Let me tell you a story about missed opportunity. Long ago, the kingdom of Nintendo created the mightiest army of games and merchandising to appeal to children. This was the army of Pokemon, and everyone played its games and bought its toys. It ruled over the markets for decades, but it always kept the games and toys separate. One day, the two powerful kingdoms of Disney and Activision rose up with their own mighty armies, combining their games and toys into the singular forces of Infinity and Skylanders, respectively. Each army was mightier than either prong of Nintendo's Pokemon army, because they worked together. Nintendo decided to combine the Pokemon army's halves of games and toys into a single force. It failed horribly.

This is the story of Pokemon Rumble U for the Nintendo Wii U. To shift metaphors, Nintendo looked at a mint it just purchased and used it to print photos of their pets instead of money. If Nintendo put effort into creating a combination game and toy experience akin to Activision's Skylanders or Disney's Infinity, it could have become a titanic force in children's entertainment and made Pokemon even more powerful. Instead, it released a pitiful $17.99 (direct) brawler loosely tied into a series of mediocre trading figures.

Mechanics

At heart, Pokemon Rumble U is a simple beat-em-up, extremely similar to Pokemon Rumble Blast for the Nintendo DS. You control a small Pokemon toy and are followed around by a few more Pokemon toys as you fight off waves and waves of enemy Pokemon toys with different attacks. Each toy has its own power level, health, and up to two different attacks, and the elemental strengths and weaknesses of the main Pokemon games still apply. As a result, you can use some strategy depending on the enemies you're going to fight. Pokemon Rumble Blast made this work on the DS thanks to lengthy, serpentine levels, a wide variety of environments, and extensive upgrading and trading options. Pokemon Rumble U has none of these things.

Each level in Pokemon Rumble U is a small arena, with no branches to explore or goals to find. You have to fight off a certain number of enemies and then a boss, and while the objectives and environments can vary slightly with forts you have to protect or poisoned tiles you have to avoid, you're still just brawling in a big ring for Pokemon toys. As you fight, you can collect additional Pokemon toys and use stronger characters, but those characters remain static through the game and you'll end up tossing them aside and using the newest, most powerful characters you pick up every match through the end. This occurs because Pokemon Rumble U lacks a toy upgrade system.