An Arbitrary Update in the month of May (and other excellent uses of time and money)

It’s been awhile since I’ve written one of these things, hasn’t it? Well, things are going ok. I bought a PS4 (along with Bloodborne, Mortal Kombat X and Lords of the Fallen), so now I can hang with all the cool kids and play catch-up on the stuff that I missed last year because my computer couldn’t handle it. That means at some point down the road I need to purchase/borrow/steal copies of The Evil Within and Far Cry 4, the former because I hate myself and need to see the game for myself, the latter because I really liked Far Cry 3 and figure more of that is something I could do with every now and again. My PSN ID is AquaRandom, should you wish to beat my ass at MK. Why isn’t it ArbitraryWater? That name was already taken when I made my account last year, weirdly enough.

The blog output should be a little more consistent this summer and maybe at some point I’ll get around to writing that Pillars of Eternity review I’ve been mentally writing in my head for the past month and a half. Why haven’t I finished it yet? Because I had finals and there’s something to be said for momentum when you’re playing games. I’ll try to finish it this week! I have nothing but free time once I’m done with work, time that I can spend in questionable ways, be it playing video games or attempting to write a Pathfinder campaign, given it’s my first time as DM. Hell, maybe I’ll try to finish Lightning Returns. That seems like a bad idea. Well, maybe not as bad as trying to play Conception II, but that’s another story...

Another 240 hours of Monster Hunter (Or: Why the L button on my 3DS is broken)

I think I’ve just about burnt out on this for the time being, at least as something that I play on a daily, obsessive basis to the detriment of my academic and social pursuits. It only took 340 or so hours for that to happen; no big deal. I’ve already written a whole piece on Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and its excellently crafted animation-priority boss battle gameplay, so I’ll keep this brief: Monster Hunter 4 is one of the best games I’ve played this year. It’s an insidiously addictive grind treadmill that can be played in short bursts or marathon sessions, and it has enough content and variety to avoid the problem of serious repetition. Wanna know why I did so abysmally last semester? Well, a bunch of personal stuff reared its ugly head, but Monster Hunter certainly didn’t help!

Since my last blog I’ve basically reached the end-game of non-DLC quest funtimes. I have several nice sets of G-Rank armor, maxed out weapons and have started taking up evade lancing with the dope Crimson Fatalis lance I made out of its body parts. It works pretty well. For me, the greatest strength of Monster Hunter is the way it rewards the player for understanding and reacting to the various nuances of the weapons and the monsters you fight. Did you know that you can do mid-air reloads with bowguns if you jump off a ledge? The emergency dive when running away from monsters while your weapon is sheathed is completely invincible for all of its active frames? Gogmazios is a terrifying giant tar dragon? Some of the systems are arcane nonsense, I had a wiki on hand pretty much at all times, but the core gameplay of fighting big, horrific monsters (preferably with others) is solid, fun and most importantly for me, pretty much free of any sort of egregious fluff. Oh, I still have to gather some random ore or bugs or fish every now and again, but by G rank I was pretty singularly focused on the art of ice cold monster murdering.

But let’s say you aren’t willing to sacrifice all your free time and/or physical and mental wellbeing to the kind of investment I’ve made. Is Monster Hunter still something someone could enjoy without making a bunch of ridiculous rank 10 weapons that look like they’re made from the parts of the monsters you’ve murdered? Yeah, probably. I’m not going to be a snob and say “The game doesn’t really even start until you reach high/G rank quests.” because I don’t think that’s true. I will say that you’re missing out if you just play through the low rank story missions long enough to fight Shagaru Magala, because to me the core of Monster Hunter is playing with others, be they strangers or friends. Still, if the time commitment intimidates you I imagine if you stuck with a small handful of weapons and didn’t try to grind a bunch of stuff out you’d be able to see whatever you want to see in a semi-reasonable amount of time. If you’re on the fence, try the demo, or buy it on sale or something, then watch a bunch of GaijinHunter’s tutorial videos on the Youtubes. Like a lot of the games I like, it’s probably not for everyone and that’s ok. Games that are actually for everyone are either focus-tested to the point of blandness or Super Mario Bros-level masterpieces. I wouldn’t go as far as to call Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate a masterpiece, but it is an excellent alternative to crack cocaine.

Other Junk:

Being the person of excellent taste that I am, I introduced my roommate (The same roommate whom I played way too much League of Legends with back in the day) to Dragon’s Dogma because he hadn’t played it. This led to me experiencing a lot of that game again, vicariously, including the Bitterblack Isle stuff that I had hardly touched at all. Yo, speaking of Monster Hunter, Dragon’s Dogma sure does take some inspiration from that, but in the context of a regular action game for humans (albeit one with its own share of bizarre design choices and quirks), while the Dark Arisen content might as well turn into Dark Souls at some point, right down to it being sadistically hard and evoking a lot of profanities from the player. Despite all those various influences, the thing I’ll say about DD is that there’s nothing else quite like it and it’s still one of my favorite games from the last few years…. which is probably why the idea of a Free-to-Play online variant seems like it could either be the best thing ever or a massive disappointment.

Down the rabbit hole of “Obscure old games” that I sometimes descend to, I’m going to just mention Fantasy General as something that I’ve been spending a decent amount of time with. A hex-based turn-based strategy game from 1996 from the team that made Panzer General, Fantasy General scratches the itch for more minimalistic, chess-like strategy that I’m surprisingly into. With a lot of the strategy games that I like being dense and mechanics heavy, the refreshingly straightforward nature of “Cavalry get bonuses on open plains, heavy infantry are the strongest overall, Siege Weapons are squishy as hell but can attack indirectly” it actually reminds me a decent amount of Advance Wars and made me realize how much I’d like a new one of those. Not that I’m complaining, Intelligent Systems. You are free to make as many Fire Emblem games as you dang please (even if they come out in Japan next month but not until next year for the states), but with Codename: STEAM being sort of a disappointment and Advance Wars Dual Strike being almost a decade old at this point, don’t you think we could use a new one of those? Oh right. Days of Ruin. But, one of those without the bad PG edginess and rocking rock music CO themes that all sound the same. Please and thank you.

Yo the Eternal Lords expansion for Age of Wonders III is pretty good. I’m the only person on these forums who likes and has played a significant amount of Age of Wonders III? Ok. There are tiger people and ice goblins now. The tweaks the developers have made since launch last year continue to impress, it’s become a much better game.

Blackguards 2 seems alright!

Looking ahead

With this summer ostensibly being my time to get my shit together and plan things out, I wonder if I could apply the same goal-oriented approach to my idiotic video game junk? I can try! The scattering of partially-finished games that I’d like to finish is something I’d really like to tackle in an efficient fashion so we don’t end up with a “No really, I’ll finish Icewind Dale 2 at some point” situation. But does that even matter? Leaving stuff unfinished always has bugged the more obsessive-compulsive aspects of my personality, but on the other hand I usually play what I feel like playing at any given moment… which thus far has been a lot of low-commitment matches of strategy games and the like. How important is it that I clear away this hypothetical backlog? How important is it that I try to keep up with the games that are hip and relevant and thus engender more discussion? I’m sorry if this sounds like I’m thinking aloud (in written form). I am. Ok. Goals? Goals. Finish Pillars of Eternity by the end of this week. Ok? good. Done. No other guarantees, but that one is something I can likely keep. I won’t make any promises for the likes of Persona Q/Dragon Age Inquisition/Anvil of Dawn/Lightning Returns/Pokemon Omega Ruby/Fantasy Life/One of those God of War games/A Lunatic difficulty Playthrough of Fire Emblem Awakening, but I still have like 3 ½ months to figure that out, right? Oh, I’ll spend less time playing video games and more time trying to figure stuff out like how to be responsible? Dang. Well, I’ll try. And to the rest of you, I wish you well. Here, have a video of Dan and some other Game Informer folks engaging in what I can only describe as "Not quite as funny as Bioforge, still pretty funny"