Tuesday 30 August 2011

Oshawott, Dewott and Samurott

The time has come at last, my friends, to fill that nagging gap I’ve left behind me: time to talk about the third Unova starter, Oshawott.  Now, I saw Oshawott for the first time back when Nintendo revealed the Unova starters last year (at the time, he had the fan nickname Wotter), and my first thought was that he’d pretty clearly been dropped on his head as a child.  Tepig and Snivy are so much more expressive in the official art; Tepig is happy-go-lucky and cute, while Snivy is a smug bastard, but Oshawott just looks vacant.  Personally I think someone dropped the ball on Oshawott’s official art and in-game sprite (which looks the same); in the show you can see Oshawott with actual facial expressions, making him look cute, proud, even devious – here, by contrast, he looks like a lobotomy outpatient.  This is a shame because it made a lot of people, including me, dismiss Oshawott without serious consideration – and, moreover, before meeting his awesome evolved forms, Dewott and Samurott.  The concept behind this line is that they’re samurai Pokémon.  Lacking steel weapons, Oshawott fights with the razor-edged shell on his front, which is called a scalchop.  A scalchop can be thrown or used in hand-to-hand combat, and is represented in the game by Oshawott’s signature move, Razor Shell.  Dewott has two scalchops which he wields together, and Samurott has a pair of huge shell swords, which are normally tucked into the armour plates on his front legs (in Japanese the swords are called ashigatana – sea lion katana – but the name hasn’t appeared in any English media yet since the word doesn’t appear in the Pokédex).  Although I haven’t seem him do it, I... presume Samurott can stand on his hind legs in battle because his swords wouldn’t be much use otherwise – and, as little credit as I normally give Game Freak, I can’t imagine that would slip past even them.  Seriously, though, Samurott is a pretty badass Pokémon – the Pokédex tells us that he can actually avoid a lot of fights just by staring his opponents down, and I can believe that.  The shell blades do a good job of combining the elements of the design where they could have been ham-fistedly pasted together (not that having Dewott wear padded samurai armour and wield a steel katana wouldn’t have been fun too, but it’s not exactly Pokémon).

So, how does Oshawott stack up against the previous Water starters?  Although I usually like Water Pokémon in general, I’ve never been a huge fan of the Water-type starters but I’ll try my best to be fair.  I will join the ranks of countless other Pokémon fans before me in declaring Squirtle absolutely adorable but my heart belongs to Bulbasaur now and forever.  I just don’t think the Squirtle line are as interesting or creative as their counterparts... Blastoise is pretty damn badass though.  As far as practical applications go, Blastoise is a fairly generic bulky Water Pokémon but does have a niche as a Rapid Spin-user.  Johto’s Totodile, Croconaw and Feraligatr are hopelessly bland, in my opinion – and historically they were also terrible Pokémon, since their greatest strength is an excellent physical attack stat, which went unused since before Diamond and Pearl all Water-type moves were special attacks.  The fourth generation gave them some cool toys, like physical Water and Ice attacks, Swords Dance and Dragon Dance, but Feraligatr still winds up playing second fiddle to Gyarados to at least some extent.  I don’t like the Hoenn Water line, Mudkip, Marshtomp and Swampert, very much, but from a dispassionate viewpoint I have to admit they’re very well done; the “big ugly brute” aesthetic doesn’t appeal to me but they’re a fine example and a creative one at that – and what’s more, Swampert is one of the very few starters who managed to actually be really powerful on a competitive level as opposed to merely decent.  My favourites by a long shot, though, are the Sinnoh Water-types, Piplup, Prinplup and Empoleon – and only partially because Game Freak managed to do a penguin Pokémon without automatically making it an Ice-type.  Empoleon’s charisma and formidable bearing are just great qualities in a partner Pokémon, and his type combination (Water/Steel) is unique and has an odd but powerful resistance profile.  People don’t use Empoleon much but there are one or two rather specific tactics that he does very well, so don’t underestimate him.  Samurott goes for the same general feel as Empoleon, I think, and I’m not sure who does it better, or which design is more creative (though I certainly feel he blows Feraligatr out of the water – so to speak – in that department).   On the whole, I think these guys compare pretty favourably – in terms of their design, at least (well, except for Oshawott’s terrible art; anyone who was first exposed to Oshawott through Ken Sugimori’s official artwork needs to go and watch Ash’s Oshawott kick some butt on the TV show right away).  But are they as strong as their predecessors?  Let’s find out.

As I alluded to earlier, most starter Pokémon are not incredibly strong.  They tend to have high stats, which makes them a good bet in-game, but they rarely possess the versatility and depth to perform in high-powered competitive play (the principle exceptions being Swampert, Blaziken and Infernape, though Empoleon and Charizard have niche uses and the others are far from unusable).  Samurott is no different.  With few weaknesses and attacks that are difficult to resist, Water is one of the best single types in the game – but it’s also the most common, so Water Pokémon need to have cool tricks if they want to stand out.  Samurott is of average speed at best, and he’s not particularly tough for a Water-type, so his main draw is that he has excellent scores in both his attack and special attack stats, which makes it trickier for opponents to guess what kind of defence they need to mount.  The trouble is that Samurott suffers from some unfortunate mismatches in this regard.  His special movepool is far better than his physical movepool, with Grass Knot and Air Slash to back up the Water-type standards of Surf and Ice Beam, but it’s his physical side that gets the wonderful set-up move Swords Dance.  The only really worthwhile physical attack Samurott has outside his Water attacks is Megahorn – which, don’t get me wrong, is a great move and does some pretty serious damage to most Grass-types, but it still leaves Samurott with some discomforting holes in his offensive coverage.  If nothing else, he does have some good choices as far as Water attacks go – Aqua Jet, the Water-type Quick Attack, can help to compensate for his poor speed, and his signature move, Razor Shell, while it is a bit weak, has a 50% chance to weaken its target’s physical defence, which makes taking another attack from Samurott a far dodgier proposition than you might have bargained for – but they’re still just more Water attacks.  He can Taunt defensive Pokémon to lock down their support moves, which is nice, or Encore them to force them to repeat those moves over and over, temporarily disabling them, but I don’t know that there’s really anything to recommend Samurott in particular as a user of these moves.

Again I find myself on the fence.  Dewott and Samurott are a bit bland and lacklustre in battle, and it’s really weird that their special attack score is the higher of their two offensive stats, considering their design, but they’re cool, creative Pokémon, and they’re not by any means terrible.  You know what, though?  The internet hates Oshawott and he doesn’t deserve it.  He’s not nearly as bad as his regrettable artwork makes him look and damnit, he’s been through enough.  I wish Samurott could learn, say, Stone Edge, or Superpower, maybe even Beartic’s Icicle Crash, but, heck, he’s not that bad.

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist (and they’d damn well better be grateful)!

Saturday 27 August 2011

Scraggy and Scrafty

There’s gross... and then there’s gross.
By which I mean, some things are disgusting and others are just nasty.
On the one hand, you have Pokémon like Muk, who is literally made of toxic waste, Weezing, who can cause lung cancer at fifty paces, Gloom, who is constantly surrounded by the stench of rotting meat, and Lickitung, who... well, I think we can all agree; the less said about Lickitung, the better.
On the other hand, you have Pokémon that wear their own cast-off skin as trousers and hoodies.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Scraggy and Scrafty.

Scraggy and Scrafty are lizards, and as lizards they shed their skin, which is absolutely fine. I just wish they didn’t have to pick it back up afterwards and dress themselves in it. Unfortunately it’s a major part of their defence because their skin goes rubbery and elastic after it’s been shed, and their “clothes” absorb some of the force of attacks, which is why the blasted things are so hard to squash. I guess that’s... interesting? Sort of? I really can’t get over how much the idea makes me cringe – but I can’t keep talking about that forever because I have other, better reasons to hate Scraggy and Scrafty. Remember how much I hated Gothitelle when I did her entry a little while ago? Well, Scraggy and Scrafty get on my nerves for the same reason. Like Gothitelle’s, their design is basically centred around a human subculture from modern times – in this case, we’re looking at stereotypical juvenile delinquents of the last twenty or thirty years. These Pokémon run around in gangs, beating up anyone they find on their turf, vandalising things at random and just being generally unpleasant (they also spit acid, although I don’t think many juvenile delinquents can do that) – which, to be fair, is something a lot of Pokémon do, but these particular ones do it in baggy pants and hoodies. Scrafty even have mohawks (and Scrafty is called the “Hoodlum Pokémon”). Something about the idea of a Pokémon based on a modern stereotype is incredibly jarring to me. Well, no, several things, actually. On the simplest level, I just don’t think this design is all that clever. More generally, I find the references a grating contrast to the more dignified influences from historical cultures and traditions, or to the more interesting and realistic ideas drawn from nature. They feel like dated caricatures. Finally, my beleaguered suspension of disbelief is suffering terribly from having to accept Pokémon that have apparently adopted elements of modern human culture. Pokémon are not human, and having Pokémon mimic humans in irritating and superficial ways is an exception to the norm that needs to have some kind of justification if it’s going to be anything but pointless – justification the designers aren’t always prepared to offer. Why are Scraggy and Scrafty the way they are? Do they feel disenfranchised by the modern political system? Do they get hooked on drugs at an early age? Do they just have a desperate, burning need to disappoint their parents, because mum and dad don’t understand them and nobody understands them and I hate you!? Happily, we may never know.

Much as I dislike Scrafty’s flavour, I can’t deny that he has a lot going for him. Scraggy and Scrafty are Dark/Fighting dual-types, which is an amazing offensive combination. As far as I can work out, there are currently only two Pokémon that resist both: Heracross (Bug/Fighting) and Toxicroak (Fighting/Poison), which is so close to perfect that, unless you want a really offensive Scrafty, he can get by just fine with only two attacks – say, Drain Punch and Payback – and use his other two move slots for support techniques. This is great because Scrafty is a heavily defence-focussed Pokémon. He hits pretty hard with physical attacks, but his best quality is his toughness – so it helps that defensively Dark/Fighting is fairly strong as well, with three resistances (Rock, Ghost and Dark) and an immunity (Psychic) to only two weaknesses (Fighting and Flying). With these qualities, Scrafty is perfect for using Bulk Up (a technique from Ruby and Sapphire that bolsters physical attack and physical defence), sitting there smugly boosting up in your opponent’s face and then smashing things once he feels strong enough. Scrafty doesn’t have a reliable healing technique, which is why I suggested Drain Punch earlier to take the edge off damage he receives while getting ready, but if you’re confident he doesn’t need it, you could use Hi Jump Kick instead for the sheer face-smashing power. Scrafty can also learn Rock attacks, as well as Fire Punch, Thunderpunch and Ice Punch, which are all worth consideration if there are specific Pokémon you want to score super-effective hits on (or if you’re really frightened of Heracross – and heck, it’s Heracross; you should be). Scrafty also possesses the wonderful Shed Skin ability, which allows him to recover from poison, paralysis, and such, and gives him a chance to wake up sooner than he normally would after using Rest, if the healing provided by Drain Punch isn’t enough or you want a stronger attack in its place.

Those are Scrafty’s obvious options, but he has plenty or other interesting choices to work with. Dragon Claw I mention only to say that it’s probably not worth it (Dragon attacks generally aren’t except on Dragon Pokémon) but Dragon Tail might be a lot of fun – it’s a new technique that does some damage and forces a Pokémon to switch out, which can help catch an opponent off-guard, and if you’ve had some other Pokémon lay down Stealth Rock or Spikes, the new Pokémon coming in will take some damage too. A slow, tough Pokémon like Scrafty is ideal for this attack.  Zen Headbutt is a poor choice for most Pokémon because Psychic just isn’t the type it used to be, but since Heracross and Toxicroak are both royally screwed if they run into a Psychic attack it might be worth consideration for completing Scrafty’s perfect coverage. Toxic and Amnesia are potential options for a very defence-focussed Scrafty. Finally, there’s Dragon Dance and Counter, which I have my doubts about but which are certainly interesting. Dragon Dance simultaneously increases a Pokémon’s attack and speed, making it a wonderful tool for offensive Pokémon, but Scrafty is so slow to begin with that even with Dragon Dance he’s not that fast. Still, it could be worth a go. Counter hits an opponent with double the damage you just took from a physical attack and is the quintessential nasty surprise of Pokémon, and Scrafty’s tough enough that he can survive some pretty strong attacks (in order to use Counter you have to still be alive). The reason for my doubts is that Scrafty’s toughness stems mainly from his excellent defence and special defence scores – he doesn’t have a lot of hit points, but his high defences mean he doesn’t normally take a lot of damage either. Since Counter works based on the damage you actually take, Scrafty’s defensive profile is really the opposite of what you want for using it. Like many of Scrafty’s other options, it’s not the best choice, but it’s still workable, and diversity of options is a very important factor in how ‘good’ a Pokémon can be overall.

Mechanically Scrafty is a strong Pokémon and definitely worth consideration for a team; he’s got a lot of potential as a tank-style fighter, and possibly in a number of other similar roles too. I still think he’s terribly designed though. I often complain bitterly about Game Freak wasting awesome designs by matching them to lacklustre typings, narrow movepools, and dreadful stats – well, today they get equal censure for wasting a brilliant typing, strong stats and a good movepool on the load of drivel that is Scraggy and Scrafty. Occasionally I make suggestions about how I would have improved a Pokémon... today I’m just going to say that they should have kept the combination of powers and abilities but thrown the design out the window and started over.

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist! Give ‘em a few weeks in juvey; that should straighten them out...

Wednesday 24 August 2011

Deerling and Sawsbuck

Excuse me for a moment.  I need to do the cutesy baby-talk thing.

Aw, who’s a cute little deer?  You are!  Yes you are!  Yeshyouare!

You saw nothing; you heard nothing.

Today I’m looking at the Pokémon incarnations of Bambi and his dad: Deerling and Sawsbuck.  Deerling are shy, retreating creatures, much like real deer, but because they’re Grass Pokémon they’re even better at blending into their environments, thanks to their mossy fur.  Surprisingly robust and adaptive, Deerling are the subject of a great deal of research in Unova because of an unusual property they possess, chosen to emphasise one of the new mechanics of Black and White: seasonality.  The Pokémon games have had a concept of day and night since Gold and Silver but only now has Game Freak added in the four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, which the games cycle through over the course of four months.  A few Pokémon vary in rarity and in range with the seasons – Cubchoo, for instance, can be found further south in Winter than at other times – but only one or two disappear entirely at certain times of year (from memory, I think Druddigon hibernate in Winter, but that’s about it).  There are also a few areas where snow drifts build up in winter and allow you to climb to places that are inaccessible in the other seasons.  Mostly, however, the changes are cosmetic – as they are with Deerling and Sawsbuck.  As Grass Pokémon, these deer behave in some ways like plants, and as such they change their appearance with the seasons: in Spring Sawsbuck are covered with buds and flowers and in Summer they grow bushy foliage, which turns orange in Autumn and then falls away in Winter.  Deerling aren’t quite so elaborately ornamented but their fur’s colour and scent changes over the months to match the plants around them, camouflaging them to protect them from all but the most tenacious predators.  Besides this curious property, there’s not much to them; in other respects they’re much like real deer.  They are, as I said, in Black and White just to highlight the games’ new seasonal cycle.  Having said that, they’re not exactly badly done – one might compare, for instance, Ruby and Sapphire’s Castform, whose concept was “a Pokémon that changes form with the weather” and who came out as... well, a Pokémon that changes form with the weather.  Without their gimmick Deerling and Sawsbuck would be pretty bland, but they’d still exist, which is more than can be said for Castform.

Since there’s relatively little to say about Sawsbuck I may as well spend some time talking about the seasons.  Like the day/night mechanic first used in Gold and Silver, the seasons don’t really have a tremendous impact on gameplay; in fact their effect is probably even less pronounced.  Many Pokémon in Gold and Silver are strictly nocturnal, such as Spinarak; some, like Ledyba, appear only in the early hours of the morning.  In the case of night and day, however, if a Pokémon is unavailable at a particular time you won’t have to wait more than a few hours before you can come back and catch it.  If you found yourself wanting to catch a Pokémon that only appeared in Summer, on the other hand, you could find yourself having to wait months – this, presumably, is why only one Pokémon ever disappears completely (Druddigon) and even then only for one season; too much of that would be absurdly frustrating.  One might expect seasons to have an effect on the growth of certain types of berry, but this is not the case since cultivating berries is now the exclusive province of the online Dream World.  If this is so, you could fairly ask, what exactly is the point of the season mechanic?  No more or less, I could fairly answer, than an immersive detail.  They don’t do a lot in concrete terms, no, and like so much else in Pokémon I think the idea could have been taken further.  However, as a simple aesthetic touch that makes the world feel a bit more real, I think they have definite merit.

Unlike the seasons, Sawsbuck has some very interesting mechanical features.  Unusually for a Grass Pokémon, Sawsbuck is a fast, powerful physical attacker, and he has access to a variety of ways of making himself even faster or more powerful – most obviously, Agility and Swords Dance respectively (either of which Sawsbuck can give to another Pokémon instead using Baton Pass, if you like).  For a passive ability, Sawsbuck gets either Sap Sipper or Chlorophyll.  Chlorophyll, which makes a Pokémon twice as fast in bright sunlight, would make Sawsbuck pretty dangerous on a sun team, especially combined with Swords Dance.  It’s something a lot of Grass Pokémon can use, but Sawsbuck is definitely a strong example.  The other ability, Sap Sipper, isn’t as overtly powerful but it’s far more unusual – it grants immunity to Grass attacks, and causes Sawsbuck’s physical attacks to get stronger every time a Grass attack hits him.  Obviously no-one’s actually going to use Grass attacks on Sawsbuck deliberately, so you need to switch him in when you think a Grass attack is coming in order to get the boost, but if you can manage it your opponent will be in an awkward position indeed.  Now, all of this is wonderful, but at some point Sawsbuck is going to need to actually stab something, so let’s see what he has in that department.  Sawsbuck is in fact a dual-type – Grass/Normal – which is something of a mixed blessing.  Grass and Normal are both poor offensive types, and as a defensive combination they don’t really work very well together either – however, by being a Normal-type, Sawsbuck has managed to trick Game Freak into violating their usual maxim that Grass-Types Don’t Get Nice Things.  He has a powerful Bug-type attack in Megahorn, a powerful Fighting-type attack in Jump Kick, and even a powerful Electric-type attack in Wild Charge – plus, of course, his Normal and Grass attacks, including a nifty signature move, Horn Leech, a physical Grass-type attack that drains health from its target to heal Sawsbuck (effectively a physical equivalent to Giga Drain).  He even gets access to Earthquake via Nature Power, an odd technique that changes into different attacks depending on the terrain (in Black and White, it always counts as Earthquake in link battles, which is where it really matters).  It’s easy to underestimate Sawsbuck because, again, Grass/Normal is really pretty bad, and his stats, while good, aren’t stellar, but he’s probably one of the more dangerous Grass Pokémon out there.

In summary, while I’m not completely satisfied with Deerling and Sawsbuck on a conceptual level – I think the design revolves around their gimmick a little too much – they haven’t committed sins of anywhere near the magnitude I’ve seen in the past.  Moreover, Sawsbuck is quite strong as Grass-types go, and certainly unique in a number of ways.  They’re a good effort, not brilliant Pokémon but a good effort nonetheless.

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Saturday 20 August 2011

Dwebble and Crustle

Just out of curiosity, does anyone remember which Pokémon from Red and Blue was referred to in the Pokédex as the “Hermitcrab Pokémon”?  That’s right: it was... Slowbro?
...huh?
No, I don’t know either.  I guess Slowbro could be said to take inspiration from hermit crabs in that he uses another creature’s shell as his own, except that in his case the other creature is still living in it too and the shell is obviously too small to fit anything more than his tail inside it anyway... so yeah; I’m not sure what they were smoking when they came up with that one (but Slowbro is still awesome).  I only bring up Slowbro because today’s Pokémon, some thirteen years later, actually is a hermit crab.

Took ya long enough!
Unlike Slowbro, however, who grabs the base concept and takes a flying leap down the proverbial rabbit hole, Dwebble gives you a fighting chance at following the designers’ logic.  See, while a real hermit crab looks for nice abandoned shells to make his home in, Dwebble looks for... rocks.  His acidic saliva allows him to hollow out likely-looking stones, then he crawls inside and suddenly has a nice solid protective shell.  Without the rock on his back Dwebble actually looks something like a scorpion, with a curved tail which... well, I honestly don’t know what that’s for.  So, why does Dwebble not use shells like any sensible hermit crab?  Because he lives in the middle of the desert, of course.  It’s an illogical but at the same time vaguely intuitive leap to move a crab from the beach to the desert: exactly the kind of leap that tends to produce interesting Pokémon, which is great.  Whenever Dwebble’s rock is broken – which, the Pokédex seems to imply, isn’t all that rare an occurrence – he becomes nervous and agitated until he finds a new one, understandably enough.  What the Pokédex doesn’t say, conspicuously, is whether Dwebble abandons old rocks and finds new, larger ones as he grows like a real hermit crab – I’m not sure whether that’s because he doesn’t do this or because we’re supposed to infer that he does, though I suspect the latter.  All in all, this isn’t exactly a deep concept, but it might be informative to compare this to, for instance, Beartic, whom I looked at last week.  Beartic is a polar bear with exactly the powers and abilities you’d expect polar bears to have if they were Pokémon, and little to no elaboration beyond that.  Dwebble is a hermit crab, only he lives in the desert, and lives inside rocks instead of shells, and since he obviously can’t wait for rocks that happen to be hollow to turn up, he has acidic saliva that allows him to hollow them out himself.  They’ve made changes from the base animal that are interesting and consistent – and this is enough to keep me happy.  See?  I really don’t ask for all that much here.

Now, with Crustle, they’ve developed this idea in a way that I think is really strange, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Crustle is basically a big flat crab with a massive slab of stratified rock on his back, which he carries around huge deserts for days on end using his incredible strength and endurance.  Why?  Well, we know Crustle are very territorial, so it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for them to travel long distances regularly... but then again, they are also very competitive and often engage in fierce battles with each other, so the loser of such a fight might very well have to walk quite a long way to find a new stomping-ground.  As for why on earth they lug the damn things around on their backs in the first place, because if they’re just for protection then they’re a very impractical way of getting it... I honestly didn’t go into this expecting to find a sensible reason for that (it’s a creative advancement on Dwebble’s design, but it’s also really bizarre) but I actually think there is one: we’re told that when Crustle fight for territory, the loser is the one whose enormous bloody slab of rock breaks first.  The implication of this could be that the rocks are actually a kind of status symbol, if you can believe it – which is not without parallel in the real world; it’s more common in birds than crustaceans but some species actually cultivate impractical features, on the basis that the individual with the most outrageous [whatever] must be exceptionally strong to be able to cope with such a handicap, and therefore an attractive mate.  This concept is making a whole lot more sense than I thought it would when I first met Crustle.  More Pokémon like this and I might start thinking Game Freak’s designers are actually competent.

As always, I mean to look at Crustle’s mechanical portrayal as well.  His type, logically enough, is Bug/Rock – not new, but not overdone either.  Shuckle had this combination in Gold and Silver, followed by Anorith and Armaldo in Ruby and Sapphire.  Shuckle’s a weird little Pokémon who has almost no offensive capabilities whatsoever but can take a jackhammer to the face without so much as flinching, while Armaldo is a big, slow, blade-festooned monstrosity who’s reasonably tough but excels most at stabbing things in the face.  Both suffer from the fact that Bug/Rock is a very powerful offensive combination but a relatively poor defensive one – these Pokémon have only two resistances (to Poison and Normal, themselves two of the worst offensive types in the game, and consequently among the least often used).  Crustle is more defensively-inclined than Armaldo and thus suffers for it even more.  Their movepools are fairly similar – with one notable exception I’ll get to later, I don’t think there’s much of anything Crustle can do that Armaldo can’t.  Their meaningful offensive options are for the most part identical (strong Bug attack + strong Rock attack + Earthquake = fun times); since Crustle is more defensive, though, you probably want him to be on support duty anyway, and his choices there aren’t wide, but they’re good: everyone loves Stealth Rock because it makes switching Pokémon in and out a painful decision for your opponents, causing damage each time in proportion to a Pokémon’s vulnerability to Rock attacks, and not many Pokémon actually learn it in Black and White since there’s no TM for it anymore (Armaldo, for instance, can only have Stealth Rock if you teach it to him on an older game and subsequently move him up).  Spikes is on his list as well, and while Spikes is generally inferior to Stealth Rock because it needs to be used three times to reach full effectiveness, it’s good to have both if that’s your thing.  Crustle’s tough enough to get at least a couple of turns to prepare these – in fact, with his ability, Sturdy, it’s actually impossible to knock Crustle out with a single attack, so he’s a decent choice for this job.  If you want what really makes Crustle interesting, though, you want Shell Smash.  Shell Smash is a lovely new set-up move that weakens your defences but also makes you twice as fast and twice as strong.  Only a scant handful of Pokémon can learn this attack; in Crustle’s case, it turns him from a defensive Pokémon into the dangerous sweeper that his type combination wants him to be.  The defensive penalties make it a dangerous technique to be using, and it doesn’t help that there are relatively few other things Crustle can do, since nearly any trainer will be on guard for this strategy the moment Crustle shows up.  If you can pull it off, though, he’d be difficult to stop.

I didn’t like Crustle at first, but I have to admit he’s growing on me – and I never had any really serious doubts about Dwebble.  They’re a creative concept, they’re not exactly powerful but they have a very rare skill and the potential to use it effectively, and they haven’t committed any sins against game balance or the spirit of Pokémon.  What more can I reasonably ask for?

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Thursday 18 August 2011

Gothita, Gothorita and Gothitelle

I’ve just realised something: I’ve hit the halfway point!  I’ve done entries on seventy-seven Pokémon from the Black and White Pokédex now, and that leaves seventy-eight to go, and by the end of this entry it’ll be eighty down and seventy-five to go!  And you know what else?  I did Trubbish and Garbodor last week, so the worst is over already, because there’s no way anything Game Freak could possibly throw at me now could be as bad as that!  It’s all uphill from here, baby!

So, let’s see what today has in store for- oh Christ, it’s Gothitelle.
...now, don’t get me wrong.  These three don’t even hold a candle to Trubbish and Garbodor, who are my new empirical standard for awfulness; I now measure everything bad in my life in terms of how much less appalling it is than Trubbish and Garbodor, and the effect on my morale has been nothing short of miraculous.  However, the fact that Gothita, Gothorita and Gothitelle even exist tells me something very disturbing about Game Freak’s creature design department.  It tells me that one day, during the development of Black and White, one of the creature design guys stood up and said to his friends, in all seriousness,
“Hey guys, you know what this game really needs?  A creepy Goth chick Pokémon.”

I will readily admit that I have only the very vaguest understanding of the meaning of the term “GothLoli” and its place in Japanese pop culture.  I have come to learn in the course of my research that the word “Lolita” does not carry the same disturbing connotations in Japan as it does in the English-speaking countries upon which the novel of the same name has been inflicted; in fact it references a fashion characterised by demure, modest, almost Victorian clothing in the style mimicked by Gothitelle’s petticoats.  “GothLoli” is, apparently, a variant of this fashion that shares colours and motifs with Goth fashion: so lots of black and dull red, liberally sprinkled with crucifixes and bats.  Maybe if I were better-acquainted with modern Japanese culture I would “get” the influences at work in this design, but I think a lot is lost in translation, as it were.  This is what bothers me about a lot of my entries; many Pokémon designs include references to Japanese or wider Asian culture that go right over my head and, well, let’s be fair here, Pokémon is a Japanese game and I can hardly expect it to pander to my cultural sensibilities.  Nonetheless, I’m going to go out on a limb with this one and declare that Game Freak really should avoid pop culture references in Pokémon designs (I don’t mind references to traditional culture or mythology, but this stuff has to go).  They’ve gotten on perfectly well without them in the past and references to modern human subcultures are just jarring.  I’ve had a cursory look through the Pokédex for similar such references and I think the record demonstrates that this hasn’t ended well for them in the past; the most notable instance, of course, is Jynx, whom Game Freak has been not-so-subtly trying to disown ever since someone pointed out how much she looks like an actor in blackface.  Moreover, I suspect my own distaste for Gothitelle is a result of what’s known as the “uncanny valley” effect – the principle is that, the more human-like something appears, the more our attention is drawn to the fact that it’s not human.  At some point, the brain stops viewing a human-like image or construct as a nonhuman thing that has human traits and starts viewing it as a human that has gone horribly wrong.  After, again, a cursory look through the Pokédex, I think Gothitelle is more humanlike than any other Pokémon (with the possible exception of, again, Jynx) – and I suspect that’s not a good thing.

Aside from the weird Goth theme, these Psychic-types have a number of the usual traits one would expect from a Psychic Pokémon.  Gothita stare constantly at things no-one else can see, which... well, that could be because they can actually see what’s on your left shoulder just there, or it could be because they’re just really weird; I’m not sure.  Gothorita really takes a turn for the sinister, though; not unlike Hypno, they have powers of telepathic manipulation and have been known to control people to achieve their own enigmatic purposes.  Finally, Gothitelle possess advanced precognitive abilities; they can predict future events and human lifespans.  None of this is new for a Psychic-type; in and of themselves, they’re perfectly fun and interesting powers for a Pokémon to have, it’s just that they don’t particularly make Gothita, Gothorita and Gothitelle unique.  I must grudgingly concede that their preoccupation with astronomy is a bit more distinctive; they use the positions of the stars and planets to foretell the future and draw their powers from starlight, and distant stars are visible in the space around their bodies warped by their phenomenal psychic power.  It is, I must again grudgingly concede, pretty cool, but I wish it had been the focus of the design.

Just as they have much of the flavour of a typical Psychic-type, Gothita, Gothorita and Gothitelle don’t have a whole lot to offer in the way of unique powers either.  Gothitelle is remarkably similar to Gardevoir from Ruby and Sapphire, another three-stage Psychic Pokémon.  Both are put together as mainly support-oriented Pokémon with good defences against special attacks; the major points of difference in their stat lines are that Gothitelle sacrifices much of Gardevoir’s offensive power for stronger defence against physical attacks and that Gardevoir is significantly faster.  Their movepools are similar too; they both have the slate of support moves we’ve come to expect from Psychic-types like Reflect, Light Screen, Thunder Wave and Trick Room.  In this respect they’re not identical either but I feel Gardevoir comes off better – Gothitelle’s Mirror Coat can reflect back an energy attack at double strength if she survives being hit in the first place, which is a pretty cool trick, but the stuff Gardevoir can do that Gothitelle can’t is very cool too; notably she can inflict burns with Will’o’Wisp and heal herself (or allies) with Wish, which Gothitelle can only dream of doing (say, how come Gothitelle doesn’t get Moonlight for healing?).  Their offensive movepools are of lesser relevance anyway because they’re basically support Pokémon but again, Gardevoir is slightly better-off.  Gothitelle only wins out because of her Dream World ability (which, as so often with these things, isn’t actually available yet): Shadow Tag.  I talked about Shadow Tag when I did Chandelure’s entry and I don’t particularly want to rehash it, but all my concerns about the sheer power of being able to forbid opponents from switching are still lingering, just a bit less so because Gothitelle, unlike Chandelure, is really nothing special without Shadow Tag.  I suppose it’s nice that she has a niche but I really don’t know what Gothitelle is supposed to do with Pokémon she’s trapped, since she won’t generally have the power to simply destroy them outright and she isn’t fast enough to make setting up to sweep a reasonable option.

Everything about Gothitelle makes me want to ask one question: why the hell isn’t she a Dark-type?  It fits her flavour really well, which the designers clearly realised because she learns several Dark-type attacks, it would be a unique type combination – and quite a strong one, at that – and it would be a clear, no-nonsense point of distinction from Gardevoir.  Occasionally I see these incredibly obvious moves with no readily apparent downside that Game Freak have failed to take, and I shake my head in despair.  I don’t know that I’d be completely happy condemning the Goth chicks solely on aesthetic grounds, because of the cross-culture issue I talked about earlier, but luckily for me I see plenty of reason to condemn them on mechanical grounds, so this is precisely what I am going to do.

I hereby deny this Pokémon's right to exist!  Let it join Jynx in the pit with the other Pokémon We Don't Talk About!

Monday 15 August 2011

Sigilyph

Today I get a tantalising glimpse of something I really wish the Pokémon games would spend more time on: the history of the Pokémon universe.  There are a fair number of ancient ruins in the Pokémon world left behind by some now-defunct civilization and there’s not a whole lot we know about them – personally I put this down to the fact that the archaeologists of this world are (speaking as an archaeology student) even more frighteningly incompetent,  if that’s possible, than their zoologists.  What we can figure out for ourselves, however, is that Pokémon were quite as important in the past as they are in the present, and a few in particular – such as this bizarre-looking creature, Sigilyph.  Sigilyph’s curious appearance has a vaguely Native American feel to me but I don’t know a lot about American archaeology – I think a friend of mine said she looks sort of Hopi?  The text of her Pokédex entries doesn’t draw on Native American themes so an alternative possibility is that they just started drawing and kept going until they got something that looked entirely spooky and alien – and either way, it worked.  Sigilyph are mysterious Pokémon indeed; they’re found only in a desert in south central Unova and supposedly patrol the former boundaries of an ancient city, attacking intruders with their formidable psychic abilities (actually, if this is the kind of thing you have to contend with, maybe it’s not surprising that all archaeologists in the Pokémon universe are adventurers and treasure hunters).  The Pokédex claims that they “remember” guarding this city in the past, and while I don’t trust the Pokédex as far as I could throw it that is interesting.  Given that Sigilyph are powerful psychics, I suppose it’s possible that those memories could be passed on telepathically but it’s also possible that they simply have absurdly long lifespans, or just don’t age at all.  Either way, the fact that this species is apparently unique to the area that used to be that city and single-mindedly devoted to protecting its ruins suggests that they had a very special relationship with the people who lived there – I half suspect they may even have been created somehow by the ancient Unovans.  I think it’s a really fascinating concept with a lot of room for development.

As I mentioned before, several existing Pokémon, mostly Psychic-types, are strongly linked to ancient civilizations.  Bronzong were once worshipped because of their power to control weather, Baltoy and Claydol were apparently born from ancient figurines exposed to a vague and poorly-understood animating force, Volcarona seems to have been viewed as some kind of solar deity by the same people who are connected with Sigilyph, and many legendary Pokémon, of course, used to be involved in all kinds of shenanigans in ages past.  The most notable one, though, is probably Unown.

The Unown are extradimensional Pokémon that first appeared in Gold and Silver and are supposedly connected with the origin of writing, their twenty-six different shapes providing the archaic templates for the twenty-six letters of the alphabet.  They communicate with each other telepathically and manifest strange powers when together in groups – in the third Pokémon movie, Spell of the Unown, a large swarm demonstrates the ability to significantly alter reality.  Most people have no idea what they are, what powers they have or what they’re up to... and people who do learn more about them have been known to disappear.  They sound like pretty cool Pokémon, but their presentation in the games is terrible.  They’re probably among the top ten weakest Pokémon in the entire game – a skilfully-played Magikarp could wipe the floor with these things – because all of their stats range from outright bad to merely mediocre, and they can only use Hidden Power, which can be learnt by all but twelve other Pokémon.  They are, quite transparently, in the games just to provide an excuse for a tedious and pointless side-quest – namely, to catch all twenty-six (twenty-eight since Fire Red and Leaf Green added “!” and “?”).  It’s time-consuming, the rewards are, historically, not worth it, it doesn’t advance the story, and most importantly, catching all of the damn things doesn’t actually let you learn any more about them.  The burning question is, though, why am I harping on about the Unown like this when I’m supposed to be talking about Sigilyph?  Besides the obvious reason that I’m easily drawn into tangents about things I hate, Sigilyph’s design resembles Unown’s in certain respects – it’s most obvious in the head, but the whole aesthetic is vaguely similar and her name (a portmanteau of sigil and glyph) suggests that the designers did indeed have a similar concept in mind.  This makes this entry an excellent time to make a point I’ve been wanting to for a while: game mechanics are a representation of a Pokémon’s concept just like art and flavour text.  The point of setting out a Pokémon’s mechanical abilities should be to create the most awesome portrayal possible of that concept and allow a Pokémon to be good at doing, and contribute by doing, the things it’s supposed to be good at.  Unless your concept is “a Pokémon with no useful skills whatsoever,” Unown is not a valid response.  Sigilyph is.  She hits all the same notes as Unown was supposed to, only she didn’t have to be useless in order to do it.

I should probably give at least a brief account of why I think Sigilyph is empirically awesome.  She’s slower than she’d like to be but still very fast, her special attacks are impressive, and given those two points, she’s surprisingly bulky.  Psychic/Flying is a so-so type combination in most respects and although her offensive movepool is pretty good, even with Ice Beam, Shadow Ball, Energy Ball, Air Slash and Psychic to choose from, she doesn’t have any way to reliably damage most Steel-types.  Even if she did, of course, there are plenty of other Pokémon who are much better at plain old damage.  Sigilyph is awesome for different reasons.  Like many newer Psychic Pokémon, she has access to a dizzying array of support moves, and her combination of speed and reasonable defences allow her to make good use of many of them: with Reflect and Light Screen, she can provide protection for your team, Hypnosis, Thunder Wave and Psycho Shift allow her to disable opponents, Calm Mind, Roost and Cosmic Power can be used to give her formidable bulk, and if you’re prepared to design your team to exploit their effects, Gravity and Trick Room can significantly slant the conditions of battle in your favour.  What’s more, one of the passive abilities she can have is nothing short of ridiculous.  Magic Guard, an ability formerly exclusive to Clefable, renders a Pokémon completely immune to all indirect damage: burns, poison, Leech Seed, recoil, Hail, Stealth Rock, Spikes and goodness knows what else.  A Pokémon with this ability can be very difficult to deal with, especially if, like Sigilyph, it’s not a complete pushover defensively.  Magic Guard cements Sigilyph’s spot as a solid and unique support Pokémon.  Her Dream World ability is also awesome, but Dream World Sigilyph don’t exist yet as far as I know, so we’ll just have to wait for it – it’s Tinted Lens, which doubles the power of all attacks resisted by the target, making its user’s assault very difficult to withstand.  Sigilyph’s offensive movepool isn’t the best I’ve ever seen, but it’s still pretty good, and also probably the best of any Pokémon that can have the Tinted Lens ability – and fairly high speed and special attack stats combined with nigh-unresistable attacks are a dangerous combination indeed.  She’s just slow enough and just fragile enough that I doubt she’ll take the game apart piece by piece, but this is one Pokémon to watch out for.

I think I’ve said all I really meant to say, but I suppose I should summarise to wrap it up.  Sigilyph is a wonderful Pokémon.  She’s creepy, yes, but in her case the creepiness is very clearly intended in the design, and it’s done pretty well.  She has all of the same connection to the mysteries of the past as Pokémon like Claydol, Bronzong and Unown while having her own niche within that theme, and she’s pretty powerful to boot.  Sigilyph is another example of the kind of Pokémon that keep my faith in this series alive, and damn, I love her for it.

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Friday 12 August 2011

Cubchoo and Beartic

All right; time to put last entry's... unpleasantness... behind me!  Today I’m looking at a Pokémon based on one of Earth’s most awesome animals: the polar bear, the largest land carnivore of the modern world.  Game Freak have rendered this powerful, dangerous creature as...

...a little teddy bear with a runny nose.

Heh.  I can never resist an anticlimax.  Truth be told, I think Cubchoo’s cute, and if we like polar bears for being the savagery of the Arctic personified, we love polar bear cubs for being cute as buttons.  I don’t know whether I’d call him well-designed or not... “cute baby bear” is really easy and Pokémon’s done it before – see Teddiursa – so I guess the uniqueness of Cubchoo’s design is in the weird snot thing.  I assume Cubchoo’s nose is constantly runny because it’s one of the classic symptoms of a cold, and he’s an Ice-type, which is... at once almost clever and a little contradictory because no Ice Pokémon would ever actually get sick from being in the cold.  I’m not going to harp on it too much, though, because he’s not actually sick all the time; he just has the one symptom.  Apparently the snot – and yes, the Pokédex does call it snot – somehow supplies Cubchoo with fuel for his Ice attacks, so... I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it’s actually some kind of antifreeze oil, maybe?  If I speculate long enough I’m sure I could come up with an explanation for what’s going on here that at least sounds good but this is the umpteenth time I’ve wished that the Pokédex would go into more detail instead of leaving us a bizarre non sequitur that just raises more questions about something that isn’t actually supposed to be mysterious.  Anyway; on to Beartic.

The thing that nags me about Beartic is that he makes me notice more and more the similarities between these two and the original pair of bear Pokémon, Teddiursa and Ursaring.  Cubchoo bothers me less because unevolved Pokémon are almost invariably simpler in design, so I’m more tolerant of resemblances – there’s just less room for variety.  What my attention is drawn to in particular is the posture.  Bears are, in general, quadrupeds.  They can stand up on their hind legs but they don’t spend a lot of time walking around like that.  For Beartic and Ursaring both, bipedality seems to be the default and I suspect the main reason is that the artists really liked the pose Beartic is doing in the picture I've got here – a lot of images of Ursaring have him in the same pose.  There’s actually not a whole lot else to say about Beartic; he’s otherwise got fairly standard description for an Ice-type – freezing breath, the ability to extend his teeth and claws with ice (which, by the way, he can’t actually do in the games; he doesn’t learn Ice Fang), a frigid northern habitat... he has some Water-type skills without actually being a Water-type, because polar bears are strong swimmers, but I don’t think Game Freak have done much with the design base other than give the animal ice powers – which, let’s face it, is a bit of an obvious move when the base animal is a polar bear.  Off the top of my head... I believe polar bears have major spiritual significance in Inuit mythology, so you could steal some Inuit motifs and some shamanistic features, then maybe flip him around to use special attacks instead of physical ones and add a bunch of nature-related abilities like Whirlwind, Earth Power and Grass Knot... wait, you mean he already gets Grass Knot?  See how easy this is?!  I don’t think I’m asking for much here; I came up with that while talking to a friend over lunch... hmm... maybe designers at Game Freak aren’t allowed food?  That would explain a lot...

Come to think of it, Beartic is broadly similar to Ursaring mechanically as well, in that both of them are slow, hard-hitting physical tanks – Beartic is a tad slower and a fair bit tougher, and Ursaring is significantly stronger, but they work in roughly the same way.  Being an Ice-type is a blessing and a curse; Ice is a very strong offensive type (mainly because Ice attacks are strong against Dragon Pokémon, who are otherwise relatively hard to damage) but it’s also hands-down the worst defensive type in the game, conferring only one resistance (to itself).  Moreover, being an Ice-type physical attacker is normally something of a tricky proposition because Ice doesn’t really have a strong, reliable physical attack that’s widely available (Ice Punch is decent, but a bit on the weak side) but Game Freak have very kindly given Beartic a signature move to work with, Icicle Crash, which is a pretty good option.  The rest of his movepool isn’t brilliant but there’s enough there to pull together some nice-looking sets.  Superpower and Stone Edge are good attacking options and I guess Night Slash might be useful despite being a bit weak (it’s very distressing, however, that he doesn’t learn Ice Shard – the Ice-type equivalent to Quick Attack – because that would compensate for his awful speed).  Swords Dance would give Beartic access to a worrying amount of attack power, though since he’s so slow I would prefer the mixed attack and defence boosts offered by Bulk Up – it’s a shame, however, that Superpower weakens its user’s attack and defence after it hits, because it means that two of your moves are working at cross-purposes if you use Bulk Up and Superpower on the same set.  Unfortunately Beartic’s only other decent Fighting attack is Focus Punch, which is always used after your opponent moves and fails if you take any damage during the turn you use it – it’s powerful enough to make up for that, but you have to build a set around it.  Beartic can do that, actually, by using Yawn (a time-delayed sleep-inducing move that is cancelled if the target switches out) to provoke switches and give him opportunities to set up Focus Punches in peace, but that’s another set entirely (also: Ursaring can do it too).  In the fullness of time, Game Freak will presumably make Beartic from the Dream World available to us, and then Beartic will have access to the ability Swift Swim, which doubles his speed in heavy rain.  This might make him fast enough to be viable on a rain team, but unfortunately he doesn’t have a good physical Water attack to take advantage of the power boost given to Water attacks by rain (no, Dive is not a good physical Water attack), so you’d probably be better off with, y’know, an actual Water-type with Swift Swim (there’s a gazillion of ‘em to choose from).

Honestly, this Pokémon’s kind of bland.  It’s sad because a polar bear is a pretty awesome base to start from; Game Freak just haven’t done a lot besides render a polar bear in Pokémon game mechanics.  This is a shame because the game could actually use more pure Ice-types; prior to Black and White there were so few I could count them on one hand.  A bit more invention is required here though.  As a partner in battle, Beartic is hardly bad, but not really good either – and more importantly, he’s not interesting mechanically.  All things considered, he strikes me as essentially an inferior version of Mamoswine.  As I often do, I feel a bit bad here because Cubchoo and Beartic haven’t committed any particularly egregious crimes; there’s no strong reason to condemn them... there’s just not much reason at all not to condemn them either.

I hereby deny this Pokémon's right to exist!  Let its head forevermore adorn the wall of a Canadian hunting lodge!

Tuesday 9 August 2011

Trubbish and Garbodor

No.
No.
These are not Pokémon and I refuse to let them be called Pokémon.
No.
What, you’re going to argue with me?


Okay, look.  Game Freak.  I’m being reasonable here.  I let you have Liepard, I let you have Stoutland, I let you have Woobat, I let you have Swadloon, I let you have Pignite and I let you have Archeops, but this is where I draw the line!  Ladies and gentlemen, meet Trubbish and Garbodor, the trash bag Po-
 
*ahem*

Pok- P- Poké- Poka-

Porcupines.

You heard me.

Trubbish and Garbodor are, both figuratively and literally, piles of garbage brought to life by an unholy alchemy taking place in some of the most noxious, stifling refuse pits on Earth (I refer, of course, to the offices of Game Freak’s creature design department).  The Pokédex explains that they live in polluted areas, assimilating rubbish into their bodies, and that they fight with a charming variety of horrid toxins, presumably extracted from said rubbish (however, it also mistakenly refers to them as Pokémon, so I’m not sure we can necessarily take it at its word this time).  I have tried – no, honestly, I have – to find some way in which these P- P- *ahem* potatoes are conceptually distinct from Grimer and Muk, and I have failed.   Both are effectively the personification of environmental pollution caused by the industrialisation and increased urbanisation of human settlements, and both were created from the waste products of said urbanisation by a vaguely-defined pseudoscientific phenomenon: in Trubbish’s case, an unspecified chemical reaction between garden-variety trash and industrial waste, in Grimer’s, the reaction of toxic sludge to (and I quote) “X-rays from the moon.”  Both of them are also ridiculously toxic and could probably drop an Indian elephant at fifty paces just by standing upwind.  The only difference I can pick out is that Garbodor looks unbelievably stupid.  Trubbish... eh... considering that the concept they had to work with was “ambulatory garbage bag” I think it’s quite an achievement that Trubbish is as tolerable as he is, but Garbodor is like a master’s thesis in idiocy; he may well be more stupid-looking than any Pokémon I’ve ever seen.
What?
Yes, excluding that one, obviously.
Oh, all right, and that one.
Well, of course he’s not as bad as that one; that bloody well goes without saying, doesn’t it?
The point is, Garbodor is definitely in the top ten – or would be if he were a Pokémon, which he’s not.  That gormless expression, the arms held together by bits of pipe, the puffy ear-tuft-things atop what he so pretentiously calls his head, the trailing strips of green plastic draped over him like a cape, the indefinable blue and pink lumps that festoon his body... nothing about this P- this polyhedron makes me want to let him continue to suffer the pain of his misshapen existence, let alone actually make him my partner.  I don’t know that he’s even properly repulsive; I’m not completely sure that the art style of Pokémon allows for that.  He just looks dumb.

I’m not normally one to use a Pokémon whose flavour I truly despise, even if I’m happy to concede it has potential merit in some role or other.  I readily admit, for instance, that although personally I can’t stand Weezing (Koffing I don’t mind; Koffing I like, but Weezing I hate) he’s undeniably an effective and unusual physical wall.  I say this in order to defend my integrity as I come to talk about Garbodor’s powers and abilities, so that my readers know I went into this with an open mind, fully intending to find a use for him if one existed.  The fact that I failed is as much his fault as mine.  Garbodor truly is dreadful.  I think I’ve mentioned in the past that one thing I like about Black and White is that few, if any, of the new Pokémon from these games are actually unusable, but Garbodor is pretty bad.  His stats are average, his movepool is utter drivel, his type is unremarkable and his abilities are, at best, situational.  Did I miss anything?  No, I think that covers it.  Poison is probably the worst offensive type in the game, being strong against only one other type – Grass – but not bad defensively, with only two weaknesses (Ground and Psychic) and four resistances.  Still, there’s something of a trend that the most effective Poison Pokémon are generally those that have managed to rid themselves of that weakness to Ground attacks somehow, like Weezing, Gengar and Crobat, because it really does hurt.  That’s not Garbodor’s biggest problem, though; his biggest problem is that his slate of useful attacks is extraordinarily limited.  He has some good special attacks, like Thunderbolt and Psychic, but that doesn’t help because he’s no good at using special attacks.  I’m pretty sure the only physical attacks he has that are worth using are Body Slam (which is good because it causes paralysis, and is therefore largely incompatible with Garbodor’s general desire to spread poison), Payback (which is best on a very slow Pokémon, and Garbodor’s not far below average in that department), Gunk Shot (which only hits 70% of the time and is therefore of dubious value) and Explosion (which has certain obvious issues as a go-to move).  Garbodor’s biggest strength is his physical attack stat and he doesn’t even have a reliable physical attack of his own element!  Was Poison Jab really too much?  Would that have sent him over the edge and made him hopelessly overpowered?  Seriously?

...okay.   Accentuate the positive.  I can do this.  Garbodor can learn Spikes (opponents that can’t fly take damage when switching in) and Toxic Spikes (opponents that can’t fly are poisoned when switching in), and given a few turns to set those up he has the potential to make switching in and out of battle hell for an opponent who doesn’t have a Pokémon with Rapid Spin handy to blow away the layer of junk Garbodor scatters wherever he goes.  What’s more, one of his passive abilities, Weak Armour, might actually have a use here – whenever a Garbodor with Weak Armour takes damage, his defence weakens, but he gets faster, and if that makes him faster than his opponent, it will give him time to toss down an extra layer of Spikes or Toxic Spikes before being killed, or just to blow himself the hell up and take his foe with him (his other ability options, Stench and Aftermath, are fairly silly, but reasonable alternatives if you don’t want him taking more damage from every successive attack).  Unlike many Pokémon with Spikes and Toxic Spikes, Garbodor actually has a little bit of bulk to him (he’s no Forretress, but this is all he’s got, so work with him here) so he might be able to pull this off reasonably well.  Heaven knows what else you’d use him for; he’s one of the least effective P- Pok- pomegranates I’ve seen since starting this mad endeavour.
What, you want a conclusion?  No, go away; I’ve been through enough on this idiot’s account.

I hereby deny this Po- Poké- P-
...
Oh, to Hades with it!  From garbage they were born; to garbage let them return!