¡Recently, Abandoned; Games!

Monster Hunter World

Abandoned this for the second time as I just hate the combat. There's a lot to love about the game, it looks great for a PS4 title, the monsters are wonderfully designed, the world feels very alive, and the basic loop of grinding for improved gear is addictive as hell. For these reasons I feel very frustrated to have to abandon it, but I'm finding the combat awful on multiple levels. The character movement is sluggish while the giant beasts fly around super fast, it should be the other way around. The lock on is useless. The palico seems to do nothing. You have to put away your weapon to heal, which takes ages and doesn't work instantly, so if you dodge roll it cancels the healing effect out (yes I know there's a ghillie suit mechanic to mitigate this but it still sucks). Fights take forever and there's little to no feedback on your progress, no enemy health bar, beasts can be limping away and then suddenly rear up and and continue fighting like before. You spend way too much time chasing the beasts from one side of the map to the other, and if you get killed it's often a case of having wasted 20 min with nothing to show for it. The UI and controls are overly complicated and fiddly (especially for things like traps), and that radial shortcut menu only seems to work about 1 in 3 times.

I know this game does its own thing and you need to engage with it on its own terms. And yes there are heaps of different weapons and they all play differently. I tried the sword and shield, dual swords and bow. The melee weapons mean you need to get close to the monsters so the awful lock on and bad camera become major issues, and sharpening your weapons is an absolute pain in the arse (it's worse than BotW's weapon degradation, seriously who thought this would be a fun mechanic?). The bow was a lot better as you can keep your distance and dodge out of harms way more easily, but you're just doing chip damage and it turns fights into a repetitive slog. Now you're gonna tell me to either stop trying to play it like a soulslike, find another weapon that clicks, or just straight up git gud. And there may be some truth to that, but I've put about 20 hours into this now and have come to the realisation that I was absolutely hating it any time I was in combat.

So abandoned, with reluctance. I may still try Rise/Wilds but I think these games might just not be for me, sadly.

It took me 3 Monster Hunters to realise that I don't gel with those games. It almost feels like a cruel joke at this point, with every new release people say "no, THIS one is friendly to franchise newcomers", and every time I end up saying "no it fucking is not!"

And now I've learned!

Sounds interesting, thanks! Adding it to my wishlist.

I clocked a whole 150+ hours in Freedom Unite, back on the PSP. For some reason though, the subsequent entries, starting with Tri and going through 3 Ultimate and then 4, never managed to capture me for more than a few hours.

I think Unite hit that sweet spot of having enough content to keep you busy without overwhelming you. It was just you, a bunch of monsters to slay, and materials to gather to upgrade your gear for the next tier. It was impenetrable in some ways, but not so much that you couldn't do it without a guide. Dragons were pretty generic for the most part, aside from the highest tier, you could face everything as long as you had decent gear and some patience.

Afterwards, they introduced a bit too many new mechanics and a bit too many new monsters that usually required a specific status setup, and that's when I stopped caring. Nevermind the fact that I started having less feee time and the idea of 30 minutes hunts with no saving and progress wiping if you died, started to get a lot less appealing.

gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/950918-dragon-age-origins/54265969

gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/950916-dragon-age-origins/52814284


Pernament buff turned on?

I was always curious if Street Fighter 1 can really be as bad as they say, and now I finally got to play it in Capcom Arcade Stadium 2. Good grief. I quit after 2 matches. And I didn't manage to pull off a single hadouken.

The audio is great in terms of nostalgia though

In Sledgehammer's defence, because they are just cogs in the machine, they reportedly got it done in 18 months so it explains a lot.

FF7 Rebirth

I'll probably come back to it at a later date when I'm in the mood for something a bit meatier, but right now I'm definitely not feeling it.
Were the party such insufferable twats in the last game? Maybe they just eventually grew on me...
I guess it'd probably help if I'd played the original PSX game, as I've got absolutely no connection with any of them.

Loved the card game, though!