It’s missing the third dimension. It may look like a circle, but it’s actually spiraling downwards.

I haven’t seen any credits yet, and they don’t mean much to me anyway. My time won’t be very telling either, because I’m taking my time. I’m an armor collector, so I’m not moving on until I have everything I want. And since armor is now unisex, I have both male and female sets to make!

Of course still playing Monster Hunter. So far only one monster I really don’t like. Hirabami is almost constantly afloat and almost all you get to see and work with is the end of its tail. And that’s by design, considering the tail can be broken 5 times in total. >.> Nu Udra is really cool though. I don’t know if the octopus frame has ever been used by another monster before, but it’s certainly very new and refreshing to me!

But with the random nature of grinding, I needed another game to fill short gaps in case a session ever ended early, so I started Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2. This decision may have been influenced by recent news, but I would never admit that. I was surprised that most of my muscle memory from decades ago is still intact! It also reminded me how unbelievable it is that the series every reached a point where the games were considered bad. It’s such a simple concept that still works, how did they mess that up so badly?

The bomb attack is weird because it doesn’t have its own timing. You set the timing yourself with Luigi and adapt to it with Mario simultaneously, which makes the rhythm as reliable as you yourself are. There’s about a dozen bombs you have to hit that way to get that Excellent and one of them tends to slip through.

My PC is pretty much in the middle of the minimum and recommended specs. But I spent a lot of time in the benchmark last month fiddling with the setting to make it work. But I also don’t need anything higher than 1080p/60fps to be happy.

I played some more Brothership. Mario’s Bomb attack is driving me crazy. As soon as I get the 30 Excellents for the medal I am never using that move again!

But most of my time has been and will still be dedicated to Monster Hunter Wilds. My main issue with the game right now is how story-driven it is. I don’t know what is was like in World, but I don’t like being kidnapped by the plot into areas I don’t want to go yet and locked out of the quest board. I like the quest-based approach I’ve gotten to know, I don’t need story segments before and after every single monster. It’s okay for some of them to be optional! As an avid armor-collector, I like to take things at my own pace.

But that’s a short-term issue, stories end eventually. The gameplay has been solid so far. My Switch Axe works beautifully, though I miss Soaring Wyvern Blade. It took some fiddling with the options and getting used to the controls to make the Seikret follow my orders properly. One wrong button and he starts automatically moving towards whatever the target is, which drove me crazy until I learned what the correct button is.

The one thing that really bothered me were the Soulflies, these little fireflies that highlight items and show you the way to your target. There’s just too many of them! You can barely see what any item is because they absolutely swarm them! Luckily, if you’re on PC, there’s a mod to remove them. I’m sure a future update will add an option to at least turn them down a bit, though.

What shocked me recently were the drop rates of the rare items. I came across my first Plate-type drop and I was excited to get one on my first try! Those used to have 2-3% chances to drop, depending on their source. What I have seen so far were drop rates of 5, 7 and 12%! I hope that’s just a Low Rank thing, because what’s the point if everything is served on a silver platter? I’m here to hunt monsters, why are you giving me less reason to hunt monsters?

Last week, you asked about the performance and I haven’t really had any issues. I even went from performance mode to balanced when I realized the game ran better than the benchmark led me to believe it would. I was wondering if that was ever going to bite me, but earlier today I fought Rey Dau, the thunder dragon. Lightning strikes and particles everywhere, the ground sparkling like mad and I didn’t notice any significant frame drops.

I did, however, have a few moments where the game just stopped for 5-20 seconds. I don’t think it’s a performance issue though, since it seems to happen at complete random, even in the middle of dialogue once. It happened 3 times in my 17 hours and the game doesn’t continue playing while it’s frozen (i.e. the monster has to wait, too), so it’s not actually causing any problems and I can live with that.

Ask me again next week. If there are issues, they’re certainly not in the wide open desert area and simple starting monsters that don’t do anything that would be taxing.

I’ve been playing Kid Dracula and Kid Dracula lately.

Kid Dracula on the GameBoy was one of my left-field childhood games that looks generic, but you can tell it’s a Castlevania spinoff very quickly. I remembered the game being very difficult, but it really wasn’t.

Kid Dracula on the NES was unreleased outside of Japan until the Castlevania Anniversary Collection and I’ve finally gotten around to playing it. It’s definitely harder than its sequel (on the GameBoy) but manageable.

And with that, I must take my leave. Monster Hunter Wilds humbly requests all of my free time.

I have finished Lightning Returns! Except I can’t finish the quest that asked me to exterminate all enemies, because there are more enemies behind the point of no return. It’s impossible to hand in the quest until New Game Plus. Which is weird, but alright, since the game REALLY wants you to play again on hard mode. There’s a whole equipment upgrading system you don’t even have access to on your first playthrough and you can only upgrade your abilities so far. Plus, when you pick up a duplicate of a unique accessory, you get a stronger version instead. If it wasn’t for Monster Hunter, I’d probably play the game a second time, because I did really enjoy it. And the one thing I will say to anyone willing to try the game is: Don’t worry about the 13 day limit. It’s not a big deal at all. I’ve done pretty much everything by day 10 and had to skip ahead to the finale.

I’m about to head to the third area in Brothership, but I haven’t played much because my work schedule has been weird lately.

I’m almost done with Wario Land 2. It’s a fine game, but I just like the first one more. The way Wario’s immortality replaces death with annoyance just doesn’t work for me. It’s faster than going back to a checkpoint, but it feels worse.

Remember the ending of ‘The Dead Zone’? I have a stupid feeling it wouldn’t be a career-ender in our reality…

It’s load-bearing dust.

I have no idea what to expect from Wilds because I didn’t play World, which is very different stylistically from the older games and Rise. But I didn’t seen anything fundamentally wrong with it, so I took two weeks off for release anyway.

My playtime in Lightning Returns is only at about 50 hours, it just seems much longer because I’ve been playing it for months.

I’ve been ‘playing’ the Monster Hunter Wilds Benchmark for 2 hours today to find the right settings balance. The demo ran fine last year, but seeing the actual FPS, I just had to do some tweaking. I’m ready for the game in three weeks, I just need to make sure to finish

Lightning Returns first. I have four enemies left to hunt to extinction, it doesn’t take as long as I expected. I’m also reaching the point where I can’t upgrade my abilities anymore. They really want you to play New Game Plus Hard Mode to get even stronger: Unique accessories get replaced by better versions when you get duplicates and weapon upgrades aren’t even available until then. I’m tempted, but I got monsters to hunt next month.

I’m near the end of the second part of Brothership. The desert island sucked, but I’m still enjoying the game. I need to hurry up a bit though, last week I got extremely excited for Xenoblade X out of nowhere. I wasn’t a huge fan of the game when it was new, but Xenoblade 2 and 3 made me appreciate what it was a bit more in hindsight and I’ve been wanting to try it again for a long time. I’ve had faith in a Switch port and I’m glad I waited.

I’ve also been playing Wario Land 2. I’ve played it once before a long time ago, I don’t think it’s as good as the first one, but it’s interestingly weird in its own right.

Brothership has been going smoothly. The islands all seem to be around the same size though, I’ve been hoping to find something chunkier every now and then. As of now, the gameplay loop is a little too small. But I’d like to give a huge shoutout to side quests straight up telling which ones will expire if you progress the main story! More games need to do that!

I misunderstood something about the main quests in Lightning Returns and I suddenly found myself done with them earlier than expected. I’m basically ready for the finale on Day 13, so now I’m spending the remaining 6 days exterminating all monsters in the world. I started with the two strongest ones before they grow even stronger. I don’t think I’ll beat the 11 Million HP superboss though. I’ll try, but I found out that he can straight up escape from combat when he’s under 25% health, rendering the whole fight meaningless and that seems too frustrating.

It took me way too long to realize how fucked up it is that you build houses on your properties and as soon as you collected enough rent money evict all those families, tear down the houses and build a hotel instead.

President Musk will be livid that his suggestion to call it ‘Gulf of X’ was shot down.

I finished Echoes of Wisdom, with completion of pretty much every side content, except I forgot to cross-reference my list of echoes with a complete list. I don’t think I missed anything, but who knows? My final verdict is neither positive nor negative, just a resounding ‘meh’. I’m always glad when they try something new, but I don’t think open world works for a 2D Zelda. A game with a top-down perspective needs more barriers or the map just becomes a square. Height just isn’t as much of a factor compared to a 3D environment.

In its place, I have started Mario and Luigi: Brothership! I was very worried about the game, since I generally don’t like it when an RPG segments its world too much. It’s been a long time since I played Partners in Time, but I remember that one being very guilty of that, where each segment felt like a ‘level’ instead of a piece of a larger world. But I’m actually very happy with Brothership so far, it’s cohesive! I’m trying to knock out the ‘Beat 300 enemies without any equipment’ challenge early and I’m getting so used to it, that I worry the game will feel too easy once my plumbers wear ties, so to speak.

I made a lot more progress in Lightning Returns. I’m past Day 7 now, which means all enemies are starting to grow stronger over time. I ran into a superboss in the Dead Dunes at some point… I didn’t know an enemy like that would just roam around like that! I got scared thinking this is what Day 7 Plus was going to be!

I did say I was going to do a second playthrough of the game to cover all side quests, but as it turns out, I have almost all of them finished already. When the game said you don’t have enough time to save everyone, they must have been lying. The 13 days you get are plenty. I might not be able to do the quest that asks you to exterminate every single enemy in the world though, but I’ll definitely try!

Even The Simpsons covered the Odyssey at some point though.

I prefer the wide game just to see the King run a marathon to castle up.

You won’t have to live in an iron lung if your health care provider refuses to cover the cost. See? The system works!

Haven’t found much time to play recently, but I beat the Deku area in Echoes of Wisdom today. This was probably my favorite area, mostly because we haven’t seen Deku sprouts as a serious race since Majora’s Mask. I find them a lot more interesting than the Korok, so I really hope they return in a major role again sometime.

At this point, I’m pretty sure I’m about to beat the game, so it’s time to finish off all the side content. I already finished the Dream Dojo including the advanced time requirements, which wasn’t that hard except for a select few challenges. Though even those wouldn’t have been so bad if there was a way to just restart without quitting out entirely! That’s a major oversight a game of today really can’t get away with anymore.

And one more thing I’ve been meaning to say for weeks but always forget… how is the lock-on so bad? Why does it seem like it prioritizes my own summons over the enemies? 99.9% of the time I do NOT want to lock on to the rock I placed somewhere! I’m actually unhappy that when Tri levels up, some summons become cheaper because the last thing I want is more entities to lock on to!