I haven't posted in this thread in a while...
I've been playing
Arcana Heart 3 (PS3) almost exclusively for the last few weeks, grinding in training mode. I've never taken other fighting games that seriously, but Arcana is different. I've been wanting to get into the series for years now, but AH1's scene was small and halfway across the US, and AH2 had an infamously bad PS2 port. But 3 is very good, and now with [
www.aksysgames.com]
Arcana 3 getting a localization by Aksys, I'll have more competition as I work towards playing on a competitive level. It might be a pipe dream, but I'd like to get good enough at this to make a name for myself in the fighting game community.
Other than that, I've been pretty laid-back in my gaming, despite my resolution to beat 12 more incomplete game files this year. I was working on
Chocobo's Dungeon 2 (PS1) for a while, but having a green-screen error destroy 2-3 hours of progress was a buzzkill. I've still got
Wild Arms 5 (PS2) sitting in the wings as well, with only 1 or 2 treasure chests missing in the entire game, probably somewhere on the world map. :\
I'm 'playing'
My Japanese Coach (DS) again lately. Picking up on my studies a bit more, as I want to solidify my grammar. Once I'm confident in that, all that remains is vocabulary and memorizing Kanji, both of which will be lifetime goals.
Still playing
Monster Hunter Tri (Wii) and
Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) sparingly. Collecting the remaining materials in Tri to finish my weapon/armor collection, and going back and forth like a love-hate relationship with Freedom Unite.
In Tri, I'm fairly close to completion. The main things I'm missing are Lagiacrus Horns/Horn+-es (for the many
many Lagi weapons in the game, approximately 16-18 that require 2-5 horns each), Alatreon and Deviljho parts for their respective weapons, and tons of Wyvern Stones for all the marginally useful Lightcrystal weapons. The Wyvern Stones are easily going to be the worst part of it all.
[Rant]
In Unite, I've unlocked the Nekoht 9* quests, and I'm constantly going back and forth between elation and frustration. After playing Tri, I find it really hard to adjust to some of Unite's bullshit.
There are plenty of things in Unite that I enjoy, and would like to see again when Monster Hunter Portable 3rd comes out; I like how personal the Felyne Chef system is, I like the atmosphere of the maps a bit better, and overall I think monsters doing a lot of damage is how it ought to be.
On the other hand, there are plenty of things, big and small, that make me want to rage. Upgrading Gunner armor to the highest it can go and still getting one-shotted by monster attacks, for example. Getting stun-locked/corner raped from full health to dead, where no amount of skill will save you because the monsters constantly do meaty attacks as you're getting up. Fighting any monster with a charging attack (hint: almost all of them) and being run over at point-blank range because they have no actual tell or warning animation for when they're going to blindly rush at you.
And, of course, the hitboxes. Not every monster has borked hitboxes, but somewhere around half of them do. Plesioth is usually the posterboy of this, with a hipcheck that must break the sound barrier since it hits 10-15 feet in front of him (and behind him, and 3-feet off on either side of him... honestly, Plesioth doesn't have a sensible hitbox in his entire moveset), but honorable mentions go to Diablos's tailwhip, Congalala's halitosis breath, and Shogun Cenataur's peekaboo digging attack. I don't know if it was laziness or entirely intentional, but these moves are designed a bit too literally; they're moving boxes, rather than segmented shapes that actually match the animations they're part of. Getting hit by invisible limbs, horns, claws, etc, that are several feet detached from the model gets frustrating really fast, and while yes, they're eventually learnable and dodgeable (it's entirely possible to Moment of Invincibility through Plessy's hipcheck, for example), they're horribly unintuitive and require way too much trial-and-error guesswork to counter. People who make claims of 'the hitboxes are fine' are deluding themselves, and those who claim 'you're making excuses because you suck' are entirely missing the point. The hitboxes are not a dealbreaker, but they
are inaccurate to what's actually happening on the screen, and they're impossible to account for without understanding them beforehand. I'm pretty sure Monster Hunter is the only series where this particular game mechanic is defended even when it's done poorly. Bad hitboxes in a shooter or a fighter will at the very least be acknowledged by the players, even if they generally don't care.
[/Rant]
I doubt anyone's really reading this rant (which is fine, I just wanted to vent) but I'll point out that Tri has fixed the hitbox problem, to the joy of pretty much everyone (even those stubborn people who won't admit they were bad before). So it's all good. I'm really waiting with anticipation for Portable 3rd now, though maybe I'll wait and see if Capcom does a Portable 3rdG or something with harder missions.
This post has been edited by TotalWhittle: Feb 18 2011, 17:41
Currently playing..., an imperative thread
Feb 10 2011, 08:40
