I know what to follow up with on the Switch-side, since there’s really not much left for me there. My backlog on PC is much bigger and whatever I feel like playing now is probably not what I want in a week, so I try not to think about it. Monster Hunter has no real end in sight anyway. I’ll grind away slowly, a bit every other day to not grow rusty for whatever nightmare gets added next, so I probably won’t start anything with too much depth.
I’m nearing the end of current content in Monster Hunter Wilds. The current Arch-Tempered Rey Dau event kicked my butt quite badly. It was the first time I actually had to truly learn a monster’s patterns and tells, but now I can beat him without carting. I only have HR Zoh Shia left and I have heard enough tales to not rush into that one. I’m gonna fully upgrade my armor first.
Brothership is still happening. Every now and then. Not as much as I would like, but with Monster Hunter going into a pure grinding phase, I’ll have more time.
And when I only have a little time, I go back to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2. I’ve had the main game beaten for a while, but there’s still plenty to do on the huge achievement list, which really adds to a game lime this. I even found myself hitting the difficult speedrun times. I wasn’t going to try those very hard, but at least for the first two levels, they were doable.
Occasionally, I’ve also been playing the 1994 CD-Rom version of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, a childhood game I have been trying to find for 30 years. It wasn’t hard to find per se, those old Carmen Sandiego games are all abandonedware at this point, but good luck getting a modern PC to understand a 90s CD-Rom! The best I could do in the past was a DOS version, which just wasn’t the same without music and voice acting. But I finally found the ‘VileBox’, which is a fan-compiled collection of all old Carmen Sandiego games that just works! That nostalgia hit pretty hard~
I haven’t had much time to play this week, but things are looking better again. I really need to put more time into Brothership again. I beat the third area and then just stopped playing again.
And it’s all because of Monster Hunter Wilds. I’m knee-deep in high rank now and I’m starting to appreciate the new structure of the game. I’ve always been the kind of guy who grinds out a single monster until I have everything I want before moving on, but with the whole world constantly moving on with local events and monsters spawning in forms that give distinct loot, the old quest format, while still here, just isn’t the way to play anymore. I was taken aback by that at first, but I’ve really been enjoying the variety this leads to.
the durability over time and the repeatability of gameplay experiences.
Looks like the “1$ per hour of gameplay” crowd is finally getting what they wanted.
Chuck is a lot of things, “not the character I was talking about” is among them.
But I’ve seen more of the roster since the reveal and if they’re going all in adding 40 random dudes from all over the series, then I’m actually okay with it. On that scale it’s the good kind of stupid that I can enjoy.
I was expecting worse when the Direct insinuated that not all games are compatible.
Did each company have to test their own games or did one poor soul at Nintendo have to work through all the shovelware on the eShop for compatibility?
That looks great. I hope we get to lay out custom courses within the world, too!
But I can’t ignore how they decided to fill out the roster. Mario Kart 8 opened the door for guest characters and now we get a cow? And a penguin? And a generic enemy from 3D World whose name I don’t even know?
I’ve had Metroid Prime 4 pre-ordered for years, I almost didn’t want to cancel that order out of sheer spite. But why wouldn’t I get the Switch 2 version instead?
I’ve only played Monster Hunter this week. I was close to reaching High Rank, so I wanted to get that done. My collection of all Low Rank armor, both male and female, is complete. High Rank has two sets of each armor, Alpha and Beta, which means I have to make four full sets per category now. I think World already had that mechanic, but it caught me off-guard for sure!
Samus gets psychic powers
I don’t know… that seems kinda out of place.
You can bend your shots freely
Nevermind, I’ll take two!
The sets are still clearly the previous male and female ones, but they don’t refer to them as such and you have access to both armor sets regardless of your character. The best part about it is that you don’t even have to commit to one, you can cherry-pick each individual piece from both sets.
I haven’t seen any credits yet, and they don’t mean much to me anyway. My time won’t be very telling either, because I’m taking my time. I’m an armor collector, so I’m not moving on until I have everything I want. And since armor is now unisex, I have both male and female sets to make!
Of course still playing Monster Hunter. So far only one monster I really don’t like. Hirabami is almost constantly afloat and almost all you get to see and work with is the end of its tail. And that’s by design, considering the tail can be broken 5 times in total. >.> Nu Udra is really cool though. I don’t know if the octopus frame has ever been used by another monster before, but it’s certainly very new and refreshing to me!
But with the random nature of grinding, I needed another game to fill short gaps in case a session ever ended early, so I started Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2. This decision may have been influenced by recent news, but I would never admit that. I was surprised that most of my muscle memory from decades ago is still intact! It also reminded me how unbelievable it is that the series every reached a point where the games were considered bad. It’s such a simple concept that still works, how did they mess that up so badly?
The bomb attack is weird because it doesn’t have its own timing. You set the timing yourself with Luigi and adapt to it with Mario simultaneously, which makes the rhythm as reliable as you yourself are. There’s about a dozen bombs you have to hit that way to get that Excellent and one of them tends to slip through.
My PC is pretty much in the middle of the minimum and recommended specs. But I spent a lot of time in the benchmark last month fiddling with the setting to make it work. But I also don’t need anything higher than 1080p/60fps to be happy.
I played some more Brothership. Mario’s Bomb attack is driving me crazy. As soon as I get the 30 Excellents for the medal I am never using that move again!
But most of my time has been and will still be dedicated to Monster Hunter Wilds. My main issue with the game right now is how story-driven it is. I don’t know what is was like in World, but I don’t like being kidnapped by the plot into areas I don’t want to go yet and locked out of the quest board. I like the quest-based approach I’ve gotten to know, I don’t need story segments before and after every single monster. It’s okay for some of them to be optional! As an avid armor-collector, I like to take things at my own pace.
But that’s a short-term issue, stories end eventually. The gameplay has been solid so far. My Switch Axe works beautifully, though I miss Soaring Wyvern Blade. It took some fiddling with the options and getting used to the controls to make the Seikret follow my orders properly. One wrong button and he starts automatically moving towards whatever the target is, which drove me crazy until I learned what the correct button is.
The one thing that really bothered me were the Soulflies, these little fireflies that highlight items and show you the way to your target. There’s just too many of them! You can barely see what any item is because they absolutely swarm them! Luckily, if you’re on PC, there’s a mod to remove them. I’m sure a future update will add an option to at least turn them down a bit, though.
What shocked me recently were the drop rates of the rare items. I came across my first Plate-type drop and I was excited to get one on my first try! Those used to have 2-3% chances to drop, depending on their source. What I have seen so far were drop rates of 5, 7 and 12%! I hope that’s just a Low Rank thing, because what’s the point if everything is served on a silver platter? I’m here to hunt monsters, why are you giving me less reason to hunt monsters?
Last week, you asked about the performance and I haven’t really had any issues. I even went from performance mode to balanced when I realized the game ran better than the benchmark led me to believe it would. I was wondering if that was ever going to bite me, but earlier today I fought Rey Dau, the thunder dragon. Lightning strikes and particles everywhere, the ground sparkling like mad and I didn’t notice any significant frame drops.
I did, however, have a few moments where the game just stopped for 5-20 seconds. I don’t think it’s a performance issue though, since it seems to happen at complete random, even in the middle of dialogue once. It happened 3 times in my 17 hours and the game doesn’t continue playing while it’s frozen (i.e. the monster has to wait, too), so it’s not actually causing any problems and I can live with that.
Ask me again next week. If there are issues, they’re certainly not in the wide open desert area and simple starting monsters that don’t do anything that would be taxing.
I’ve been playing Kid Dracula and Kid Dracula lately.
Kid Dracula on the GameBoy was one of my left-field childhood games that looks generic, but you can tell it’s a Castlevania spinoff very quickly. I remembered the game being very difficult, but it really wasn’t.
Kid Dracula on the NES was unreleased outside of Japan until the Castlevania Anniversary Collection and I’ve finally gotten around to playing it. It’s definitely harder than its sequel (on the GameBoy) but manageable.
And with that, I must take my leave. Monster Hunter Wilds humbly requests all of my free time.
I have finished Lightning Returns! Except I can’t finish the quest that asked me to exterminate all enemies, because there are more enemies behind the point of no return. It’s impossible to hand in the quest until New Game Plus. Which is weird, but alright, since the game REALLY wants you to play again on hard mode. There’s a whole equipment upgrading system you don’t even have access to on your first playthrough and you can only upgrade your abilities so far. Plus, when you pick up a duplicate of a unique accessory, you get a stronger version instead. If it wasn’t for Monster Hunter, I’d probably play the game a second time, because I did really enjoy it. And the one thing I will say to anyone willing to try the game is: Don’t worry about the 13 day limit. It’s not a big deal at all. I’ve done pretty much everything by day 10 and had to skip ahead to the finale.
I’m about to head to the third area in Brothership, but I haven’t played much because my work schedule has been weird lately.
I’m almost done with Wario Land 2. It’s a fine game, but I just like the first one more. The way Wario’s immortality replaces death with annoyance just doesn’t work for me. It’s faster than going back to a checkpoint, but it feels worse.
I have no idea what to expect from Wilds because I didn’t play World, which is very different stylistically from the older games and Rise. But I didn’t seen anything fundamentally wrong with it, so I took two weeks off for release anyway.
My playtime in Lightning Returns is only at about 50 hours, it just seems much longer because I’ve been playing it for months.
Hearing them complain is a good reminder that we’re doing the right thing.