is giving it away for free to all furloughed federal employees.
If 
you’re looking for clarity on whether Sony’s much-anticipated PS3 adventure game Beyond: Two Souls is worth picking up, you might want to try a psychic. The new effort from developer David Cage and Quantic Dream is splitting game critics right down the middle.
Cage has plenty of experience with polarizing pieces of work. His past two games, Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain, pushed gaming’s cinematic boundaries but faced some irksome gameplay issues. Beyond is cut from the same cloth, featuring virtual versions of Hollywood heavyweights Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe in a spooky tale about spirits, loneliness, and what lies on the Other Side.
You 
have to give school officials in Los Angeles credit for a good idea: put iPads in the hands of over 650,000 students to give them the most advanced learning tools available in an effort to boost their interest in academics.
But the $1 billion plan is taking some heat after students in the nation’s second-largest school district cracked the tablets’ security settings to forgo reading, writing and ‘rithmetic and instead post on Facebook and play games during class time.
Even 
before the first Skylanders game hit shelves in 2011, the team at Activision was bracing for competition.
The concept — marry action figures with video games — was largely untested, and while the company bean counters were cautiously optimistic about the prospects for such a hybrid, there were no guarantees. But the developers had already started a countdown.
You 
might – might – actually be able to play Grand Theft Auto Online this weekend. And if you’re really lucky, you might even be able to do so right now.
Rockstar Games has issued an update for GTA V on the PlayStation 3 and says the update will be coming to the Xbox 360 “as soon as possible” today. If all goes according to plan, the fix should clear up a lot of the server issues that have been plaguing players since the online mode’s launch three days ago.
While 
you typically play a hero in military shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield, some of your actions aren’t exactly heroic. You’ve likely partaken in more than a few actions that international law would frown upon, to put it mildly.
If so, the Red Cross wants a fitting in-game punishment for your crimes.
Tom 
Clancy had one of the most valuable names in gaming.
It was so valuable, in fact, that Ubisoft bought it from the prolific author in 2008 for an undisclosed substantial sum. And while Clancy’s writing legacy is at an end with his untimely passing, his name will continue to be a part of video game culture.
Since 
the launch of Grand Theft Auto V, fans have been eagerly waiting to start exploring the game’s new multiplayer mode. Early Tuesday morning, that mode launched — but most players are still waiting to play it.
As seems to happen with so many major online game launches, Rockstar and Take Two were unprepared for the massive influx of players, causing the game’s servers to be overwhelmed and preventing most players from being able to log in and explore the compelling new mode.
Grand 
Theft Auto V has just about everything. You can build a crime empire. You can go skydiving. You can play a round of golf, search for hidden treasure, partake in a triathlon, or just drive around like a maniac.
There’s one thing missing, though: an instruction manual.
Chris Morris: Journalist 