Last year, Pokémon Unite introduced the Electrode Volleyball play mode as a limited-time offering to celebrate its anniversary. This year, said play mode is on a roll and even climbing to new heights - a "prominence", so to speak, which is why I've described it as such in the title of this post. The rise to that "prominence" is a fascinating one for what it means for the play mode and this game as a whole, and it can stand to be explored.
The biggest thing for that is a World Tour featuring the play mode: a series of competitions that will take place online in the next month or so, for the top regions where the game is played. Competitors can even enter individually (and then team up later on) and certainly as already-formed teams. The competitions are being promoted with fanfare that rivals the standard competitive mode, which makes it truly a peak for the play mode.
Meanwhile, the play mode itself has essentially been available indefinitely as a Quick battle map in addition to the usual daily map rotation and any other special event maps, of which at this present time there are in fact two of the latter. Since the play mode tends to go much quicker, it presents itself as an alternative to other Quick battle maps, which is a good side benefit other than now being able to support the above competition.
For additional support of the tournament, there are two accompanying game events. Both of these involve taking part in and/or winning matches of the play mode; one has the ultimate reward of a Platinum emblem for Electrode and the other has rewards of items and temporary Unite Licenses every five battles won up to 101 of them. Both of these events need at least some grinding effort but are certainly worth it to an extent.
Having described Pokémon Unite as a "sports game" earlier, the Electrode Volleyball mode becomes a real testament to that. The new competition takes the mode to new heights and shows off a different competitive potential for the game in addition to the existing one. That may just allow the game to have a "sticking" factor in addition to a "smashing" factor by the above, for enabling another kind of Pokémon competition to take place.
One year ago: When Two's a Crowd...
Two years ago: On Pokémon Valuables
Three years ago: Tournament: SWEEP JR vs. Majestic Force Elite (SA Factions)
Four years ago: The Irreplaceable Difference
Five years ago: Quickies: Finding Pokémon in Trees
Six years ago: Countermeasures for Pokémon Go
Seven years ago: Ingress and Out
Eight years ago: Pokémon in Common Terms
Nine years ago: Cosplay: CLAS:H/ICGP 2017, Regional Edition
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