Monster Hunter

A post full of thoughts in no logical order

Wow, its been a while since my last post. Not a record by far, but almost two weeks is a long time in the current TE era. I’ve been pretty good about slapping something up every few days for some time now, even if it’s just a dumb photo that I found entertaining for a few fleeting moments.

In an effort to start getting though my gigantic backlog of books – Wait what? Books? Yes books. I have a lot of them, but I haven’t read most of them. Anyway, I’ve decided I want to read more, so this week I’ve been making an honest effort to always have a book with me on the bus. Whether I’ll keep going once I’ve finished my current book, I don’t know, but here’s hoping!

The lack of blogging around these parts can be attributed ~~mostly~~ entirely to Pokémon White 2. Obviously. I blame Game Freak for working in a rather extensive achievement system. For every objective you clear, you’re presented with a medal, and when you get so many medals, you get a rank up. It’s not actually deeper than Xbox achievements or PS3 trophies, but the fact that the game makes such a big deal out of the medals makes them that much more appealing to collect. Too bad some of the requirements are completely ludicrous. Check out the list here.

I’ve been working on a big new post over the last little while. I think it’s going to end up being this month’s article, if just to fill the hole. Unfortunately, it is about video games. But it’s a little different in that it’s something of a history lesson with a little review packaged in for those interested. I don’t know. It’s not something I care about enough to link to on my Facebook page or anything, but it’ll have to do.

I’ve been reading Monster Planet this week, the last of a trilogy whose first two parts I’ve already talked about at length. I said that I thought Island and Nation would make great movies, because both of them are pretty briskly-paced and feature a fairly original take on the zombie genre. However, Planet takes it up to eleven and goes into full-blown crazypants video game territory. Now, instead of the occasional smart zombie who can control the mindless masses of undead, there is a whole cadre of liches, each with a unique magic power. It’s gotten kinda ridiculous, but I’m already two-and-a-third books deep, might as well git ‘r done. Full write-up coming soon!

Speaking of spooky things and video games, I’ve begun playing Silent Hill 2 again to half-assedly get into the spirit of Halloween. I thought I was going to do it right this time, playing alone in the dark, but I messed that up. Since I’m playing the HD Collection edition, my experience is being totally controlled by achievements, and as such my current playthrough has been paired with some extensive map-making and step-by-step instructions on how to get through the game as quickly as possible. At the very least, by the time I’m done with it, I’ll have become a master of the game.

I borrowed my brother’s copy of Cubivore to round out my October gaming palette. While the camera is awful and the overall experience is a little shallower than I’d hoped, I think it’s good enough to slake my thirst for Tokyo Jungle. For now.

Have you watched the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon yet? It’s fairly good! Not quite as good as the new TMNT comic series, but it’s definitely worth watching. I will admit that I’m a little disappointed that its demographic skews considerably younger than the 2003 TMNT series. I blame Nickelodeon. Though I suppose the best way to revive a franchise is to make sure it’s what all the li’l kids want for Christmas. A world where Turtles are plastered on every damn thing again would be a world I’d love to live in.

Xbox Minecraft got a big update recently, which is enticing. The price didn’t get cut though, so I’m still not buyin’ it.

I’m bad at getting into the Halloween spirit. I haven’t watched a single cheesy 80’s slasher flick yet. I feel like I’m failing pretty hardcore as a nerd. The Wife is forcing me to take her to Paranormal Activity 4 this weekend though, so I guess that’s at least one “scary” movie for the season. I just have trouble committing myself to 90-120 minutes of uninterrupted watching.

I don’t have nearly as much trouble watching TV or Let’s Play videos. Over the last two weeks I have watched both seasons of Better Off Ted, most of Arrested Development‘s second season, and Brickroad’s Metal Gear LP. Ted is… well, it’s okay. I enjoyed it as much as I did because it co-stars Portia de Rossi and Andrea Anders, both of whom I find very funny. The list of actresses (or even actors, it’s not a sexist thing) I really like is pretty short, but those two are definitely on it. It should be obvious that I much prefer comediennes to “serious” actresses. I also love the way de Rossi pronounces the word “anything.”

I don’t think there’s anything else relevant I can say so that I can add another tag to this post.

Oh, wait! New Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate trailer? Oh Hells yes!

Closing the gap

I was looking over my 2011 backlog list yesterday and was a little surprised to see that I had the goal of replaying Luigi’s Mansion on there. I actually did that recently! Yay! That’s another one to stroke off, and one I didn’t actually expect to get around to.

I was originally looking at the list to try to formulate a game plan for the weekend, but then I remembered that my youngest bro had asked to come over and play Spelunky, so that’s probably all I’ll be doing for the bulk of today. It’s nice that I’ve managed to hook someone else on Spelunky, because I love it, and it’s a big exception in that I actually much prefer to play multiplayer. I find the game a lot harder with a second person (especially in the very rare case where both people are wielding shotguns), but it’s a game that’s still pretty fun even when you’re dying repeatedly. I find the process of dying over and over to learn the game a lot more fun in action-platformer form than RPG. Probably because a winning Spelunky run takes an average of 15 minutes, whereas finishing the main dungeon in Shiren the Wanderer will generally take a lot longer. I love the idea behind roguelikes, but find it difficult to make the time investment required to learn them well enough to win.

Sunday will likely be devoted to The Last Story, but I’m thinking that if I really dedicate myself I could rush through what’s left of Master Quest in Ocarina of Time 3D. I christened my 3DS XL by getting up to the Master Sword, so I’ve really only got the best parts of the game in front of me. Well, except for the Fire Temple. It’s kind of dull, but at least the MQ version will mix it up a bit so it doesn’t just feel like I’m going through the motions.

I’ve also been doing a really poor job of wrangling up the last few ‘mons I need to fill out the Unova Dex in Pokémon White. I want it done before Black 2 and White 2 hit, so that leaves me…two weeks. The dumb thing about this is that it’s mostly just evolving that needs to be done, and it seems like the Unova Pokémn have a considerably higher average evolution level than monsters of previous generations. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t know as much about Pokémon as I used to. It’s a lot harder to keep track of the 600+ creatures than it was when there were only 151. In any case, a lot of Audinos are going to be beaten upon over the next two weeks. I need to fill that Pokédex!

So notice how there isn’t even a passing mention of maybe drawing a comic or going outside there? I think my hobby may have crossed the line into full-on addiction at this point. I probably won’t even take the time to blog anymore once I get Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. Especially since saves are transferrable between the Wii U and 3DS versions! Yay obsession!

Countdown to U-Day

What have I had, three posts about Wii U so far? Definitely out of character for me. I guess I must be growing up, because a younger me would have themed the blog here with all sorts of Wii U stuff. Woulda made up a Wii U banner anyway. Oh, wait. The blog has been Wii themed since… 2007? Wow, past me really was good at that future planning stuff!

As it is, I’m barely excited enough about having gotten my pre-order last weekend. And that’s with only two months left to go! I should be bouncing off the walls and yakking everyone’s ear off about how excited I am for my new console. Alas, I am much more subdued this time around. It’s probably because I can’t afford to buy any games to play on the stupid thing. Gone are the Wii days where I could just throw my paychecks away on as many vidja games as I could handle.

It’s too bad too, because it suddenly seems that I want them all. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but I’m certainly a lot more confliced about which Day One title I’m going to bring home with me on launch day than I was just a week ago. Since these megaposts are kind of what I do these days, let’s have a look-see…

Darksiders II – This was my original choice, and it had no competition, save perhaps Pikmin 3, but that’s been pushed back so it’s out of the running. I had a great time with the original Darksiders and little interest in any other Wii U launch day games, but now I’m having to think about it. Also, I’ve heard rumblings that maybe Darksiders II isn’t as good as the original, so that’s causing some hesitation. It’s still number one, but two months from now anything could happen.

New Super Mario Bros U – Since finances are tight, I have to consider that maybe The Wife would like to play with my our new toy too. Considering that NSMBU is probably the only launch title she’ll get any mileage out of. It’s not that I don’t think I’d like it, it’s just that I’m smack in the middle of New Super Mario Bros 2 on 3DS right now, and I don’t feel like I need another Mario game yet. We also had an absolute blast with the original Wii game, and that’s certainly helping this one’s case along. The real issue here is that I don’t find the New Mario games quite as fun to replay as say, Super Mario World.

ZombiU – You’d think this would be right up my alley, what with the zombies ‘n all. Truth is, I wasn’t really taken with it until I started reading impressions from last week’s Nintendo event in New York. Now I’m very much leaning towards the idea of picking ZombiU over Darksiders. If nothing else, I’d like to have a game that really makes use of the gamepad, and doesn’t just delegate maps and inventory management to it. I mean, ZombiU does that, but in a more interesting way. Or so it seems. I’ll need to keep reading up on this one. I can’t help but remember the mediocrity of Dead Island though.

Rayman Legends – I wasn’t sold on Rayman Origins until last Friday, despite the fact that everyone and their dog has been raving about it since it came out. But then I played a few stages with my youngest bro, including the unbeleivably difficult Secret Final Level, and had an absolute blast. I’d played the demo, but I guess I did it wrong by playing solo. So now the question of the sequel comes up. Do I pick this one up at launch, or do I satisfy my newfound interest with the cheaper original?

Assassin’s Creed III – I haven’t played a singe other game in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, and I didn’t ever plan to. However, I’m very much into the American Revolution setting of this one. That is all.

Scribblenauts Unlimited – I couldn’t get into the first Scribblenauts game no matter how hard I tried. But the promise of a game with better controls, huge environments to explore, and the ability to creat things has stuck the Scribblenauts hooks right back into me. I can’t see myself actually buying it, but stranger things have happened.

Tank! Tank! Tank! – I haven’t read anything about this since E3, but damn does it look like fun! I’m also a big supporter of the odd-duck games that come out when a new game system is released. Admittedly this doesn’t seem quite as gimmicky or odd as, say, Feel The Magic XY/XX or Rayman Raving Rabbids. Another one that I’m really going to have to look into before taking the plunge.

Okay, so there are only seven launch titles I’m interested in. But it’s still really hard when you can only choose one! Luckily, most of the other games (Pikmin 3, The Wonderful 101, Runner 2) I want are looking like they’re going to come out around March, so that’s time to sock away a little cash. The fact of the matter is though, that Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is slated for March, so at that point I won’t need any other games. It would be really rad if that had been a launch title, but what can you do?

So laaazy

You know, I’ve had a new movie review sitting around for over a month now, but I have no idea how long it will be until I post it. It was originally supposed to go live in July. And it’s pretty much done, too! The bulk of the writing is done; I still have to go back over it to do a little spellchecking and other fine-tuning, but the words are essentially done. The thing that I’m stuck at it getting some screengrabs.

Normally, that’s the part I’d do first. I’d watch a movie/show, and then go back and take a few shots of important part, and then write the article around those. This time I did all the writing first, and the way that I wrote it calls for a lot of images. And not just the basic screengrabs either! No, I worked myself into a corner full of photoshops and collages. I suppose I could go over the article and edit the parts that call out images I don’t want to take/create, but at that point I’m cheating the reader of a fuller experience. Oh, what a world.

It’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s just that taking screenshots o a movie is dull and tedious. Making sure I printscreen jsut the right moments, making sure everything is sized and named properly… It’s boring.

This is sort of similar to the reason why my Monster Hunter Let’s Play is stalling. Playing Monster Hunter is one of my favourite pastimes, and talking about Monster Hunter comes in at a close second, so in that case I’m mostly blaming Camtasia. With sprite-based games, I can set it to record and then just have at it as long as I need, then stop when I feel like the session is done and do a little chopping to make everything nice and neat before I produce it. Monster Hunter, being a PS2 game, I guess eats a ton of memory while being recorded. If I go over about 15 minutes of footage, it stops recording sound and just replaces my narration and the game’s audio with a horrible extra-loud static track. So I have to time myself to make sure I don’t record too long, find a suitable spot to pause, and then wait while to video is processed, then wait twice as long while the video is saved to a file. The processing/saving part eats up all my PC’s resources too, so I can’t do anything else with it while I wait. Then I have to do the usual editing, which is not terrible, but annoying after all the other hoops I’ve had to jump through to get that far. Especially if I screwed up the timing and have to fix the sound problems. And then, then I have to hope that while it was paused for Camtasia to do all its things, that my PS2 emulator hasn’t crashed. That’s happened twice now, and it’s even worse than when the audio breaks, because not just footage is lost, but actual game progress. This was the worst project I’ve ever started.

But that movie review? It’ll be done… maybe this weekend. I don’t know. Maybe that’s what I’ll do with my Friday night.

The numbers game

So one of the fellas over at Game|Life posted a story today about how Nintendo product sales make up roughly 70% of the Japanese video game market. Whether these numbers are skewed or not, this makes me very happy, being a big fat Nintendo fanboy and all.

Now we just need to find a way to make those numbers happen over here, and all will be right in the world again. Also then we might get Dragon Quest X, the first traditional MMO I actually want to play.

It also makes me happy that New Super Mario Bros 2 is selling really well, and that people are enjoying it. If you hadn’t been keeping up, the internet didn’t seem to be looking forward to it. To put it nicely.

One of the things that stood out to me is that Nintendo platforms make up roughly 75% of console sales in Japan, and Sony has approximately 23 of the other percents. I’m going to go ahead and assume that the Xbox 360 has the other 2%, and all the other lesser consoles combined account for less than a percent. Also of note is that the only 360 game whose sales are worth mentioning is Monster Hunter Frontier.

So let’s have a look-see at the facts here. MH Frontier is the most popular Xbox game in Japan. Xbox is the most popular console in North America. So why, Capcom, do you not bring Frontier to North America? I don’t have a lot of disposable income, but I would gladly fork over a little bit of what I have each month to have the opportunity to play a big, fancy, HD version of Monster Hunter. I know there’s more to it that that, but seriously. Capcom’s got peanut butter and chocolate here, but they refuse to mash them together.

I kind of hate Capcom right now. Or I would if Dragon’s Dogma wasn’t so rad.

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

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.

Filler at its worst

Don’t you hate it when you don’t really have anything important to talk about?

I do, but that’s not really my problem lately. The problem is too many awesome video games, and too much time spent at work to play them all.

I’m only four levels into Lollipop Chainsaw. I should have finished this game weeks ago. I think there are only two or three more stages anyway, but still. And this feels like a game where playing it over and over for high scores and cheevos will be fun and not just compulsion.

Dragon’s Dogma continued to suck up all my video game time, because I love it to pieces. I try to be careful about using the word “love” when I describe material objects, but man do I love Dragon’s Dogma. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it’s a huge dick when it comes to fast travel. But the world isn’t that big, so it’s mostly not an issue. It would kind of ruin the point anyway, when the only time I end up needing to traverse the entire map is during escort quests.

Then Theatrhythm Final Fantasy came along and ruined everything. I fear that I might not play another game for weeks. I already have a real thing about rhythm games, but when it’s a rhythm game that also tickles my nostalgia bone? Big trouble, but in the best way.

The biggest loss is that I’ll be completely ignoring the Xbox Live Arcade version of Spelunky, which I have been absolutely frothing with demand for and finally launched yesterday.

And then there’s still Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite, which I will probably be playing until the day my PSP dies. And then I will buy a new PSP and continue to play Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite. Unless Monster Hunter 3G is better.

Someday I’ll finish Kid Icarus: Uprising. If it even has an ending.

I love that my primary hobby is so consistently wonderful. 🙂

The hunting cycle

It’s almost Canada Day, and Canada Day means two things to me: the Lac du Bonnet fireworks show, and Monster Hunter. Over the last couple years, it’s been a new part of our Canada Day traditions for me to tote my PSP down to LDB for the weekend and play Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite during the time that is not used for adventures or fireworks. Of course, the PSP’s battery life doesn’t last nearly as long as it needs to (there’s not that much to do around there), but for me those four hours are as important a part of the weekend as the journey to Pinawa to get ice cream from the Burger Boat, trying to collect enough silly things from the Bargain Shop for an article, and the fireworks show.

Summer in general is also just kind of when my Monster Hunter cycle restarts itself. For MHFU anyway. Me and the game have sort of a love/hate relationship where I’ll play it obsessively for a while, get stuck on a tough quest, and then put it aside for months. Regardless of where I am in the cycle though, an impending Canada Day always brings me back around to the Monster Hunter.

The first time I hit a brick wall was actually on Canada Day. I had just bought MHFU after spending the couple previous months completely obsessed over Monster Hunter Tri on Wii; when I discovered that the PSP game had roughly three times as much content, as well as giant crab monsters, I knew I had to get it. It wasn’t long after I dove in that I discovered what would become one of my most hated parts of Monster Hunter: piscine livers.

Piscine livers are an item dropped randomly when you defeat a monster known as Cephalos. Cephalos are strange looking monsters that are something like a cross between a hammerhead shark and a chicken. Most of their time is spend swimming through the sand, where it’s very hard to damage them. There is an item that can force them out of the sand, but the sonic bomb isn’t available to purchase, and the items you need to create them are somewhat rare. So once you waste the two sonic bombs that are supplied to you for the piscine liver quest, you’re stuck waiting for the Cephalos to jump out of the sand by their own volition. Which can take forever. And of course the piscine liver isn’t the only thing a Cephalos can drop, so if luck isn’t on your side you can very easily time out on these quests.

You’ll see, if you follow my Monster Hunter LP, how annoying these quests can be. It’s not until about a dozen episodes in (so it won’t be uploaded until quite some time after this blog post), but I think it takes like three videos for me to finish the stupid quest.

I did manage to wrangle up the necessary livers eventually, but the quest left a sour taste in my mouth. And I won’t even get into how I feel about the fishing quests. No, I hit my first stopping point when I met Cephalos’ big brother, Cephadrome. He does the same damn thing where he swims around in the sand and doesn’t come up for nobody. Even worse is the fact that you’re stuck fighting these jerks in the desert, where the intense heat will literally drain the life out of your hunter. Cool drinks can temporarily stop the drain, but even if you bring five in with you, they won’t last the duration of the quest. If Cephadrome decides he doesn’t want to play, there’s a very real chance that the heat will kill you.

So I tried the fight against Cephadrome a couple times. I think I died from heat stroke once, and my time ran out on another attempt. I may have even been killed by Cephadrome himself once. He’s not a terribly strong creature, but at the beginning of the game his body slams can be pretty deadly. Once my failures had stacked up enough, I decided that the quest was garbage and stopped playing the game altogether. Monster Hunter Tri had no such bullcrap; the challenge was fair and sensible, so I went back to that. Even though it didn’t have awesome giant crab monsters.

It probably wasn’t long before I picked MHFU back up though. It was still a fairly new game to my collection, and easily the best PSP game that I owned (still is!), even with the crappy quests. I took on Cephadrome again, and while I don’t think I managed it on my first try, I did eventually fell the beast, and everything was wonderful again for a while. That was, until I met Tigrex.

I’ve posted about my hatred for Tigrex before, and fairly recently, too. It took me forever to eke out a victory against one of those guys, and I’ve only slain one more since then. Tigrex isn’t really that strong, but he is fast. A lot of monsters have a thing where they knock you down and then trample over you or blast you with a fireball before you can get up and out of the way. It’s kind of cheap, and that’s basically all Tigrex does. Most monsters leave an opening to get a hit or two in, but Tigrex generally turns around and launches into his next attack long before you can close the gap and smack him up some. And then there’s rage mode.

The majority of large monsters have a rage mode where they hit harder, move faster, and gain new attacks. This is usually brought on by special circumstances, like if you deal out a lot of damage in a short period of time, cut/break off part of a monster’s body, or when they come out of a stun. I’d say that once you carve off roughly 20% of Tigrex’s life, he goes into rage mode every time you hit him. Or at least it seems that way. And it’s the worst, because the very last thing you need is an already too-fast monster getting a speed boost. It’s no wonder I stopped playing because of him.

My latest brick wall was the mighty Lunastra. She’s referred to as a dragon, but looks an awful lot like a big blue lion with wings. Lunastra’s not that hard, and I think I put down the game last time more due to being distracted by other games than because I couldn’t beat her. I know I lost a couple fights against her, but they were losses caused by my own inexperience and impatience.

The trick to defeating Lunastra, and indeed many other large monsters, is patience. Knowing when to strike is key, and it might take a couple rounds to really figure that out. Her attacks are easy enough to avoid, but if you aren’t paying enough attention and get caught by one, you’re in trouble. The flamethrower attack, for instance, is super easy to see coming, and even easier to dodge. But the damn thing hurts if you’re clumsy enough to get caught in it. I was killed instantly with 3/4 of my health bar once because I got hit by a rage mode flamethrower. It was a little embarrassing, but it put me in my place. Upon picking up the game again last week, I took Lunastra down on my first try, and with a fire-element sword and fire-susceptible armor to boot. I could not have been more poorly equipped for that fight, but I came out victorious because I took my time and fought smarter, not harder.

The next challenge on my list is Teostra, Lunastra’s stronger, redder, male counterpart. I don’t feel confident that I can take him out, because I’m still kitted out in that weak-to-fire armor set. But it’s got a super-strong physical defense rating compared to everything else I own! Sometimes it’s hard to know whether you should be worrying more about physical or elemental resistances. At least I don’t have a fire sword equipped anymore.

Will Teostra be my next gamebreaker? Probably not. At least, I hope not. I’ve only been playing MHFU again for about two weeks now. It’s far too soon to be rage-quitting already. Plus it’s Canada Day weekend, and I don’t know what else to do between the time the Bargain Shop closes and the fireworks start.

*NB: I stole the images for this post from the Monster Hunter Wiki*

Dogmatic

On Saturday I made up my mind. We went to Toys ‘R’ Us first because they had a game that The Wife wanted, and I intended to buy it for her. It’s not often that she wants a video game, and I tend to nurture those wants when they surface. But there was nothing for me there. I tried my luck in Future Shop, Best Buy and Superstore that day, but they all failed to meet my needs. Or more, it seemed that my needs came too late.

On Sunday she worked over in St Vital, and I asked if she could check around that area for me on her lunch break. Sadly, neither the Wal-Mart or GameStop were of any help to my cause.

On Monday I asked again if she could scout the local EB Games before work, since it’s a stone’s throw from her workplace. Not only did she check the one in the mall, but the one across the street from the mall as well. All to no avail. I feel lucky to have such a devoted wife, but was sad that I had her chasing wild geese. So I swallowed my pride and made nice with Wal-Mart’s electronics department, because they were apparently the only store in the city that had the object of my desire.

And now I own Dragon’s Dogma. Yay 🙂

Then I booted up the game and it played a remixed English version of “Samayoeru Aoi Dangan” by B’z on the title screen. Freaking B’z. Between that and the fact that the game is more or less a mix of Skyrim and Monster Hunter with a little Shadow of the Colossus thrown in for good measure, this is clearly Capcom’s love letter to me for being such a dedicated fan for all these years.

So maybe the song doesn’t really fit the theme of the game, but man is it awesome! Plus, B’z!! I haven’t had so much trouble getting past a title screen since Metroid Prime.

I’ve only really had time to rush through the intro and poke around starting town a little, but I am thoroughly impressed so far. The boss of the intro stage is a traditional chimera, made of a lion with a goat’s head grafted on its back and a snake for a tail. Your companions suggest severing the snake and diabling the goat to reduce the beast’s abilities. Very reminiscent of severing tails and breaking other bits (frills/beaks/armor/etc) in the Monster Hunter games. Possibly the most entertaining part of the fight was watching my allies grab onto and climb the beast. I tried to get onto it myself but couldn’t manage to stay on. I’m sure the game will teach me how to do it properly before long.

Also, there’s a dragon at the very beginning, and it is massive. Like, at least as big as Lao Shan Lung. So far I am very impressed with the scale of the boss monsters; that’s one of the things I was really hoping Capcom would go all out on, and it looks like they did. Even the chimera was big enough that my character and his three buds could fit on its back. The only, only thing I’m a little disappointed with is that all (or most of, anyway) the monsters are standard high-fantasy stuff: chimeras, griffins, cyclopes, hydras, and so on. I won’t lie, I snuck a peek at the bosses in the strategy guide, and there’s nothing overly original in there. Maybe Capcom will note the excellent cross-promotion opportunity and release some Monster Hunter monsters as DLC. I would be more than happy to pay extra for the opportunity to take on Teostra in a setting where I might have a chance at victory. Or Shen Gaoren. Any of the carapaceon family would be fun, really.

Aaaanyway enough daydreaming. My first impressions of Dragon’s Dogma have been excellent, and I hope that it ends up being as compelling as its influences. I sunk over 100 hours each into both of the Monster Hunter titles I own, and a good 70 or so in Skyrim. I haven’t even seen most of Skyrim yet either.

Oh, the big problem I have with Dragon’s Dogma is that there is a very limited hair colour palette to choose from. Pink is not an option at all, so Claire is stuck with a deep red. Not acceptable.