Game Diary — Page 4

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (Wii-U)

Posted on 18/07/2013 Written by choobs

I’m going on a bear hunt! I’m looking for a scary one! As the song goes. Well, I certainly did find a scary one – he’s an Arzuros and his picture is down the bottom there. For this quest, I had to weaken him to a point where the tranquiliser would be effective. This involved wailing on him with dual-blades for a good twenty minutes. The trouble is, the animation is so flawless that it was kind of upsetting to do. Okay, at the start of the level he’s all drool and rage and swipey claws, but by the time I’d worn him down a bit he was limping from area to area and falling over when he tried to charge. Poor beastie.

Anyway, consider him captured. Now – I’m off to farm Great Jaggis to upgrade my armour…

Oh – also, the ability to move the savegame between the 3DS and Wii-U (and back again) is awesome. As long as you remember to move it back again when you’re done

Wii-U

Posted on 15/07/2013 Written by choobs

Worst. Setup. Ever.

Tonight consisted of:

1. Putting the hardware together, cabling up etc.

2. Wrestling with the networking for the best part of an hour to get it to connect. In the end – I took all the spaces out of the SSID, did a manual setup and used static IP addressing and Google’s nameservers. Then it worked. Sadly, it demonstrated it was working by…

3. Spending two hours downloading an update.

4. Next up, I made a backup copy of my 3DS’s 32Gb memory card (and lucky I did – as you’ll soon hear).

5. Spent an hour doing a content migration from the Wii to the Wii-U.

6. Created profiles, added friends, stuck monster hunter in the drive.

7. Discovered a slight hiccup in the Monster Hunter 3DS<->Wii-U migration system. It moves the WHOLE DATAFILE, not individual users. Which is annoying as #2 Son has a fairly advanced player on my 3DS. The idea is we’d be able to do multiplayer between the 3DS and Wii-U. But the saves can only exist in one place at a time. Wait! Remember that backup I took of the 3DS SD card? You guessed it. Created #2 son an account on the Wii-U. Each account has its own datastore. Moved the save (including his player) to his account. Turned off the 3DS. Stuck the SD card in the Mac and copied the backup I made over. Booted up – yuss! Saves recovered to the 3DS. So, we can both play on the Wii-U and 3DS – we just need to be careful who copies what where…

It’s all going to end in tears, isn’t it?

I’m going to bed. I might get a go tomorrow

State of the Gaming Nation (in my house)

Posted on 15/07/2013 Written by choobs

So, I’ve not really been doing much gaming for the last year or two. Just fiddling with a few titles here and there. It’s a bit of a recurring ennui, really. I can pin-point pretty much where this lengthy slump came from. It pretty much coincides with the end of the Gamecube era and the start of the Wii era.

Throughout its life, there was a steady stream of seriously good (to my eyes – I have odd tastes) titles appearing on pretty much a monthly basis on the cube. A fair few of them I still pull out every now and again. More than a few have gone in my gaming top-ten-of-all-time.

So, to say I was disappointed with the Wii is an understatement. I’m sure there were some good titles released, but the sheer volume of utter shovelware pumped onto the system did a damn fine job of masking it. Even the first-party titles didn’t particularly shine for me (with a few exceptions). Something I’d normally consider unthinkable happened. Skyward Sword – a Zelda game – is sitting on my shelf. I haven’t played it. And I LOVE Zelda.

Anyway, things appear to be looking up. I have a 3DS and it’s starting to get some damn good titles. Titles of a quality that it’s beginning to feel a bit like the Gamecube era. In the last six months or so I’ve bought Ocarina (again :)), Cave Story, Harvest Moon, Fire Emblem, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, Donkey Kong Country Returns and Luigi’s Mansion 2. Without exception, they are magnificent.

In fact, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is SO magnificent that I’ve just bought a Wii-U to play it on. Thank God, it looks like Nintendo are getting their act together.

Monster Hunter 3 ultimate (3DS)

Posted on 12/07/2013 Written by choobs

So, a one-star mission. Hunt some beasties, get their guts. 50 minutes to do it. Dead easy, I thought. As it’s an easy one, I thought I’d hunt the aquatic beasties, on the basis that it would give me a bit of practice with the (perfectly adequate) controls. And it was all going fine until the bloody Lagiacrus turned up. Nasty ornery beastie can spot you a mile away and comes straight at you, stunning on the way. So, several frantic minutes later, after much darting between areas trying to evade the damn thing, I finally handed in the mission – with less than a minute to spare :-/

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS)

Posted on 11/07/2013 Written by choobs

It appears dem monsters need hunting once again. I was a bit suspicious of how this would play, particularly with regards the camera, but as it happens it controls beautifully and doesn’t require The Claw Of Death like the PSP version did.

So, it’s Monster Hunter – you know how it works. There’s Monsters. And you Hunt them. While upgrading and crafting and so on. It’s still got the learning curve we all know and love from the series, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s also very pretty.

What is completely lacking, though, is standalone online multiplayer in the 3DS version. Given the PSP version (Freedom Unite) had it 5+ years ago, this is pretty bloody unforgivable. On the upside, those of us with a Wii-U (I don’t have one) can transfer saves to and fro between the Wii-U version (which DOES have online) and the 3DS. I don’t know what they omitted the non-local multiplayer. Seems a bit stupid. Still, the upside is it’s given me the reason I needed to buy a Wii-U.

Anyway – it’s a diary, so progress. I’m just starting out. Ganked some Jaggia, collecting some mushrooms.