The only game I play online

Hey so it’s Monster Hunter time. If you’re not interested in reading what I have to say about Monster Hunter, now would be the time to go enjoy what exists of the Articles archive.

I spent pretty much the entirety of last weekend playing Monster Hunter 3. For some reason, I felt compelled to go back and hunt Cedaeus, the final boss of the offline mode. I thought that maybe time and experience and better gear would make the fight less frustrating. Not so. Underwater hunting is still awful, and is exacerbated by the fact that Cedaeus is a gigantic (and surprisingly speedy) whale monster. It took three separate outings to get him, but I did it. It’s strange, I guess I’ve never slain him before either, because my hunt log says I only have one Cedaeus kill to my credit. Oh well.

Following that, I got annoyed that my Jaggi+ armor set still wasn’t strong enough, and decided to go online to challenge some high rank monsters, whose item drops would allow me to create better armor.

Monster Hunter 3’s online mode has a ranking system that governs what levels of hunts you can play, called Hunter Rank. I’m currently stuck at the point where I can only play up to 4-star hunts, which is the first tier of high rank quests. What that means is that it’s the beefed-up versions of the easy(ier) boss monsters. The problem here is that you need quite a few HR levels to unlock the next star level, and you need a lot of experience points to go up a rank. Also, hunts take about half an hour in general, and don’t dole out a whole lot of experience. So if you want to play MH3 to its full extent, you’ve got a lot of grinding in your future.

That’s not so bad though, because Monster Hunter is pretty darn fun.

Continue reading The only game I play online

Badwich

This is a photograph of the worst sandwich I’ve ever had the displeasure of eating. Fortunately, it was crafted by none other than myself, so I don’t have to get on anyone’s case about ruining a sandwich.

The sandwich in question is comprised of four ingredients beyond the requisite bread: turkey, cheese, tomato and mustard. Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Not as bad as the last notable sandwich I made anyway. In reality the Pepwich was far more palatable than this beast.

Now, it’s just theory, because I haven’t tried to recreate this thing yet (And why would I? It was awful!) but I think the poor taste of the sandwich was more due to shoddy construction and handling than inappropriate ingredients. The first mistake I made was to put the tomatoes on the top, squished up against the mustarded bread. It’s just theory, but it seemed like the biggest issue in flavour was that the tomato and mustard had a poor combined taste. I claim it as a theory because it’s never been an issue before; I always get tomatoes and mustard on my Subway sandwiches, but here they seemed to work against each other. I mustard any meat-based sandwiches I make, and never has it been a problem when tomato is introduced. But I don’t think I’ve ever made a sandwich where the tomato and mustard touch. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s the only theory I’ve got.

Either that or the tomato had gone bad. It looked fairly fresh though.

The other big issue with the sandwich, and this was a rookie mistake, is that I sat the sandwich tomato-side down in its plastic container. Not an issue when you’re going to consume it right away, but when it’s going to sit until lunchtime? Tomato against bread is going to make for a mushy, disgusting sandwich. It wasn’t the worst soggification I’ve ever suffered, but that one layer of bread was still pretty soggy and gross. Combined with the off taste, it made for an almost inedible sandwich.

The lesson I want you to take away from this story, children, is this: don’t put your tomatoes adjacent to the bread when you make a sandwich. Put them between the meat and cheese. This also applies to pickles, but you have a little leeway there because pickels aren’t as watery as tomoatoes. Also pickles add a lot more to a sandwich than a tomoato will. Tomatoes are best reserved for omelettes and salad.

The worst number ever

I have this app that teaches me a new Finnish word every day. It’s mostly useless, because you really can’t learn a language one word at a time. Not efficiently, anyway. Plus I actually have to launch the app every day and manually choose to save the daily word, or else it’s lost to the ether. Sometimes updates will stealthily remove large swathes of words. It’s rather inconvenient and I sometimes wonder why I let it continue to eat up space on my phone.

At the very least though, it’s proven that twenty-one is the worst number ever.

Prolonged Fantasy VI

I’ve been very, very slowly chipping away at Final Fantasy VI. Or, I suppose it’s Final Fantasy III because I’m playing the Virtual Console edition. But all that aside, I started playing this in February. From what I’ve read about it over the years,  FFVI should not take 5+ months to complete.

The problem is that I cannot seem to remember that it’s there. Every time I pick it up and start playing again, it sems that a new game comes around to distract my attention from it. And this isn’t the first time I’ve had this issue either! I’ve tried playing it (admittedly the highly illegal ROM of it) a couple times before, and the farthest I’ve ever made it was to the ghost train. I know this for a fact because I haven’t got even the slightest recollection of Terra or Locke’s paths from the point where the party splits following the battle with Ultros.

I’ve finally progressed beyound that point though, and I’ve just arrived at whatever the town is where you can learn a little bit about Locke’s past. I probably should have remembered that one town’s name too, because Locke has always been my favourite FFVI character, even though I’ve never really played the game. That opinion is based almost completely from Nintendo Power’s coverage of the game. It’s funny, Epic Center was always my favourite NP feature, but I never played any SNES RPGs during their time. I was always afraid of games I wouldn’t be able to beat in one rental.

Before I move on, Locke is still my favourite character. “It’s a little tight, but the price was right!”

Anyway, I was a little distraught at the event battle just before this part of the game, where you have to defend a hill against a force of encroaching troops. FFVI up until that point wasn’t a tough game. I kept a big stack of potions on hand, and just chugged those as I brute-forced my way through anything that posed a threat. But this battle was different.

There’s a part that plays out the same near the beginning of the game, where you’re on a map that’s made up of a small maze. Your party is at the top, the enemy below. You get three groups of characters to move around while trying to stop the baddies reaching your side. The first instance of this is pretty easy. There aren’t a lot of bad guys, and it’s the beginning fo the game; of course they wouldn’t make it very hard. Only the second time around, you’re squaring off against a regiment of soldiers led by Kefka, who (SPOILERS) ends up being the main antagonist of the game.

It became clear very quickly that my parties were painfully underleveled. I had never stopped to grind in this playthrough yet, and while I still had a good supply of potions and tonics, the soldiers were doing a pretty good job of carving up my two-person squads. (There was one squad with three characters, but they only saw a single fight). In the end I got screwed because one party was constantly barraged by enemies, and since you can only move one squad at a time, your control is frozen as the camera pans over to any inactive parties that are besieged by enemies. Because of this, I was only able to move my backup squad at the top about one step between each battle, while the enemy party that was near the top was able to slide on in at two steps between fights. It was stupid, and a waste of like twenty minutes.

On my second time around, I tried something competely different. I stuck Terra and Sabin together, and sat my other two squads at the two choke points at the top of the map to intercept any incoming enemies. With Terra and Sabin, I beelined directly for Kefka. On the way they were accosted by at least seven enemy squads, which I cut down handily by spamming Sabin’s Aurabolt. Terra doled out poitions when necessary, and I FireDanced my way past the Rider at the bottom. I proceeded to continually blast Kefka with Aurabolt and he retreated before I knew it. I think only one enemy squad made it to the top before it was over.

I’m now starting to wonder if it’s a trait exclusive to FFVI, or if more FF games become a cakewalk if you just plow through them with a sack full of potions. I’m wondering if the rest of the game is like this too, or if I’m eventually going to have to put some thought into it. I’m sure that I haven’t seen the last of the gimmick bosses, but aside from that, is brute force the best way to get through all the mooks? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I think at this pace I should be done by about this time two years from now.

Worse than MacFarlane

I’m a little torn. One one hand, I want to share the PowerPoint presentations I’ve done for work with the internet because everyone at work gets a kick out of them. Or at least everyone lies about liking them. On the other hand, I kind of hate the one I’m currently working on (pictured above) because it’s mostly just stooped to Family Guy style references of “Hey, remember G.I. Joe?” I know I’m better than that, but I just don’t really have any good ideas rattling around in my brain right now.

The very first one was great because it was mostly original content with some clever, more subtle references. A lot of it was just learning how to use PowerPoint, and in the end it was a big mess of using every option available and pushing the program as hard as I could. For the second one I stuck with a Spider-Man theme throughout, and kept the bells and whistles to a minimum. That one was easily the most well-liked of the trio. The third was original ideas again, spoofing the Choose Your Own Adventure books that I adored as a child. It is probably the most complicated PowerPoint presentation ever created, but most of that is under the hood so it’s just good fun for viewers.

So you have a bit of an idea why I’d want to post those ones. It’s mostly irrelevant though. I will never put them on the internet because they contain secret company secrets. Okay, so policy and procedure isn’t exactly the most classified of info, but I think it could still land me in hot water. And that’s something I really can’t afford. It’s really too bad, becaue it’s something where I’ve been allowed to be creative, and done a pretty good job at it! I guess you’ll just have to settle for that teaser image.

Recurring obsessions

I have so many images sitting in a folder on my desktop that are there specifically to be blogged about. For some reason though, I just cannot seem to get around to resizing, renaming, and uploading them. I’m looking at the folder right now and it’s taunting me, telling me I’m a lazy hack. And I kind of am, but that’s besides the point. Let’s talk about video games some more then.

I’m terrible at finishing video games. I have no idea what’s gone wrong with me lately, but it seems that I’m having a lot of trouble sticking with a game to the end. Oh, wait. This isn’t new at all. I could update that list with every game I’ve failed to complete to my level of satisfaction in 2012 so far, but I feel that doing so would probably cause me to break down and cry like a little girl. I suppose the backlog will be nice in the upcoming couple years where I won’t be able to afford new video games, but still. Ugh. I’m such a flake.

I think a lot of it stems from the fact that a lot of the games I really like are games that don’t really have well-defined win states. Take Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite for example. Technically, there are two monsters that are considered “final bosses” (one for online, one for offline), but even once they’re defeated there are still things to accomplish. Have you finished every single quest? Do you have all the Guild Card baubles? If you answered “yes” to both of those… wow, you’ve got a lot of free time. But you can still play online and there are a whole buttload of event quests that you can download for free. Basically, if you’re into it, you could restrict yourself to playing only MHFU and it could still last you for the better part of a year. And that’s before you start dicking around with stuff like self-imposed challenge runs. I shudder to think of what will happen to me if Monster Hunter Tri G actually makes its way overseas.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy is similar, but different. Being a rhythm game, it’s already more about enjoying the music and getting high scores than finding the end. There’s a point where new content stops unlocking via rhythmia points, but those Dark Notes are randomized. For each Dark Note you beat, a new one is unlocked, so you could chase those forever. It’s not like you could even collect them all either, since you can only have up to 99 at any given time. Besides, I’m kind of curious to see if the rhythmia counter will roll past 999,999. Not that I’ll end up playing Theatrhythm that much or anything. After two weeks with the game I’m at just about 35,000rm, but it’s a burning curiosity. I’m sure someone in Japan has gotten that high and posted it on YouTube.

I suppose that technically Spelunky does have an ending, but I don’t think I’ll ever get there myself. Between the PC and Xbox versions, I’ve only made it to the temple stages two or three times, and never to the boss. So it’s kind of like there’s no end. But good gravy, that game is addictive. Besides, it’s secretly another high score game. Sure, you did pretty well that run, but don’t you think you could do better?

And then there’s Minecraft. I don’t know how, but I still sink entire nights into Minecraft. How is it that I keep going back to Minecraft, but haven’t even made it halfway through Xenoblade Chronicles? At this rate I probably won’t get past the intro of The Last Story when it’s finally released.

At the very least, I was able to stick with Final Fantasy XIII-2 to the end and even get all the achievements. That was pretty cool.

Share It Maybe

You can probably guess that I’m not a huge Carly Rae Jepsen fan. She’s pretty much the embodiment of cookie cutter pop music. Nothing special or original going on there. Anyway, it seems that one song, “Call Me Maybe,” has become something of an internet meme. Which would annoy me if her music was bad, but as it is she’s merely uninteresting. Far more tolerable, but a bit less hilarious than Rebecca Black.

Anyway, here’s the best thing I’ve seen to come from this particular meme.

Awesome stuff like this is why Sesame Street has persisted so long in such a cynical world as ours. Also, check out this hilarious video with Kermit and Cookie.

MMMMMMeh

So I finished VVVVVV yesterday on my lunch break. I’m kind of not sure what to think about it though. I think it’s a neat little game with a neat little concept, but I can’t in good conscience say I like a game that had me saying “F*** this s***” at every turn. Probably wasn’t the best game to be playing at work.

I still think the core concept (flipping gravity instead of jumping) is cool and fun, but the problem with the game is that Terry Cavanagh hates everyone. I was totally disarmed by the simple graphics and cute little smiley-man characters and the fun, breezy demo. I figured it would be an enjoyable throwback to the days of yore, but it’s just so hard. And not fun hard either. Hence all the potty mouth. I gave up on the stupid Veni Vidi Vici tunnel (you know the area) after like 100 deaths. The bouncy area was a lot of fun though.

The problem I have with VVVVVV is that it’s a game about precision. And I mean 100% precision. You hold that d-pad for even a fraction of a second longer than you should and it’s death. Probably over and over again. I’m not a big fan of laser precision. That’s why I’m not a doctor. I like to have a little wiggle room. I gave up on the stupid collectible thingamajigs because the challenges I needed to pass to get some of them were ludicrously difficult, and I’m a person who would normally be completely obsessed about getting all the doodads. Especially when there are only 20 of them.

Beating the game unlocks some time trial modes, and being good at those in turn unlocks No Death mode, which is the stupidest stupid crap I have ever seen. I died well over 500 times in the hour and half it took me to beat the game. No way in Hell would I ever even consider trying to beat it with no deaths.

On the upside, the music is really great. Not particularly memorable, but it surely was fun to bop along to while I was playing. Also I was playing the 3DS version because it was on sale, and is the first thing Nintendo has put on sale ever. I would have been much more put out if I’d paid more than $5 for VVVVVV.