Vacation/Pokken Tournament

     

     Hey, how are you all doing? Life is good. Happy Easter and all that Jesus Christ jazz. I'm currently on vacation out on the ocean in this place called Cayucos here in California. Its a family vacation with my step-mother, my two brothers, my step-dad, and my step-mom's brothers and sisters (about 11 people all together). Right now I'm writing this at a hotel. Tomorrow we will be moving into a house that we'll be staying at the until April 1st. Things are looking up! I've got the Wii U hooked up and my bros are watching Netflix on this great hotel WiFi. We just came back from a great dinner at this seafood place called Dorn's. I had a seafood combination plate that came with fries, squid, calamari, and fish. It was terrific! I'm having too much fun for my own good. But you may have been wondering why I'm writing this on my vacation. I just want to keep up with the blog and keep it comin' with content. This time I want to focus on Pokken Tournament.
     So I got Pokken Tournament the day it came out, which was back on March 18th. I played the tutorial for a bit but I didn't really like it or understand the way the game played. After playing it with my friends I just got stomped on and still didn't get it. After some time I played the single player mode by myself and I'm finally starting to get it. The game isn't amazing by any means but its not a bad game either. It's somewhere in the middle if you will. My main problem with Pokken is that the roster is just crappy Pokemon that I've a) never heard of or b) don't give too shits about. The roster could've been so much better if a) they put more gen one pokemon in the game or b) put more interesting fighters in there or c) had a rotating roster that you could download like in mobas. They had endless possibility that they could've done with this game to make the roster better but they failed so hard. But I do believe that the game is very well made and plays great for a pokemon fighter, a first for the pokemon series. Namco done did good with this one folks. If I had to give Pokken a rating I would give it an 8 out of 10, which is being fairly generous considering that the combos can be rather generic.
     Also, people are trying desperately to turn Pokken into a tournament fighting game and I think that's just plain wrong. I don't think this game was intended to be a tournament esports game nor do I think it has that kind of potential as a fighter. The combos, as technical and theatrical as they are, are simple stuff that are basically Tekken cop outs. The SoCal Smash community have created a SoCal Pokken community page and there are tournaments all over SoCal for Pokken and I think that's a bit much for a game that just came out and doesn't have that much going for it yet. I might be wrong in the future and Pokken might turn out to become some kind of major esports game but right now I just don't see it. The game just isn't good enough in my opinion. Earlier I said that the game is an 8 but its a hard 8, like getting a C in a super difficult college course. If you have a Wii U you should buy this game just because its the first pokemon fighting game with combos and bad ass looking pokemon when they win a fight. However, I believe that they will make better iterations of this game in the future and/or patch the game until it becomes good. That's all I'll say about this game for the moment. I think it has untapped hidden potential (Gohan anyone?) for the future.
     Lastly, this past Thursday was a cool Fire and Dice smash tournament. I brought my friends along and they had a blast. They played doubles and singles and one of my friends won a set against this Lucario player. It was pretty cool seeing him annihilate this guy with Yoshi. My matches went okay but I didn't win any sets so things definitely could've gone better. I'll get 'em next time!