Arcade VS Cinematic
Hello. I was watching a little bit of a video review from some YouTuber and they were talking about what a “masterpiece” World was and that obviously triggered me, so here I am! Now I’m not gonna shit on World or Wilds but I think I’ve just figured out why I like the other games better and to be fair, I don’t think I’d classify any Monster Hunter as a “masterpiece.” There’s annoying things in all of them but if you prefer the W games, that's fine but if you think versions like Rise just flat out shouldn't exist, well then you're just wrong. Wilds is definitely doing a lot of things better than World.
The character creator still annoys me. They’re getting closer with Wilds but it still doesn’t go far enough. The smallest male characters are still bigger than the biggest female characters. I want to be able to make a femboy or a muscle mommy. I don’t understand why there’s just not a height slider. A “big” change is that there’s no male/female armor now, everyone has the same. Technically one is more masculine and the other is more feminine but they aren’t gender specific but we still only have access to two armors per monster. In the older games you had male and female blademaster and gunner armors, so four sets of armor per monster. In GenU there were some other variants here and there, “R” if I remember right. World and Rise had alpha and beta versions, male and female, so again, four sets. Wilds we are given two, and that is supposed to be seen as a victory. So in essence we still only have access to two armor sets per character. Nothing really gained but some creativity lost. Granted I’m sure this takes a boat load of work off of artist and developers who only have to worry about two armor sets versus four or even six.
The older games intros go so hard man. It’s not about a story or overarching plot, there’s just a group of hunters fighting monsters. There’s a loose sense of a story in there but it doesn’t hold you back and can also be easily ignored. The story for Wilds cannot. Monster Hunter is, at its core, a co-op hunting game so I just don’t understand why there is a need for a story. Maybe there’s a handful of people who only play solo and this is for them but again, it’s like any other co-op game, your plot is in the way of me and my friends goofing off. That’s all we want from games, get out of my way please. I think the little paragraphs about why someone is putting out a quest for a certain monster to be much more entertaining.
I like the use of endemic life in Rise/Sunbreak. It makes me think the hunters of Rise are different then the hunters of World/Wilds. The hunters of Rise seem to know how to pick up the various aliment toads (paralysis, sleep, poison, what have you) without them activating and then using them later where the World/Wilds hunters don’t have this knowledge and just try to time a kick to the toad to get the monster trapped. The spiribirds were fine, at first, but it did get annoying to get them every hunt. It seemed because of the need to collect the spiribirds we always started at the main base camp of each zone. If I remember right there was no random start locations in Rise, but the spiribird thing was kind of annoying and one; I would just not bother and two; I just got a mod that had a prisim spiribird at the start of each hunt. But I did like the toads and the spiders. In the W games I feel like the hunters know the environment a lot better. If I’m remembering right there isn’t a whole lot of environmental traps and things in Rise. I remember some things on the walls you could smash a monster into and they would get sprayed with lava or water, maybe even a sand pit? There’s some hanging rocks in some areas that you can drop on monsters but I feel like the W games have more of those things around. Tree vines, random terrain the monster can fall into, a waterfall. Maybe they have more or less the same amount in each game, in any case, I like all those things in each game type and use them as much as I can.
Overall what I think it boils down to is pretty much the same reason I prefer Nintendo games vs any other AAA game that chases “realism”. I like visually stylized, artsy games. I don’t understand how you CAN’T have fun with GenU or Sunbreak. With the different styles of GenU and the switch skills of Sunbreak like, how? I remember in GenU the only way I could fight a Najarala was with aerial hammer, everything else was just a waste of time. W/Ws is very grounded, more realistic but I, personally, don’t want that, I want to zoom around the map using my gunlance as a friggin’ rocket. I liked in GenU using the constant side step slap of a greatsword to knock a monster out. I liked the wire bug move in Sunbreak that let me hit my kinsect at the monster like a baseball. Wilds has implemented some of these that I’ve noticed. The duel blades for instance have an adept dodge so that’s something. I've seen people call GenU and Rise "more arcade like" and I guess that's what I like. Maybe it's an age thing, don’t get me wrong, clashing with a monster and pushing it back is cool but I think the arcadyness of GenU and Rise is what a video game is supposed to be to me, you know?
I think also, if they keep alternating every other Monster Hunter game like this it can split up the roster in a way, like Valstrax for instance. Valstrax does not seem like something that would show up in a World like game, he’s too out there. Fighting a Valstrax is like fighting an Armored Core unit, it’s fucking crazy. Ahtal-Ka from GenU gets a bunch of rubble and builds itself a mech, I don’t think that’s anything we’ll see in a World game. For the most part, most monsters are relatively grounded and look like plausible creatures so they can appear in both styles of the game but there is a handful that I just don’t think we’ll ever see in the World style. But hey, I could be wrong, you know, we’ll see. This might just be a coping mechanism for me to tell myself that there’s still hope for the next game if Qurupeco, Gobul, Gigginox and/or Melfestio don’t show up in Wilds or its G-rand expansion. With what I’ve seen so far, I think the Gigginox could fit right in with some of these creeps in Wilds.
That’s that I guess. Oh! Before I forget I have an idea for a microtransaction. I know how that sounds, and I know what you’re going to say but, this isn’t for you, so just, get, get out of the way for a second; Capcom! Capcom Capcom! Hey! So I’ve got this idea for a microtransaction. I got this idea from watching the Tekken trailer for Anna. In the trailer, sometimes when Anna hits her opponent this little briar knot thing shows up, do that for the damage numbers in Monster Hunter. Everyone has their own thing in Tekken, Kazuya has lightning, Yoshimitsu seems to have a red slash, so I just imagined something like that. And maybe it’s not every hit, maybe just the crit numbers or whatever the numbers are with the little extra bits in the corners. I don’t know what those are, I imagine they are crits. But I could see the little thorn patches around those numbers, or cherry blossoms, I don’t know, I’d buy that.
Welp, I’ll go back to slogging away at Wilds story, give me some feedback. Let me see your hunter, I want to see! How do you feel about the armor situation? I will say also the weapons are much better looking this time around so I am glad for that. Which Monster Hunter do you prefer, arcady (is this even a word?) or cinematic? Let me know and I’ll be back sometime, byeeee!!
Comments
Post a Comment