Posted in: Games, Mobile Games, Niantic, Pokémon GO | Tagged: deino, Niantic, Niantic Labs, pokemon, pokemon go

Pokémon GO's Best & Worst of 2020: Worst Shiny Releases

The year 2020 is wrapping up, and it has been a year of major change in Pokémon GO. Trainers have seen the game add both new features and new species, all the while adjusting to the ever-changing situation with the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns that followed. Now, let's take a look back at what has been a defining year for Niantic's worldwide mega-hit game and determine the Best and Worst of 2020 in every aspect of Pokémon GO. This time… we're talking the worst Shiny releases of 2020. Let's go!

5. Ferroseed

Overall, Ferroseed's Shiny release wasn't so much horrible as it was underwhelming. In November 2020, Niantic hosted a series of sponsored events that were fun if a bit underwhelming. Relegating Ferroseed's Shiny release to these events made it quite the rare Shiny to have… but also made it a paywall Shiny.

4. Jynx, kind of

2020 saw Niantic adjust how they handled certain events. While you could generally bet on a Shiny release or two in past events, now Niantic has introduced two possibilities. Sometimes, they'll focus on a certain Shiny, like Lotad or Cubone, which they will hype up in their announcement as if it were a release when really it's been out in Pokémon GO for some time. Also, they will "release" a new Shiny as they did with Shiny Jynx in the Holiday 2020 event, which kicks off tomorrow. "Release" is in quotation marks because Shiny Jynx was obtainable in the past through hatching and evolving a Shiny Smoochum, with the only difference with this new event being that it can now be encountered in the wild in its Shiny form. This isn't overall a bad idea, and it worked for Clefairy earlier this year, but the highly anticipated annual Holiday event deserved a much more hype Shiny release.

3. Unown

Unown makes the list not because of its release but because of what happened after its release. Niantic released Shiny Unown for GO Fest and then later featured it in raids… only to totally remove it from the game. Now, those lucky enough to encounter a rare wild Unown have no chance of it being Shiny. A limited-time Shiny release works for certain Pokémon like Meltan that can be hunted at a player's own pace, but with a Pokémon as rare as Unown, it seems cheap to revoke its Shiny capabilities outside of events.

2. Rufflet

The already rare Rufflet saw it's raid/Egg-only Shiny release during the Secrets of the Jungle event this month, but it didn't seem to have the raid/Egg-only Shiny rate that made other species like this worth the raid pass. Not only this, but Rufflet raids were unusually rare, making this Shiny release seem like an afterthought for Niantic.

1. Deino

Far and away the most controversial Shiny release in Pokémon GO history, Shiny Deino was released as part of the Dragon Week event. Or so we're told. This rare Pokémon was available as part of the event's Timed Research and was announced as available in the wild and raids, but a cursory glance at the Pokémon GO community on social media this week led to memes where trainers made fun of the absurd rarity of even a regular, non-Shiny Deino. Deino remains one of the rarest Shinies in the game, and I personally believe that Pokémon GO needs rare Shinies to exist. When the map is filled with Pokémon that everyone already has, and an hours-long hunt yields exactly the same, the game gets less fun. However, Pokémon GO trainers deserve a fair shot at a Shiny in its release week, and they were not given that in the maligned Dragon Week event.

NEXT: The Best Shiny Releases of 2020

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!