Pokmon Unite turns monster battles into a team sport

Games like League of Legends and Dota 2 are massively popular, and have been for the better part of a decade. But they can also be impenetrable to new players and viewers: there are so many characters and strategies that figuring out what’s happening on-screen is a huge challenge. The just-launched Pokémon Unite aims to fix that. It doesn’t just add cute monsters to the genre, but also some clever fixes to streamline it and make things more approachable. It’s kind of like a mashup of a strategy game and basketball, but with a Gengar thrown in.

For the uninitiated, a MOBA — or multiplayer online battle arena, to use the genre’s unnecessarily long full name — is a five-on-five competition where the goal, usually, is to destroy the opposing...

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