Look! I’m not Bague! I’m Chewbury! And I’m a bloke! This is a direct result of the Rath Heart Armour making me look like a cupcake in MH4U.

Oh Lordy! It’s a new Monster Hunter game. And I haven’t even reached G-rank on MH4U yet! Well, that’s embarrassing! Anyway, all is not lost! Just like MH4U played sufficiently differently to MH3U that it didn’t supplant the previous version, MHGen does the same thing – in spades. The jumpy mechanics introduced in 4U are still there, but there’s a whole new “Styles” system which allows you to switch up both your play style and the special abilities that style gives you, depending on the fight you’re doing.

For example, this time round I’m using the switch-axe as my main weapon. I’m also using the ‘Aerial’ style rather a lot. This basically adds a little jump to my dodge, meaning I can vault off monsters (which makes special attacks fun and mounting easy). The trade off is that I can only select one special move and my combo finishes can only be triggered while part of an aerial chain. Other styles allow you to select up to three special moves and provide a wide range of defensive and offensive options.

On top of these new mechanics, there’s a buttload of new areas and new monsters as well as a VAST array of villages, areas and monsters from earlier editions, right the way back to Monster Hunter 1. I think I could probably play this one forever.

It’s woefully out of date. I have actually played some things, but I’ve also been evil and added (many) more. I’m going to sit down tonight and update it, then dress in sackcloth and ashes for a month and actually stick to it. 2015 was insane for gaming.

Readers of this blog will most likely be aware that this came out It’s pretty much the only thing I’ve been playing of late, on account of it being fecking great. There’s been a bit of mud slinging about it (mainly from Kotaku), so I thought I’d mention a few of the gripes along with my response to them;

• “It doesn’t look any better than Fallout 3.”  I suspect anyone claiming this hasn’t played Fallout 3 recently and are relying on memory.
• “The gameplay is too much like Fallout 3.” Yes. That’s because it’s Fallout 4. People love Fallout 3 and want more of it. So Fallout 4 is more of it. If it was different, it wouldn’t be. I’m kinda amazed that I feel the need to explain this.
• “It’s really buggy.” An easy one; No, it’s not. Granted I’m only 40 hours in, but I haven’t experienced anything other than the occasional oddity (something’s arm clipping through a door – that kind of thing. The kind of thing you get in practically every big game). No frame rate issues, not save-eating crashes. No crashes at all, in fact.

But moaning aside, how is the game? Magnificent – it’s just as vast, engrossing and addictive as its forbears and it’s currently eating all of my spare time. I’m hoping it’ll keep me going until No Man’s Sky appears.

Bague in Rath Heart armour

So, I have a tradition of creating a female character called “Bague” in Monster Hunter. I’ve been doing it since the PS2 days. I need to stop it. I’ve just spent a LONG TIME farming Pink Rathians to make the Rath Heart armour set. And I look like a cupcake.

There’s a now playing page. Up there, in the middle of the top navigation thingy. Gonna keep that up to date with what I’m doing, methinks.

It’s getting ridiculous. It really is. After my prolonged ennui – in part caused by a lack of anything new and interesting and in part by my ridiculous Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate obsession – I’ve found myself up to my eyes in amazing titles. Admittedly, this is at least partly down to the magnificence of the new 3ds and the PS4, but regardless I’m struggling to keep up. My list of “Things that I’m actually playing right now” currently looks a bit like this:

1. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (3DS)
2. Xenoblade Chronicles (3DS)
3. Tomb Raider Definitive Edition (PS4)
4. Toukiden: Kiwami (PS4, Vita)
5. Final Fantasy X Remastered (Vita)
6. Elite Dangerous (Mac)
7. Apotheon (PS4)
8. Don’t Starve (PS4)

On top of these, titles which I’m kinda sorta playing but have been distracted from are (wait for it)

1. Alien Isolation (PS4)
2. Bloodborne (PS4 – not even started!)
3. Destiny (PS4)
4. Dragon Age Origins (PS4)
5. Evil Within (PS4)
6. Shadows of Mordor (PS4)
7. Heroes of the Storm (Mac)

On top of that, on the 3DS alone there are another dozen games and about half that amount on the Vita that have fallen by the wayside. The problem here is I’m doing too many at once. The trouble is that things like MH4U, Elite, Heroes of the Storm and so on are as near open-ended as they get. So in order to dig my way out of the mess, I’m going to focus on two games at a time and try my damnedest NOT TO BUY ANY MORE (until No Man’s Sky comes out). To keep me honest, I’m going to get back to my Game Diary entries before I drown in it all. So here’s the rules: at any one time I’m allowed to be playing a “standard” game and a long-term game. Long term games I’m allowed to play for an arbitrary number of days before switching to another one, but “standard” games need to be completed before I start (or continue) another one.

So – my current “standard” game is Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition” (which, I might add, is exceptional.

Barroth Armour get! And let me tell you, fertile mud is a bugger to get a hold of! The Barroth rolls in mud to armour itself and if you hack this mud off during combat, there’s a chance it’ll drop a sparkly – and there’s a chance (a small one) that this sparkly will be fertile mud.

But most of the time it isn’t.

You can also get fertile mud as a quest reward, with a much higher drop rate if you capture, rather than killing the beast.

You need eight (I think) fertile mud for the full armour set and I reckon the best way to get it is to grind the ‘hunt a Barroth’ three star quest. Took me four or five runs to get it all. Now that I’ve done that and fitted the armour with ThunderRes decorations, I’m ready to have another go at the Lagiacrus. Once that’s out of the way, I think most of the remaining quests are in the Tundra. Barroth armour has a nasty -10 to ice attacks, so I’ll be swapping back to Jaggi armour (or making something better) before long. Saved armour sets for the win.