Monster Hunter: Dynamic Hunting

I don’t think I ever even gave it a passing mention here, because I’d basically abandoned the blog for the duration of 2010, but when Monster Hunter Tri hit the Wii in April last year, I developed a sickening obsession with the game. And I mean that literally. I gave up a lot of sleep for Monster Hunter, and my health suffered for it. Then it got worse when I discovered Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite for PSP. I mean, my PSP was happy because it was actually getting some use (Dissidia: Final Fantasy has had the same effect), but Stephanie did not, because I had access to Monster Hunter wherever and whenever I wanted. At least with Tri, I was only able to play while in my room.

If you haven’t heard of the Monster Hunter series, get on the bus, man! It’s the only reason I’ve ever been compelled to play video games with people online for reasons other than novelty, and aside from Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, it’s been the only one since. The premise is that you, with up to three other hunters, march around in various environments with gigantic swords (or axes, if you’re cool) and track down even bigger monsters. You then proceed to attempt to slay or capture said beasts. Most of the time you will be slaughtered. These monsters are exactly as powerful as they are huge, and most of them are fast, too. Your only hope is to use monster loot and precious stones and whatnot to craft slightly stronger armor and weapons. Even the strongest armor will only keep you alive through a handful of hits from the bigger beasts, though, so it’s more about learning the monsters’ weaknesses (physical and elemental), patterns, and tells. Knowing when to strike is far more important than the next weapon upgrade.

The downside to the game’s process is that while it’s fun, hunts can tend to take a long time. If you’re really unlucky, you can spend your entire time limit (each hunt it timed, BTW) just trying to find your mark. It’s a less common problem in MH3 than MHFU, because monster start points  seem to be randomized in the PSP game, but the beasts still wander the environments fairly randomly in both games. Monsters can also take a lot of damage, and since they have no visible life bar, you’re stuck wondering until they start to limp around and run away from you in hopes of recovering a bit. I think that in the context of the game, this is fine, but in the real world, you can’t just sit down and run a few quick hunts. Unless you’re playing solo runs of the weakest monsters, you have to make a real time investment when you play Monster Hunter.

And that’s where Monster Hunter: Dynamic Hunting comes into play.

Dynamic Hunting is Capcom’s newest entry in the series, and is the long overdue first iOS Monster Hunter title. Give how big the series is in Japan and that it’s gaining some fairly good traction in North America, I’m surprised that Capcom, the house of a million sequels, took so long to get this out. I’m glad they waited and crafted an excellent mobile spin-off of the series, though, instead of rushing out a quick cash-in app.

So like I said, I think MHDH is pretty fantastic. It’s got the spirit and personality befitting of a true Monster Hunter title, and it’s extremely accessible and quick to play too! The important thing for a mobile game, as I’m sure everyone who knows anything about game development knows, is that you can pick it up and play for three minutes here and there. That’s why games like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja work so well on the platform. Yes, developers will try to export these titles to dedicated gaming machines to make a quick buck off the gullible casual crowd, but they belong on a handheld device. I, personally, have never felt that Cut the Rope would benefit from a WiiWare or Kinect re-release. I don’t go to my couch and TV for bite-sized games. That’s where I go to put in an hours-long session of Final Fantasy XII or bounce around aimlessly in the vast worlds of Super Mario Galaxy.

What Dynamic Hunting does differently is cut out the hunt part entirely. It probably should have been called something more along the lines of Dynamic Fighting, but we’ll ignore that little inaccuracy. The whole concept of the game is straight one-on-one fights against a select handful of the MHFU roster. I’ve only progressed to the point of seeing twelve available monsters in three tiers of four, but I’ve got my fingers crossed that there’s still a fourth tier to unlock. Five would just be gravy. While loading times are a little longer than I’d like, you can navigate your way into a fight very quickly, and I don’t think I’ve seen a mission time limit go over five minutes yet, resulting in the first Monster Hunter title that you can actually make a little headway in over the course of a single lunch break.

Though the true hunt is out, most other Monter Hunter elements are in, albeit in a scaled-back manner. You still have items, though the extent that you see them is in a few potions and another item specific to each hunt which are available each time you start a hunt. You can’t buy new stuff or swap in more useful tools, but the mechanics don’t really require item use. Antidotes are going to be the non-potion item used the most, as all the hunts are kill missions; capturing monsters is no longer an option. You can buy power-up drinks to use before a hunt with in-game currency or pay real money for “G” versions of them, but to be honest, I keep forgetting they’re even there.

Weapons and armor run on the same crafting system as full Monster Hunter games, with a few key differences. Since exploration is out, all your materials are monster loot, making it necessary to remember which monsters drop which ores. Armor no longer comes in separate helmets, gloves, body armor, and leggings, but rather as complete sets. This is nice because you never look like a mismatched idiot, but you also lose the benefit of mixing and matching bonus effects. Weapon choices have been reduced to sword & shield combos, great swords, and dual swords. The options give you about as much variety as you’ll need, but I’m very sad that my beloved switch axe wasn’t included. Given that the game is based on MHFU, I guess the switch axe wouldn’t have been included anyway though. Not sweating the loss of lances though. Never liked the lance. Notably, you cannot choose to play as a female hunter. This had better be fixed in an upcoming update.

Controls are great for a touch-only title, even though they suffer from the usual lack of accuracy plaguing all touch games that require fast and precise actions. Your hunter is in a constant state of “z-targeting,” always facing the target monster, and dragging in any direction will move him in that direction. A tap will make him swing his weapon, and a swipe will launch a super attack. Holding two fingers on the screen will block (unless you have the dual swords equipped, which cannot block), and a two-fingered swipe will cause your hunter to dodge. It’s super-easy to get the hang of, and ends up being a game of delivering a few blows when you see and opening and watching for the dodge cues. The swipe attack, I find, is the only action that doesn’t work reliably, which is a shame because using one when a monster is winding up its own attack will result in a counter and a nice big opening to get in a few more easy hits.

The game is not perfect, however. Monster Hunter games are not easy to begin with. Like real hunting, they require skill and patience. Generally you will hunt a new monster and get killed a couple times before you know it well enough to really stand a chance. Eventually the monsters are so powerful that they do get really hard (Tigrex and Barioth spring to mind), but the difficulty curve is usually sloped enough that it doesn’t feel like you’ve gone from basic training to expert mode. Dynamic Hunting though, doesn’t really work the same. The first four monsters put up a fight, but all of them go down fairly easy. The gap in difficulty between Khezu and Basarios, though, is huge. Basarios is not overpowered or unfair, but his attacks have short wind-ups and small dodge opportunities. You really have to step up your game at this point. The jump from tier two to tier three is just as wide, and I’ve only barely been able to survive the first two monsters of that tier. It never really feels like you’re hitting a brick wall, but the game definitely goes from a casual timesink to an intense test of monk-level focus. This is where patience, more than anything, is absolutely necessary. If there is a fourth tier waiting in the wings, I shudder to think of the horrors that will reside there. I’d like to be able to see some of the later monsters from MHFU though, as I hit my brick wall there at Kushala Daora.

The other slight issue I have with the game is the ranking system. Each hunt will end with you being assigned an overall rank from S to D. This rank is based on four factors: mission, life, time, and parts. You’ll get a sub-rank for each category, and your hunt rank is decided by (I think) the average of those. The problem here is that the game never tells you what those categories mean. Life and time are easy enough to figure out, and Monster Hunter vets can deduce that the parts score is earned by damaging specific points on a monster’s body. The mission rank is a huge question mark though. The Monster Hunter Wiki says that it’s a score of how well you dodge and block a monster’s attacks. That’s all well and good, but if you kill a monster without giving it an opportunity to attack (only possible on Yian Kut-Ku and maaaaybe Congalala), you get a big fat zero. Needless to say, earning even an overall A on a hunt is hard, whereas only the best hunters could even dream of seeing that big S on their results screen.

The last thing I need to complain about is sort of a Super Smash Bros. quibble. I know that there are a limited amount of monsters in this game. I wouldn’t be surprised if the third tier was the last. But within those twelve monsters are two colour-swapped versions of previous monsters. Includng Yian Kut-Ku and Yian Garuga was a little sketchy, but they’re different enough to justify having both in. Blue Yian Kut-Ku, however, is just a slightly faster version with more HP. Red Khezu is the same way. Maybe they have slightly different attacks, but really only in the way that Dr. Mario throws pills as opposed to regular Mario’s fireballs.

In between the last paragraph and this one, I actually stopped to finish the game, and it turns out that the third tier was the last. Red Khezu, despite being a buffed palette swap, was the hardest of the four and Monoblos, the final monster, was relatively easy. Getting even an A rank on him will be nearly impossible, but having spent as much time getting murdered by his big brother Diablos in MH3 as I did, he’s not super hard to kill.

In the end, I feel that Monster Hunter: Dynamic Hunting was an excellent investment of $5. Yes, it’s a little more expensive than the average iOS app, but it’s also cheaper than Final Fantasy III, and I think that MHDH will provide a more balanced fun:grind ratio. Given, all I really have left to accomplish in the game is to bolster my hunt ranks, grind out all the equipment and earn all the achievements, but I think that even this very basic Monster Hunter experience is a fun and exciting one. Not to mention that now I have a true portable version of Monster Hunter.

EDIT (17/09/11) : Due to the constant updates applied to mobile games, there is now a fourth tier of monsters available to fight. Kushala Daora is not among them, but my old nemesis Tigrex is.

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This is not speculation

So I had the items in the picture below as a snack today. Turns out I picked the wrong ones on both counts. I’m special!

First, the Doritos. Doritos apparently have not one, but three questionably new flavours out right now. Each one is assigned a degree of burnination. I guess they’re supposed to be really spicy? Being the lover of spicy things, I went for what I thought was the most spicy of the three. As it just so happens, I have no idea which way the burn degrees go. So really, I picked the weakest of the three, as I was informed after I got home and looked at the back of the package. There’s a little picture of a thermometer with the temperature just above the bottom, and an arrow which informs me that my heat level is there.

But damn, those Blazin’ Jalapenos were hot! My mouth was positively aflame! Well, of course it wasn’t actually on fire, but I imagine it would have been if I’d chosen one of the flavours farther up the spiceometer. Like, they were even more intense than the spicy thai ramen noodles that I love so much. There is no doubt in my mind that the Firey Buffalo and Scorchin’ Habanero will break me like a little girl when I try them (and you know I will). Also, I’m not a huge fan of ha-ha-halapeno, so the taste didn’t even resonate with me very well. Better than eating a straight jalapeno pepper, but not by a whole lot.

The Pepsi, on the other hand, was a fault of both my stupidity and my lack of attention to detail. There was a sign on the chip stand that said if you buy a Pepsi and a bag of Doritos, you get a slight discount. So why wouldn’t I? I never say no to an ice cold delicious Pepsi. I noticed the advertised Pepsi bottle has a green band around the top of the label, and assumed it was just part of the cross-promotion. Well it was, but it also served to differentiate the Pepsi With Lime from Good Pepsi. Of course I also failed to notice this until I got home.

Not a fan of the Lime Pepsi. It’s been promoted before, but I never tried it until now because it sounded like something that I would find disgusting. I don’t really think it’s that bad, but I surely will never drink it again if superior options exist. It’s like someone got 7up all in my Pepsi, but it negated the Pepsi and lemon flavours and just left lime and something that sort of tastes like it might be a creepy uncle in the Pepsi family. 7up and Pepsi mixed actually taste much better. But yeah, the lime flavour is overpowering and I obviously could stand it long enough to finish the bottle, but that’s never happening again. From now on, I pay damn close attention to my Pepsi labels.

Feeling downtime

So you may have noticed that the site was down for the last couple of days. Oops! Looks like I forgot to pay my hosting fees. Anyway, back in business and back to posting. I’ll probably get that article up tomorrow. By Saturday, at the latest. Actually there are two to post, and only one of them is even sort of good. But whatever, need to get back on the content-creation train! Anyway, that’s all I had to say for today. Must Ocarina of Time 3D now.

I’d give you my world

I wrote an article today. I don’t know when I’m going to get around to posting it, because I wrote an article two months ago and still haven’t posted it. The one I wrote today is edited and spellchecked though, which gives it an advantage. It really just needs pictures and a link. Also, it’s about Monster Hunter, which means Stephanie will go “ugh… I thought we were done with that” and everyone else will be interested because I haven’t made anyone else completely sick of hearing about Monster Hunter. It was actually just supposed to be a blog post too! But I just kept typing and typing and 2000 words later it wasn’t a blog post anymore. This is actually going in a similar direction so I’mma stop typing now.

Get on your bikes and ride!

First thing to mention today, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I’m working on a new little side project for this summer. The, uh, “field research” is going quite well, and it should be ready to launch on the first of July. I’m thinking that since it’s a wannabe-professional writing project that I should probably hire an editor, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe it’ll work, maybe not. We’ll see come the end of the summer.

Also, how great is Link’s Awakening DX? I think it’s pretty awesome, though it is probably the single most obvious piece of evidence that I’m not nearly as patient with my games as I used to be. See, right at the beginning of the game, you can buy a bow from the shop. But it’s 980(?) rupees, which is way more than you can afford at the outset of the quest. But there is a crane minigame that, for the cost of 10 rupees and a little professional insight, you can grind and have that money much faster than you’d acquire it normally. Each play costs 10 rupees and there are two thirty-rupee prizes, so you have a net gain of 40 rupees a run, which means it takes 25 rounds to secure the necessary funds. It takes roughly a minute to grab both rupee prizes, which doesn’t sound so bad, but who wants to grind a crane game for half an hour? So for the first time ever, I’m skipping the bow for now. I’ll wait to come back once I’ve got the cash or the need for the weapon. I seem to remember having more rupees than I’d ever need by the third dungeon, and I don’t recall the bow ever being required to advance. As far as I can remember it’s more of a convenience, which is a far cry from modern Zelda games that have you use it all the time.

Lastly, where my recent Final Fantasy addiction is involved, I think I need to take a break from Dissidia and focus on Final Fantasy XIII. The game (Dissidia, that is) informs me that I’ve played it for forty-something days in a row now. That’s great and all, but at this point I’m mostly just grinding up my characters so that they’re overpowered when I start up Dissidia 012. FFXIII, on the other hand, I am crazy about and need to spend more time with. Over the last few weeks I’ve been powering my way through the “slow” part to the game, but it’s been slow going, getting in maybe one play session a week that lasts more than an hour. I really have no qualms with what I’ve played so far though. Yes, it’s running through enemy-filled hallways to the next cutscene, but I like it that way! Plus, the battles are dynamic enough that I don’t care if I’m just mashing the auto-battle command over and over. Not to mention that the game rewards you for ending battles as quickly as possible, and I love that the game doesn’t keep an average of your battle results. I would hate to open my menu and see a less-than perfect four-star rating there every time, spitting on my pride. Really, I could talk about FFXIII all day long, but this post is long enough already and I’ll save it for another time.

We’ve got a line in the sky

The past 24 hours have both strained and bolstered my love for Nintendo. Not equally, but we’ll get there. For now, let’s just focus on the worst of it, and then end on a positive note.

Yesterday we were promised a system update for the 3DS that enabled, among other things, the eShop. This is a feature that should have been included at the release of the hardware, but I can understand that they wanted to make sure it was as good as it could be, and delays are always better than half-assed product. But then the update was pushed back and back again up to yesterday. And then I got a message saying it would be available in the evening. I waited all damn day, and when did the update go live? 11:40. PM. If not for the fact that I love my system update, I might still be a little bitter about that one.

The eShop, however, is the glorious ship upon which all my hopes and dreams ride. See, ever since before the original Wii (more on that later) launched, I’ve been dreaming of a time where classic GameBoy games would be provided via some sort of download service. And now they are! Yeah, maybe the only ones worth a look are Link’s Awakening DX (still my favourite Zelda ever) and Super Mario Land (debatable), but some day Pokémons in all colours of the rainbow will be available, and maybe more importantly, the Wario Land series. And Donkey Kong ’94! Oh, and the Kirby’s Dream Land and Final Fantasy Legend series! And Metal Gear Solid! …I could go on like this all day. For now I’ll just revel in my favouritest Zelda and the fact that I actually really like Super Mario Land.

And now, about today’s overload of Nintendo goodness. Where to even start? To put it simply, I think the 3DS is about to really come into its own. The first-party lineup alone is more than I need, nevermind the love Capcom’s showing: two Resident Evils and the all-important MegaMan Legends 3. But that Wii U? I am ever so excited about it! With the first Wii, I admit, I was just as skeptical as everyone else, but I have no doubts that Wii U will deliver on every count. USB hard drive compatibility? Check. Awesome new tablet controller? Check. Some decent horsepower? Check. Console that’s an adorable cross of Wii and 360? Check and double check.

Let’s just get one thing straight; I think that the name Wii U is so, so terrible. That is not the name of a game console, that’s the sound a fire truck makes!

But on the plus side, we’re going to have a plethora of great games to play! Think about it this way: Four Swords could get a real revival! And not like I’ll play any of them (Arkham City being the only possible exception), but there are a buttload of “core” games headed to Wii U too, which nearly knocked me off my seat. Anyway, I should go and actually watch that press conference now. Following like five live blogs of it was all well and good, but I’d like to see some of this stuff in action.

They’re preaching lies

I’m sitting here trying to finish up Secret of Mana on my phone, but it’s getting to a point where I just don’t think it’s possible to continue. It’s really bad because I’ve beaten this game several times before. I wish I could just say that it’s because I’m getting old and suck at games now (which may be more true than I want to admit), but it’s actually because SOM for iOS is so, so badly balanced.

In the Super NES version, the game was pretty easy. If you get stuck somewhere, it’s because you forgot to buy the better armor at the last town. Maybe you played too fast and didn’t level enough (though level gains aren’t nearly as important as in, say, Dragon Warrior) and need to go back and grind a handful of bees or chobin hoods. Bosses were the only real challenge, and that was until you realized that spamming magic would essentially end the fights before they really began. What I’m getting at is that I never really faced a sticking point before. But now they’re everywhere! The game has been totally rebalanced in the enemies’ favour, and now the bosses are usually where you find respite from the terrible onslaught of death.

Mooks have been way upgraded for the iOS version of the game, their attacks doing a whole hell of a lot more damage than ever. Magic is even worse. And that wouldn’t be too bad on its own, but your character’s hit rates have gone way down. I swear nine out of ten times your attacks will whiff. I first got stuck in the upper land forest, where the combination of overpowered caterpillars and unhittable moles and fish ripped me a new one over and over again. I don’t remember ever using cups of life outside of bosses back in the SNES days, but by God, the merchants are sending their kids to college on my cup of life purchases alone this time around. It seemed like for most of the mid-game that every time I walked onto a new screen the sprite would be dead within ten seconds.

But a combination of grinding money and buying the (awesome) Gold Island armor as soon as possible really made the areas between getting Flammie (SOM’s airship stand-in) and entering the underground city really easy (or at least bearable). Now, in the underground city however, things have gotten retarded hard again. My armor is no longer game-breaking, but merely enough to keep my dudes from dying in a single hit. Making my way through a single hallway is tough, and getting from one end of an entire screen to the other without a casualty is nearly impossible. It gets worse too, because I’m stuck right before a boss with no supplies and no MP and he’s apparently immune to physical attacks? I definitely don’t remember this guy. So basically I have to work my way back out of this area (which is one of the longest dungeons) to get stuff, but getting out alive in my condition is going to be yet another nigh-impossible challenge (see the image above, and that’s right outside the boss room).

I remember a long time ago, when Secret of Mana was fun. But now it’s tedious and unfair and frustrating. I don’t like the iOS port, and until they put out a patch that at the very least puts my hit rates back to a reasonable level, I don’t think that I can finish it.

You’re mad

Still plugging away at Final Fantasy on my iPhone, not really sure what I should do next, because I got the airship right after Lich, and then went on to get my class changes right away. Thought Pants might be better off with magic. He’s not.

It’s been a long time since I’ve played this game too, and that was the first time. Having gone so far off course on my second playthrough makes me feel really cool because I don’t really think about sequence breaking when I play games. But it’s so easy in Final Fantasy! If you wander around enough (and have a vague idea of what you’re looking for), the game basically cracks right open once you kill Lich and get that canoe.

Oh, and check this out! During my first outing, I played FF1 pretty rigidly, always using my fight commands and saving as much of my black mage’s MP for bosses as I could. Large mobs were annoying and took several rounds to defeat. It was not efficient at all. This time I’ve been wantonly blasting whoever I can with magic, and it turns out that you generally will have enough MP to go around anyway. And then I got the Gauntlets and Healing Rod.

I never realized that items like these were in the game; you can equip them for weak stat bonuses, but really what you want is to use them as items. When using these particular pieces of equipment in battle, they cast thundara and heal respectively. With no MP cost. And they never get used up or go away. So now that Gus can cast thundara every round with no MP drainage, cannon fodder enemies are rendered completely moot. Even nine-monster squads are vanquished in a single turn. I don’t know why the game even bothers to keep sending them out.

I honestly cannot wait to see what other items like this I can find. Something that casts healara would be nice, because while ~50 to the team each turn is more than enough for dungeon crawls, it’s not quite enough to keep up with the bonus dungeon bosses and their unusually strong magic. But then again, I suppose that’s what all my unused MP is for.

I ain’t gonna be easy

I know that when you make a game that revolves around issuing commands that has a touch-only interface, you’re probably gonna have to represent some of those commands with icons. But why, exactly, is the item icon in the iOS version of Final Fantasy a teapot?

I mean, okay, I guess a teapot in general might be classified as an item, but never in the game do you gain a teapot as an item. Your characters never interact with an teapot. There are no enemies shaped like teapots. I don’t even think NPC houses have teapots. I suppose that the teapot is a little less generic than using a bag or maybe a backpack as the item command, but it’s still completely irrelevant.

The teapot doesn’t even represent any items you can carry. Why not make the item icon a potion? That’s likely the most common item subset you’ll be using. Why am I thinking way too hard about this? And where do you go after beating Lich?