Massive Update Part I

It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you ... so I'm going to do a few posts in a desperate bid to catch up.

Monster Hunter Tri: I was inspired to buy this by all the great things my good friend Michelle had to say about the Monster Hunter series on the PSP. After spending 5 hours going through all the tutorials on the PSP I was ready to set forth, but this coincided with the arrival of the Wii one.

For those who don't know Monster Hunter is a Phantasy Star Online-esque action role-playing game involving you hunting dinosaurs, effectively. You go out from the central village on quests, hunt monsters, collect materials to craft weapons and armour, forrage for herbs and the like to make other items. No operatic story, just pure gameplay - just how I like it.

It really is a superb game with lots of depth. It relies on skill rather than stats to get you through encounters, and even the relatively n00b-friendly Wii version is pretty tough to get into. It's the best feeling when a game clicks and you stop fighting the controls and relax into the flow. I'm sort of getting there but it's not quite fully clicked, if that makes sense.

I did take it online a couple of times. It's very similar to PSO in that you can get a party together, choose a quest and go out to your own instanced area and hunt. Great games generally but I was fed up of doing the same missions over and over to get my HR (Hunter Rank) up enough to open more. I was convinced the good people I was playing with were fed up of slaying a Great Jaggi for the 7th time that session, and that did rather take the enjoyment away for me.

Why am I not playing it now? Good question. I know others for whome the games have really got their monster claws into them, but I wasn't feeling that pull, and I can't really put my finger on why. I'm not done with the game, writing about it here is making me reflect and want to fire it up again. Maybe I just don't have that addictive personality I had a decade or so ago where I'd easily spend 8 hours straight playing games or making music.