Pokkén Tournament Location Test

Last week over on Twitter the official page for Dave & Busters made the announcement that they would be hosting a special US location test for Bandai/Namco Game's Pokkén Tournament at their Times Square location. They've also been doing testing for Tekken 7 as well, so this past Sunday I went down to check things out.

Since the game is being worked on the whole thing of course is in Japanese. To help new players they've got a "Official Guide for Field Test" booklet that you can get at the front desk. This full color booklet tells you everything you need to know with move lists for each character and full explanations on how to play the game.

For the most part if you've had the chance to play Bandai/Namco's excellent Gundam Extreme Vs. series you should feel right at home with Pokkén. You control one character in a full 360 3D space, you can dodge, jump and dash all around and even on a controller it feels good. Of course it all depends on the character you play. Some characters like Suicune (I still have no idea how to correctly pronounce the damn name) have a lot of great ranged attacks and can zone players, while a character like Machamp is more suited to close combat for all his punching and grab attacks...which makes him a bit weak. Since many characters have a few ranged and up close moves Machamp can get zoned from a distance and can't really get in close to do damage. One of my favorite characters Gengar makes up for his really small size and limbs with the ability to teleport and even has a Hypnosis attack to get in to dish out more punishment.

Then there's Pikachu. My goodness. You wouldn't think a little mouse would be such a bad ass in a fighting game, but I think he could end up being one of the best characters. First off, it's super quick and can get in really fast, even with zoning characters. The electricity attacks have a good chance to stun so you can run in and do even more damage. I think after this test they might have to adjust him, because I saw a lot of players doing very well with him.

From what I was told the game will be on test for a month and then it's back to Japan where it might be coming back a month after that. If they do end up doing another test with more of the characters playable and some balance changes, I'll be sure to check it out. For you folks on the west cost the Southern California "Round 1" arcade is also offering a location test for this game, so make sure you go and check them out! (Also, if you do please drop me a line and let me know how long their doing it for and also if they're handing out the booklets like in D&B's)