how is it possible that i'm still reading plenty of comments on the internet saying that hungrybox plays "defensive" or some sh*t.
Did people actually watch the leffen vs hungrybox matches? If it was up to leffen, he would camp the f*ck out of hungrybox for the full 8 minutes, and don't get me started on when leffen/armada take hungrybox to final destination...
Hungrybox reseted the bracket (vs plup) in like 5 minutes. He sure as hell didn't do that by playing "defensive". It's the foxes that, to minimize the chances of that happening to them, decide to interact with puff he minimun neccesary.
Puff may not play very "melee like", but, when most foxes fight hungrybox, they sure as help don't play "melee like" (i.e. agressive, interactive, exticing, etc...) either. Instead of fox and falco destroying each other, you have fox running away from puff.
Fox is not "forced" to just camp either, as he has the tools to do as he wants, but because he does have the tools to camp, he choses to do that instead.
I can't say if hungrybox is bad for melee or not, as, if it wasn't for him, top 8s would be much more varied, and we would get to see all the matchups that people want to see (like mango vs armada and such) much more often, and we would see much less fox in top 8s too, so i won't arguee against melee potentially being better without hungrybox.
However, because we do have to deal with watching hungrybox vs all these foxes, i'll say that, puff is the character that keeps things interesting in that particular matchup, not fox (which is supposed to be the character that represents what people like about melee). Fox vs puff on final destination should tell you everything you need to know about which is the character going against "the spirit of agresive, exciting melee".
And by the way, i know i look a bit crazy when i say this, but i'd like to see competitive melee with final destination banned and regular pokemon stadium replaced with frozen stadium, i think it would be much better.
