A Love Affair With Monster Hunter- Work In Progress
We get literally a dozen emails every four years asking us how we manage to write at least two hard hitting posts a month. Well reader here's a behind the scenes look at a post in progress, with directors commentary at the bottom. That's right, we're opening up the creative process to you the readers. Not at all because we can't be bothered to write anything proper. Who knows? This may inspire you to start up yet another video game blog because there aren't enough of those around!!!!!*
Here it goes:
With my wife away on business, I've spent hours and hours with my mistress. There's nothing quite as thrilling as sitting in my pants, opening a bottle of wine and spending the night with another woman. However, this other woman isn't Tracy from accounts, it's a woman called Cunzy1 1 who is mighty handy with a bowgun. Yes, after months of waiting I finally picked up Monster Huntr Tri for the nintendo Wii and I've gorged myself on it this last week and although all the hype had made me midly excited I still wasn't prepared for the excellent game that is shooting up the charts of the games I've invested the most hours in.
From the off, Monster Hunter is very daunting. Starting the single player game you are given very little guidance as to what everything means. What are all these items I keep accruing that don't seem to do anything? What is the secret of playing with the pig? How do I level up when there's no experience points? What does that cryptic subquest require me to do? In an effort to make it all even more bamboozling, new elements are thrown at you all the time. In Moga villlage (the hub for the single player) you end up having to help out an ever expanding farm, send out a fleet of fishing boats and trade with a travelling ship's captain, decorate your house and level up Cha cha. At first it all seems frustrating and a bit random but after a while it all 'clicks' and without thinking about it you will do the 'dailies' after every quest. Without holding your hand through it, the game lets you work it out in your own time. Which is nice.
As for the Monster Hunting itself, various quests are submitted to the Guild Sweetheart (we don't know either, basically, the person you talk to to set out on a hunt) and when you do all the quests in the set you unlock a new set of quests in new areas which are slightly more challenging. This is where the game gets great. Whenever you hit a wall in the single player you can simply hop online and quest with strangers to improve your equipment and get more items but most importantly to improve your know-how of the bosses and how best to fight them.
The addiction curve for the game is super saccharine sweet. Playing online means that you not only get to go on the quests that you are familiar with from single player but if another hunter submits a quest (providing your Hunter Rank is high enough) you can join them and this is where you encounter new places and new creatures. Stuck on a Great Jaggi in single player? Wait until you see a Qurupeco and a Royal Ludroth. Sure the guys with the cool armour and weapons were dishing out most of the damage but you were Questing with up to three other people is action packed and completing a quest brings a sense of joy and relief at the lower levels and failure is met with a gritty determination to jump back in.
Director's Commentary
Well there is a panopoly of problems which need to be fixed if this were ever to be posted. The reason we stopped writing it is because writing about Monster Hunter made us want to play Monster Hunter so we did. secondly, due to a paucity of general knowledge of English language vocabulary we literally find it hard to write positively about anything without sounding like a 12 year old child. We had to edit out 435 instances of 'nice' before we posted it here.
Paragraph 1. Starts off mildly interesting but analogy falls flat on its face. It's confusing to the reader that Cunzy1 1 is the name of the author and the character. Why isn't Nintendo capitalised but Wii is? Mildly is spelled incorrectly. Last sentence is horrible. Why the use of first person all of a sudden? The TGAM guidelines are to use 'we' all the time even when it doesn't make sense i.e. 'Our wife'.
Paragraph 2. Is this a photo of a screen? What happened to the screen capture stuff you bought with 140% of last year's budget? This paragraph makes the game sound incredibly boring. Cut it out(stop using brackets too).
Paragraph 3. Bland. Why are you explaining the game? Are you writing a FAQ?
Paragraph 4. No it turns out you are writing an Official Nintendo Magazine review. Why don't you tell the reader that playing online is 'complicated' and remind them not to give out personal details when playing online? There is a sentence that isn't finished here. This is shit. Total shit. How can this come from the same team that brought the world this review of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles? Isn't there a new cyberdildonics thing we can put up whilst we try to find new writers?
* We've just found out that Kieron Gillen has mostly left Rock Paper Shotgun which now means that British Video Game writers no longer have a champion. Now we'll all be reading that trash by the Americans which talks about feelings and headshots rather than painting Warhammer miniatures and the wonders of habitual binge drinking :( If anyone does know any good British video game writers then drop us a comment.
Here it goes:
With my wife away on business, I've spent hours and hours with my mistress. There's nothing quite as thrilling as sitting in my pants, opening a bottle of wine and spending the night with another woman. However, this other woman isn't Tracy from accounts, it's a woman called Cunzy1 1 who is mighty handy with a bowgun. Yes, after months of waiting I finally picked up Monster Huntr Tri for the nintendo Wii and I've gorged myself on it this last week and although all the hype had made me midly excited I still wasn't prepared for the excellent game that is shooting up the charts of the games I've invested the most hours in.
From the off, Monster Hunter is very daunting. Starting the single player game you are given very little guidance as to what everything means. What are all these items I keep accruing that don't seem to do anything? What is the secret of playing with the pig? How do I level up when there's no experience points? What does that cryptic subquest require me to do? In an effort to make it all even more bamboozling, new elements are thrown at you all the time. In Moga villlage (the hub for the single player) you end up having to help out an ever expanding farm, send out a fleet of fishing boats and trade with a travelling ship's captain, decorate your house and level up Cha cha. At first it all seems frustrating and a bit random but after a while it all 'clicks' and without thinking about it you will do the 'dailies' after every quest. Without holding your hand through it, the game lets you work it out in your own time. Which is nice.As for the Monster Hunting itself, various quests are submitted to the Guild Sweetheart (we don't know either, basically, the person you talk to to set out on a hunt) and when you do all the quests in the set you unlock a new set of quests in new areas which are slightly more challenging. This is where the game gets great. Whenever you hit a wall in the single player you can simply hop online and quest with strangers to improve your equipment and get more items but most importantly to improve your know-how of the bosses and how best to fight them.
The addiction curve for the game is super saccharine sweet. Playing online means that you not only get to go on the quests that you are familiar with from single player but if another hunter submits a quest (providing your Hunter Rank is high enough) you can join them and this is where you encounter new places and new creatures. Stuck on a Great Jaggi in single player? Wait until you see a Qurupeco and a Royal Ludroth. Sure the guys with the cool armour and weapons were dishing out most of the damage but you were Questing with up to three other people is action packed and completing a quest brings a sense of joy and relief at the lower levels and failure is met with a gritty determination to jump back in.
Director's Commentary
Well there is a panopoly of problems which need to be fixed if this were ever to be posted. The reason we stopped writing it is because writing about Monster Hunter made us want to play Monster Hunter so we did. secondly, due to a paucity of general knowledge of English language vocabulary we literally find it hard to write positively about anything without sounding like a 12 year old child. We had to edit out 435 instances of 'nice' before we posted it here.
Paragraph 1. Starts off mildly interesting but analogy falls flat on its face. It's confusing to the reader that Cunzy1 1 is the name of the author and the character. Why isn't Nintendo capitalised but Wii is? Mildly is spelled incorrectly. Last sentence is horrible. Why the use of first person all of a sudden? The TGAM guidelines are to use 'we' all the time even when it doesn't make sense i.e. 'Our wife'.
Paragraph 2. Is this a photo of a screen? What happened to the screen capture stuff you bought with 140% of last year's budget? This paragraph makes the game sound incredibly boring. Cut it out(stop using brackets too).
Paragraph 3. Bland. Why are you explaining the game? Are you writing a FAQ?
Paragraph 4. No it turns out you are writing an Official Nintendo Magazine review. Why don't you tell the reader that playing online is 'complicated' and remind them not to give out personal details when playing online? There is a sentence that isn't finished here. This is shit. Total shit. How can this come from the same team that brought the world this review of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles? Isn't there a new cyberdildonics thing we can put up whilst we try to find new writers?
* We've just found out that Kieron Gillen has mostly left Rock Paper Shotgun which now means that British Video Game writers no longer have a champion. Now we'll all be reading that trash by the Americans which talks about feelings and headshots rather than painting Warhammer miniatures and the wonders of habitual binge drinking :( If anyone does know any good British video game writers then drop us a comment.
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