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It’s woefully out of date.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.

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.