MH 4 U

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. MH4U. 4 U. Not for me, as it turns out.


I've enjoyed Monster Hunter in the past, to a limited extent, and this latest one I've tried (not by any stretch the latest released) is more of the same. I have less time and patience than ever for the type of rigmarole this game foists upon its players, though.


One 'gather some eggs' mission, and I'm done. I wasn't going to stick with it long anyway, but ugh. This game needs to evolve, dearly.


There's a PC clone coming out called Dauntless that will probably mix up some of the elements, and could turn out to be really good. I heard some ex-Riot developers are working on it.

Diablo Has Returned

I mentioned in my last entry that I was planning to play a lot of ipad games on my trip to Japan. Well, that didn't happen. In fact, it seems like there is no better way to ensure that I will not play a game than for me to blog about doing so. It's very strange.

I didn't play much of anything at all on the trip itself, since I was mostly busy doing a myriad of other things. I played a battle or two of Tactics Ogre on the planes there, and while I was in Tokyo I picked up a copy of Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, which I've spent about 5 hours playing, since.

It's definitely Monster Hunter! I really enjoyed what I played of Tri on the Wii (about 50 hours' worth, if I recall), and that experience helps to make heads or tails of this game, which is pretty similar, but does have a few key differences. Being on PSP, there is of course no right-hand method for camera control. I've tried "the claw," but haven't found it really necessary thus far. I've only done the first single player quest and a bunch of tutorial quests at this point, but there is a way to center the camera behind you by tapping the L button, and that has been sufficient. I like to think I'll have time to play a lot more of this game sometime in the future. We'll see.

Arriving back in the States after a couple of weeks, I would have liked to jump back into playing a lot of Dota 2, but I overworked some muscles in my back and was laid up on the couch, instead. I have slowly worked myself up to sitting at the PC by playing some matches of Tribes and messing around a bit with the new level creator tool for Portal 2. I have made one level so far, and it is hardly an inspired work of genius. It's cool that you can do that, though.

And, of course, one of the biggest releases of the year has just dropped on us. Yes, Diablo III is here at long last. 24 to 36 hours on from release, it is even playable, when the servers are up. I was at least able to get on last night (about 24 hours post official release) long enough to create my female Wizard, Meiairi, and play through the first couple of quests. I'm still only about halfway through the content that I played through three times during the beta. I went with the Wizard because it was the most fun of the three classes I played in beta, and yes, because she is sexy. Her beam attacks are particularly sexy. When I played the beta, the rune system had yet to be implemented, so I am excited to get into that once I get her to level 6. She's at 5 now.

The real currency auction house (Blizzard seems to be calling it the RMTAH) is not yet online, unfortunately. I'm really looking forward to making a buck on that. If I could even just make enough money playing Diablo to pay for the next expansion pack or some Steam games, I'd be thrilled. And if I can make more than that....

What Am I Doing?

Yeah, I still have yet to finish any of the games I listed in my last post.  I won't even list all the games I bought, though.  In my defense, they were all ultra-cheap.  Maybe I should take drastic measures for 2011, like limiting myself to buying one game a month, or buying everything I want now (no restrictions) and then closing the wallet 100% for 2011.  That would be tough.

Well, maybe my current system will work.  I've eased the cutoff price up to $20 because I was tired of debating whether or not to spend completion tokens on $13 or $15 games. I figure once a current-gen console game hits $20, it won't go much lower unless it's a real turd or mega-bomb.  Take for instance a by all accounts good game, Darksiders.  That game has been $30 and then $20 for a while now, but I've yet to see it get near $10, whereas some supposedly big releases this year that flopped I've seen on sale in the $5-$10 range, and I don't even mean on Steam!

So, I don't really know what I'm ultimately going to do with this whole game buying/playing balancing act, but for now I'll say 2 completions earn 1 purchase for games over $20, I guess.  I started at 1 for 1 above $10, but this may be a better balance as far as inflow and outflow.

Enough of that--games! I've been busy playing a whole host of stuff in the last few weeks, and that's what counts.  I got a new big-screen TV to game on, and that's caused me to mix things up some, as well.
I had a slight Monster Hunter resurgence on the Wii, playing a bunch more online and encountering several new big monsters I'd never fought before.  It's a great game, and a lot of fun.  Why the hell is it shackled to portables and hobbled, barely-online enabled systems.  Why bother with huge fail bucket projects like Lost Planet 2 when an HD Monster Hunter would be a sure fire success in Japan at the very least, and could crack the west wide open for Capcom?

I also returned to Bayonetta one night last week, to pick up where I left off a few months back.  I was pretty confused, having forgotten a lot of how the combat system flows and how to handle different enemy types.  Mixing up the weapons I used helped some.  I only went through one chapter, though, and I'll be needing to see to that again soon, to continue on and hopefully finish the game up before New Year's.  Bayo is a really fun game, but I just have so much else I'm more interested in that it's hard to get around to.  Yeah, life is tough in these hard times.

I've been playing a lot of Fallout, also.  I'm more acclimated to it now, and I've made some good progress.  I actually completed the first major quest, which is to find a new water chip to replace the one in the main character's home vault.  You're given a deadline of 150 in-game days in which to accomplish this, or the water runs out in your vault, everyone dies, and it's game over.  In my travels to find a replacement, though, I started to wonder if living underground in vaults is the best thing for survivors in the wasteland.  There is definitely life above ground, dangerous as it is up there.  I half expected the water chip quest to be the entirety of the main quest line of the game, and after finishing that up the rest of the world just being there to run around in and do as you will, but no, there is more to it than that.  I guess this was before the days of open world games as we know them, now.  No, my next task is to hunt down whoever or whatever is behind the too-rapid growth in the super-mutant population, and stop whatever they are doing.  I believe I ran into some of this faction in my search for the water chip, but when I return to where I met them now, circumstances have changed, and I'm attacked on sight, so I'm thinking about going to someone else for help, perhaps the Brotherhood of Steel.  I'm definitely getting into this game.

Another game I've been playing a big chunk of is Dawn of War II.  I have no way of really knowing how far into the game I am, but I'm estimating maybe halfway.  I keep performing well enough on missions to deploy an extra time each day, which as far as I can work out, is allowing me to pursue optional objectives in addition to playing out the main campaign.  My squads of Space Marines are all around levels 12-14, currently, and Wargear drops are plentiful on each sortie. This game is a ton of fun to play, but the mission structure makes it a little too easy to stop playing.  The missions can get pretty intense when you are essentially controlling 4 individual Diablo characters at once against hordes of enemies and boss encounters.  It's too easy to just walk away after one or two quick missions, especially playing near bed-time, when I don't want to get too amped up.  I really, really like this game, though.  I already own the first expansion, Chaos Rising, and the next, Retribution, is a sure purchase next year.

The recent announcement of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim made me really want to go back and play some more Oblivion (TES IV), so I found myself re-installing it this past Sunday.  I still have all of the Shivering Isles content unplayed, and it may remain that way, because now that I've played the total conversion mod Nehrim, I don't think I want to go back to the vanilla game.  The Nehrim designers, who also made total conversions for TES III: Morrowind, I'm given to understand, have taken Oblivion, broken it down into its constituent parts, and reassembled from them an entirely new world with its own mythology, creating an almost all-new RPG.  Sure, all of the building blocks are familiar, but entire systems have been overhauled to address some of the more common complaints players of Oblivion had, and the result is a game that I feel comfortable in saying is just better, mechanically.

Oblivion featured some odd, almost experimental design decisions.  Everywhere you went, monsters and loot were basically level-synched to your character, which allowed for total freedom in exploring the world, but meant that you would never really find anything all that exciting when you did.  You never found a super bad ass sword that made you entirely overpowered, you only found the sword that was balanced to be pretty decent vs the enemies who were balanced to put up not too much of a fight.  This all meant that leveling up in general felt pretty meaningless.  If you leveled, so did everyone else.  You would run into situations where random bandits on the roads would be wearing the same high level armor that you were.  Gaining new abilities never seemed to make you more powerful, only give you more variety in what you could do.

Nehrim fixes this by just going back to a more conventional setup where enemies are assigned static levels, and areas are populated with enemies and loot of a certain range of levels.  All of the sudden, combat and exploration are both more exciting, making for a better game, overall.  It doesn't stop there, though, they have overhauled the inventory and standard UI, also, making them more functional and PC-friendly.  Oblivion was basically a console port, and the inventory, UI, and FOV really reflect that. Nehrim helps out in those areas.  The map in the original game was a real pain to use, and the guys behind this mod have done a lot to improve on that, too.  You can still definitely see Oblivion's flaws poking out, but Nehrim tries it's best to smooth them over.

So that's what Nehrim is mechanically, but how does it play, you ask?  Well, it's of course a first person RPG, like Oblivion, focused on melee/ranged/magic combat and character growth featuring an open world and a ton of quests, all optional after the first couple of hours.  The plot is that you are a monk who has grown up in an abbey, and you receive a mysterious letter telling you that your life is in danger unless you show up to meet the sender at an old abandoned mine, and to come alone and tell no one. Upon arrival, you are attacked by trolls living in the mine, fall through some floor boards to the lower levels, and have to find your way out again, encountering other recipients of the same mysterious letter, most already killed by the trolls.  When you finally find your way back to the entrance of the mine, you are alone, and arrive to find a powerful mage torching a pack of trolls.  This mage explains that he was the one who asked you there, along with several other candidates, but of course did not expect the trolls or for all the other candidates to be killed.  Turns out, a secret brotherhood of mages (secret to avoid persecution in the magic-fearing kingdom) have been watching you and these other candidates for some time, and have decided you are fit of character and natural ability to join them.  It's literally an offer you can't refuse; they'll kill you if you do.  You are given a forged letter announcing your conscription into the army of the kingdom for some far-off war, and told to give it to the head of the monks at your abbey, and then to meet with the mage again in a nearby village.  The mage disappears, leaving you to your own devices.  This is basically where the game opens up.  You'll have to do a few little quests before you can leave the encampment surrounding the mine, which is under attack by a rogue group of mages (different from the group that has just recruited you, by their robes), but after that you're free to go out and explore the world and do as you will.

I'm following the main quest line so far, with a few diversions into caves and ruins I've discovered, and random side quests to uncover more about my character's past pre-Abbey.  I've been playing for about 5 hours, so far, and really enjoying Nehrim so far.  If you have a copy of the PC version of Oblivion (retail or Steam, either way), and you want to breathe some new life into it, definitely check out this total conversion, which basically amounts to a whole new 50+ hour RPG, and completely free, of course!

Metal Gear?!

I put Infamous to bed over the weekend.  I have a review haiku that pretty well sums up how I feel about the game, but as a teaser: it's pretty forgettable.  It's well done, and the story is batshit insane, but ultimately all of the mechanics are cribbed from other games, and mostly overdone, too.  I grow tired of going from point to point around an open city doing the same handful of activities, and this game's superpower set are just analogs of your typical pistol/rifle/grenade/rocket launcher kit of every other open-world game.  Climbing is well done, but the environments are mostly extremely bland; big rectangular buildings with little in the way of tricky navigation to be done.  Meh.

Among my spoils of the Steam Summer sale are the majority of the Call of Duty franchise, and I've sunk my teeth deep into the first game, and it's a lot of fun!  It's a balls-to-the-wall, no-thinking exercise in shoot, advance, shoot, and for what it is, pretty awesome.  I kind of want to power through it and a bunch more of the series, too, all of the WWII games available on the PC.

Last night I did some monster hunting (Tri), finishing up a couple of the online 1-star quests, and collecting materials for a sword/shield combo I wanted that both matches my Jaggi armor set and will stay sharp longer than the tomahawk I've been using (though it's a bit weaker per hit).  Very addictive.

Then, today, my passion for gaming got the better of me, and I rationalized myself into a MGS: Peace Walker edition PSP bundle.  See, I had a $100 gift card from being employee of the month at work, plus $60 from when I sold my original PSP a long time ago, so all I needed was the price of MGS: PW itself to make up the entire price of the bundle.  Plus, I am kind of a collector of MGS games (NA editions, anyway), and this is a limited edition bundle.  I'm a little let down that the UMD didn't come in the proper packaging for the game, but just a little cardboard sleeve, but it would be idiocy to buy another copy of the game just for that.  Right?  I do own every version of every MGS that has been released here, though, aside from the VR missions and Portable Ops Plus.  I guess I should have pre-ordered at Gamestop and gotten the very limited camo PSP, but fuck Gamestop.  I hate them.

So, the game, Peace Walker, then.  I played it for a couple of hours tonight, and so far so good.  I'm using the new "shooter type" control scheme, though I'm not convinced it's much different from one of the schemes available in Portable Ops (it has been a while, though...).  Anyway, it's working sufficiently thus far.  I realized today that with the way the 3DS is looking, I'd better just go ahead and get comfortable with a single analog for some games, and try to avoid those where it's just too much of a hindrance.  I managed to finish MGS: PO, though, so I'm sure I can manage Peace Walker, if the purported Monster Hunter difficulty of some of the bosses doesn't get in my way.  The base building and team building stuff also seems really reminiscent of PO, along with the mission structure, so I remain skeptical about this game being all that much of a quantum leap over the prior PSP game.  Again, it's been a while since I played PO, though, so I could be misremembering. It does seem clear that the scope of PW is greater, though.  I can already see that there are a ton more side missions and things to build up and research in this latest game.

The plot pretty much has to end up being more important to the overall series arc, too.  PO's plot, while definitely a part of the MGS canon, is pretty dispensable, and entirely omitted from the intro to PW, which wants to bridge the gap directly from Snake Eater.  I'm not sure how I feel about this move, which is tantamount to a retcon of the first PSP series entry.  At the time PO was about to come out, all we were told was how much of a legitimate entry it was to the series entire arc.  We'll see about that when all of Peace Walker's plot comes to light.  I remember being a bit unsatisfied with the events of PO.  Big Boss still hadn't exactly gone rogue enough to end up where he had by the events of the first Metal Gear (sans Solid).

Bad As I Want To Be

Last week I finished up my romp through Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and I thoroughly enjoyed the game, as I mentioned on the latest Call Of Podcast. It's the type of game where you can see all of the seams, the load times in the menus are inexcusable, and it's probably a bit short for some, but it's cool all the same.  It has its one trick, and it does it well.  Even the QTE's, which I normally despise, were ok because they were so forgiving, and just required one button press, rather than the "test of strength" variety in some games.  I even played one of the bonus campaign levels (I have the special edition), the Jedi Temple, and enjoyed the cool fight at the end of that one.  One gripe I have though, is with the dark side (non-canon) ending.  It was just nowhere near as cool as it should have been, to set up Starkiller's further dark side missions post-game (the other two bonus campaign levels, Hoth and Tatooine).  I wonder if the sequel will be any good.

The biggest story for this blog update is that I finally started inFamous, which has been sitting on my shelf for probably a year, now.  I've gone from platforming and shooting lightning in Galaxy and SW:TFU to doing both at the same time in this game.  I mentioned being kind of "meh" about it on the podcast, and after putting in a few more hours, I'm starting to like it a little more.  I'm being as comically evil as I can possibly be.  I push people around with my force electric powers just for fun, and if I'm given the choice to help some people or do something rude and selfish, I'll go the latter rout, with total disregard and contempt for the citizens of Genericity (that's not it's real name, but it'll do).  In a way, I'm projecting my own jaded, seen-it-all gamer disdain into Cole, who is a perfect conduit for it, since he's kind of a cock, himself.  I want to see if willing him to be as evil as possible will actually make him into a bad guy, or if he'll wuss out and have a change of heart at the end.  More games need to let you be the bad guy, and actually be a bad guy.  Like, reprehensible.

The game does an odd thing where it sends you into the sewers to get through these very straight-forward platformy sections, only they're super duper easy; because Cole tends to suction onto whatever surface is nearby, it feels like a three-year-old could blow through those sections.  I would actually appreciate a little more of a challenge there, something more akin to the jumping puzzles in a Prince of Persia game.  I do like Cole's Spider-Man act out in the open city, though.  It makes getting to the rooftops a lot easier and pretty effortless.  I also like his power line grind ability.  That's just fun.  The electric scatter grenades and the gound pound thing are cool, as well.  Now that I think about it, Cole's powers have a lot in common with Starkiller's.

Apart from those two main things, I made just a little progress in The Witcher, moving into Chapter II.  This is going to be a pretty long game. It's very good so far, though.  I played a little more Bad Company 2 with Esteban after recording the podcast this weekend.  I think it's still my favorite multiplayer shooter.  I also went back to Super Mario Galaxy and got my star count up to 78 before shelving that game for a while to return to Monster Hunter Tri on on the Wii.  I got in one good hunt online, taking down a Qurupeco with one other player, and getting my Hunter Rank to level 6.  There's a lot left to do in that game, yet.

The Nature Of A Man

I spoke about it on the podcast, but most of last week was devoted to finishing up Planescape: Torment.  I've had a few more days to process the ending and the game as a whole, and I have to say my top X games ever list needs a revision.  As games focused on telling a story go, it's probably the absolute best I've seen, though it's methodology is nothing like a Metal Gear Solid or Shadow of the Colossus, and comparisons to those are cumbersome, at best.  Planescape has one huge advantage going for it, and that's the player's imagination.  So much of the game's story is related through text that it is more comparable to a novel than your typical game or movie.  Vast swathes of backstory and character development set in fantastic locations across the planes (alternate worlds/dimensions) are related to the player through dialogue options, making the game as epic or mundane as the player imagines it to be.  And the ending is just perfect. 

As far as I know, it's a one-of-a-kind experience in gaming, and no one should miss it.  By now the game will run on any PC on the market, if you can find a copy.  I'm really hoping it eventually finds it's way onto Steam or GOG.com.  It's worth learning a little about ADnD rules to play, too, even if you're pretty clueless about it, like I am.

I went on a Monster Hunt one evening last week, but it was nothing, really.  I only had time to go and gather a few random materials for use in future hunts and crafting.  I'm going to have to find a place to fit in more Tri soon.

My June project, though, will be The Witcher.  It's always looked so cool, and coming off of Planescape, I still felt that I wanted to be doing some role-playing, so I set it to download over Steam a few days ago (I'd bought it a long time ago during a 50% off sale).  I've only played around an hour so far, but it's pretty cool, and not really what I was expecting.  It's very timing-based.  It also seems to have the player kind of rely on a triumvirate of battle options; there are your sword stances, your alchemical potions, and your "signs," which are basically magic spells.  I've really only seen the way sword stances work so far, but there are approriate stances based on what type of enemy you're fighting--bruiser, armored, heavy types, quick and agile types, and the numerous but weak type.  The strong stance, quick stance, and crowd stance, if you will. 

It's set in a very Eastern European dark fantasy setting, and so far Geralt, the main character, is a total badass.  This game also has one of the coolest intro movies ever.  Youtube it.

...Three Weeks Later

I've been absolutely swamped with work and doctor's appointments and whatnot lately, and while this is the first chance I've gotten to blog any, I have been doing quite a bit of gaming.  I've forgone watching these Rome DVDs, in fact, to fit in more time with some of these games.  I'll write this time period up in chronological order.

A few weeks ago Steam had a sale going on the X series, a long-running one where you play a space entrepreneur, and sometime privateer, out to make your own mark on the galaxy.  I did some quick research, and it was clear that the game to buy from this series is the most recent (and by all accounts, most complete) entry, X3: Terran Conflict.  It was only ten bucks, and I like space and had recently come to the conclusion that EVE Online and its monthly subscription weren't right for me, so I bit.

The game is vast and expansive, and by turns bewildering and incredibly difficult, but it is also strangely compelling.  Even 18 hours in, I feel like I have barely scratched the surface.  Every mission I try to take on is either outright impossible or so difficult as to make it virtually so.  Missions don't preclude you from taking them if say, you aren't in the right type of ship, or don't have a cargo bay big enough to transport the items in question, or don't have a ship fast enough to get to a place before the time limit of the mission.  So, right out of the gate, you are surrounded by missions and tasks you can attempt to do for people around the galaxy, but that would be functionally impossible to finish.  Still, I am compelled to get somewhere in this game.  I think what I need most is money to buy better ships for myself and money to invest in hiring other ships to run trade routes and money to build factories and stations with which to make more money to use to start to be able to get out and actually do some things to build some reputation with the various factions in the universe.   First, I need to find some good trade routes to run, then I need to run them for a while to build up some cash, and get the whole ball rolling.  We're talking hundreds of hours of potential playtime here, if one wanted to see and do everything in this game.  Did I mention that there is actually a plot and a series of story missions to play through?  I think 100+ hours into the game is probably a prerequisite to get anywhere into it at this point, though.

The other large and very time-intensive game I've been playing lately is Monster Hunter Tri.  I covered the basics about the game in my last post, but I've been delving farther in since.  I have about 35 hours now on the in-game clock, and I'm at the end of the third tier of guild quests in offline mode, about to hunt a Royal Ludroth.  What I've been playing some in the last couple of weeks is the online mode, where you can group up with 3 other players and head out to co-operatively kill these huge monsters for their horns and hides and such, which you can use to forge bigger and better weapons and armor with.  As co-op usually does, it adds a lot to the playability of the game.  You can group with people more experienced in order to learn how to handle the epic battles that some of the bigger game present you with.  I've grouped up with people a few times now, and working together we were able to do in 10-15 minutes what it took me 3-4 hours to accomplish alone, and by the skin of my teeth.  The closest parallel I know how to draw is trying to solo VT or IT mobs in FFXI vs. taking them down in a 3 or 4-man party.  Monster Hunter is a little more fair than that when you play solo, but only if you have the experience and skill that comes with a lot of trial and error.  The action is solid, and the progression addicting.  It's fun.

With May winding down, I decided to try and finish a couple of games to keep my pace up for the year.  I'm shooting at about 2 per month.  With that in mind, I went back in the last couple of days and polished off Torchlight.  I was at floor 23 or 24 of 35 when I'd last left off, so I had about a quarter of the game left.  Well, I'm done now.  The game started off really easy, so much so that I was playing on Hard mode with my Vanquisher.

Let me tell you, it gets a whole hell of a lot more difficult in that last stratum of the dungeon.  I was dying pretty much every time I ran into a room with more than 2-3 enemies to fight at a time.  The elemental damage from some of those guys was fucking brutal, one-shotting me time and time again.  Luckily, you have a few options for where you want to respawn, and how much of a death penalty you are willing to incur when you do so.  If you opt to respawn in town, you don't lose anything at all, so what I would do is set a town portal wherever I wanted my 'checkpoint' to be, and when I died I could just respawn in town and immediately take the portal back into the dungeon.  All I had to do was cast another portal spell as soon as I'd used the first, and I was set.  This strategy worked fine right up to the last boss, who was such a hardass that I can't even begin to describe what it was like to fight him.  He literally must have had a million hit points, and my average attack would hit for maybe 500, with crits doing about 1500.  If I'd had to rely on my pistols alone, I'd have been there all night, but luckily I had my flechette traps and Hail of Arrows abilities pumped up  and used those, primarily, to whittle him down over 15-20 minutes of non-stop death/respawn looping.  This guy would spawn scores of helper enemies that I had to try to deal with.  More often than not, he would actually kill them all himself in some sort of move that looked to be him consuming their life essence back into his own.  I never noticed his HP actually increase, however.  I must have died 30 times.  Here, I just said "fuck it," and elected to spawn right at the entrance to that floor, which was entirely given over to his lair anyway, and took the hit to my gold total.  There is an achievement for beating him on Very Hard Hardcore mode, which is one level higher than I was playing on, and with perma-death.  Yeah, on Hardcore, one death permanently erases your character, which of course means no respawns on the final boss, or anywhere else.  I can't imagine how I'd kill that guy on Easy without dying a bunch, so I have no fucking clue how anyone could do that.

So now, I'm done with Torchlight.  There is a lot more that the game has to offer, including higher difficulty, other character classes, a 100-floor alternate dungeon, tons of loot, and crazy ass mods, and I might be back for some of that at some point, but for now I move on to the next game I need to complete!

In all of this gaming confusion, I had to take a business trip up to Seattle, and I took my DS along for the ride, since the new Mac Steam platform is incompatible with the version of OS X on my MacBook.  I played a little bit of Touch! Kirby, which is still one of the best implementations of the DS stylus controls that I've ever seen, and a little bit more of the Final Fantasy IV remake.  I also got in a little bit of Battlefield with Lonesteban, the first I've played of that game in weeks.  That's all for now!  My goal for this week is to finish off Planescape: Torment and to play some more Monster Hunter and X3.

What Up, Yo

I have played exactly three games this week, yo.  I spent the first few days playing a bunch of Monster Hunter Tri, then later focused on finishing the Zerg campaign in Starcraft before April ended, and also played a ton of Uniwar throughout.

Monster Hunter kicks ass, and I can't wait to play more.  I bought it kind of on a whim, kind of to see whether or not the newest, most accessible entry in the series would would actually appeal to me (long time readers might know that the PSP game failed to click with me a couple of years ago).  The addition of the second analog stick, by way of the Wii Classic Controller Pro, does wonders for the game's playability.  Capcom has also gone to lengths with Tri to include perfunctory tutorials and a free-hunt area that makes resource gathering and practice hunts a cinch.  I've logged about 12 -14 hours with the game, and I'm really enjoying it thus far.  I'm at the very end of the second tier of guild quests (rated 1-5 stars) in the single player game.  I understand there are more quests online.

It's just a great game.  It's heavily skill-based, as in you got to have skills, or you will get nowhere.  I'm given over to that type of gaming recently, though, with stuff like Demon's Souls, Starcraft, and a bevy of multiplayer FPS that I've been into.  I'm starting to game more for mechanics than for stories, like I have done in the past.  Monster Hunter mixes that skill-heavy play with a bunch of great RPG mechanics, too, like crafting your own armor and weapons from rare items obtained through hunting and gathering in the world.  There are a couple of aspects of the game that I find annoyingly last-gen, though, and they are the closed-off areas with loading screens between, and the somewhat janky UI and inventory systems.  You can tell that the game is largely un-evolved from the PS2/PSP entries.  I can live with that, though, because the game is really good when you get right down to it.  I've only fought one big monster so far, and the battle was pretty epic.

I've been "playing" Starcraft for an eternity now, but I'd only finished the Terran campaign.  Within the last couple of weeks I decided to get back into the game, and now I've finished off the Zerg campaign, as well.  This is another game I've sort of had to teach myself how to play when playing.  With the Zerg, though, most missions amounted to building, expanding to more resources, building more, and then overrunning the opposition through force of numbers.  I didn't have to outright restart that many times, I could mostly go back to a timely save file if a rush ended badly or a scouting attempt went wrong.  Still, each of the 10 missions took anywhere from 60-90 minutes, and more in a couple of cases.  It's significant enough an investment that I treat each race's campaign as a separate game for completion tracking purposes.  I'm not sure when I'll get to the Protoss, but I should do it sooner than it took me to get to the Zerg after finishing the Terran campaigns.  I still have all of Brood War to get through before I can play Starcraft II!

In other gaming, I've been playing tons of Uniwar online via my iphone.  That game kicks ass.  The asynchronus model for turn-based games is ace for mobile games.

Other April-ending ends and odds

Quite aside from the MGS series (quite), I've spent a whole lot of time the last couple of weeks playing Puzzle Quest. I must be getting pretty deep into the quest mode by now. My Wizard is level 35, and I have a pretty nice set of broken equipment and broken spells for this broken (but awesome) game. Maybe it's not broken, maybe it's supposed to be ridiculously crazy and extra turn happy. It's amazing when I (or my enemy) can get like 7 extra turns all in a row and set up some insane chain-reaction culminating in 50 or more points of damage to the opposition.

Monster Hunter Freedom--not for me. Aside from just general graphics and interface jankiness (it's a 2004 PSP game, so I can understand this somewhat), the way this game is built just is not what I'm looking for at this point. The game seems to be 100% loot based. Get a mission, go kill some shit or gather some shit, and use the proceeds to upgrade to cooler gear. Rinse, repeat. There's barely any window-dressing of a world or story whatsoever, and the game is even further hamstrung by supporting only ad-hoc multiplayer for the, I don't know, 50% of the game that is designed to be taken on with a partner or team. I can see why this thing is so monstrously popular in Japan, and all at once I can see why it does pretty 'meh' numbers in the States. It makes perfect sense now that I've played the game. It's like an MMO, except not Massively Multiplayer, or Online!

I'd like to say that MH:F would have likely gained more traction with me back when I was like 15, but (aside from what would have been mind-blowing graphics), I kind of doubt the veracity of that statement. So, this is going to get traded in soon. I'm glad I finally got a chance to check the series out, though.

My copy of GTA IV should arrive today!

Time Flies

Has it already almost been a week? The big thing over this past weekend was some XBLA stuff, some Rock Band, and gearing up for MGS2. A lot of that time was spent on Puzzle Quest alone. I'm determined to play that game all the way through to the end. I have no clue how far into it I might be, though. It's just too good of a game; that devious combination of puzzle and rpg tropes is the definition of addicting.

I flew a few missions more in Ikaruga, too. I've made it up to around halfway through the 3rd level (on easy with max lives and continues). That game is beautiful in it's simplicity, and it looks great in high-def. Not a bad deal at $10, either.

I found Monster Hunter Freedom for PSP used, and in mint condition, for $20 at EB the other day, so I decided to give it a whirl. My first impressions are "someone please tell me how to play this game." A couple of times now I've gone off on my first quest for the hunter's guild, which from what I can make of the briefing, is just a test to see if you can either survive a trip out into the wilds or if you can actually find this cryptic artifact that I'm assuming actually exists, not having seen any evidence that would lead me to actually believe in it. I've just wandered around so far, attacking random things and wondering where the hell this "paws pass" or whatever it is I'm looking for is. My PSP battery died halfway through my morning commute today, and that didn't help matters.

My first couple of hours with Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance were spent reading the 3 'books' of back story in the "special" menu of the game. It's interesting how those are set up. There is meant to have been a book published by one of the minor characters in the first MGS, detailing the behind-the-scenes happenings in and around the events at Shadow Moses. The first article of interest is a mock book review of said book, the second a mock-noir recounting by a bumbling journalist of his own investigations into the incident and the book (kind of humorous), and the third is the 'book' itself, which reveals a few previously unknown facts about the Patriots, a guy called Richard Ames, and what really happened in those islands north of Alaska's Fox archipelago. Altogether this stage-setting amounts to about 500 'pages' (a paragraph or so each). I try not to dwell on what my reading all of this says about myself.

As far as the game proper, I've made it through the Tanker chapter, and about an hour or so into the Raiden section of the game. I've only played through MGS2 once in the past, so my memories of the story are nebulous at best. I'm thoroughly enjoying it to this point.