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Lost in Translation: When You Get a Midlife Crisis at 25 pt.1

Let me admit one thing: I love Lost in Translation. There, half of the readers are gone! Rarely ever a movie with this kind of slow burn and dream-like atmosphere will invoke a sense of indifference where people watch this for nearly two hours and think "Meh, it's okay but nothing to write home about." when I can observe most people being in two camps after watching this. One that loved the movie and affected them greatly enough to claim it a cinematic masterpiece and another that watched it and was grateful that they found a cure for insomnia.

This seems true when a friend and I got together for our usual movie night/morning online (we live in two different parts across the world) and we put on Lost in Translation for it. The movie left me smiling and feeling comfy after it ended while it left my friend feeling like he was Bill Murray at the start of this film. It's a kind of extra slow burning movie that you have to vibe with in order to enjoy it or else it'll leave you bored out of your wits.

Which is why it's hard to recommend to people when it's a 50/50 chance they'll just turn it off and watch something more exciting. And t's hard to define it in a single genre because it's the script is a little complicated than that. Basically this movie is about two people: Bill Murray playing himself as another actor, Bob Harris (because if you cast Bill Murray, you get Bill Murray, not another character) having a midlife crisis where his life isn't as exciting as it used to be and flown to Tokyo to endorse a Suntory whiskey; and ScarJo as Charlotte, a young woman where she feels like an empty shell desperately trying to find some levity and purpose for her life while travelling to Japan with her husband. Eventually they both meet up, get acquianted and then share some whacky experiences together that makes them a little less dead inside, finally having some fun together in a dark, depressing city in good company. All of this while not understanding a lick of Japanese and experiencing culture shock.

Seems a simple enough premise but like I said, it's a bit more complicated than that. It's a Drama but it never gets to a point where it's like ScarJo losing her temper to Kylo Ren like in Marriage Story. It's a Romance but the romance never get to the point where they take it to the next level. It's a Comedy but the humour is so subtle and so contextual and so satirical, it'll definitely get Lost in Translation itself unless you watch it the second time at least. Dad joke but you get what I mean. Individually, these may seem like it makes the film weak but they blend in together enough to make the script work to what it intends to do.

The quirky awkwardness of the situations Bill Murray was in and combined with ScarJo's desperate attempts to find happiness in all the stuff (ikebana, spiritual enlightenment, new age self help audiobooks) that other people claimed to find their inner Zen in Japan gives off the feeling of that crushing depression in the start of the 21st century that felt more real than a lot of other films or media that tried. That might sound a lot like films around that time, like Magnolia but thankfully the characters in the film there don't whine endlessly about how society is fucking awful, how the characters actually talk it out with each other than making cries for help to the audience and it's also half the runtime (thank God!).

However at times, it does feel like a Bill Murray slice of life somewhat at times since his annoyances with the japanese production crews' indifference, not wanting to be on stage and him feeling dead inside and trying to make the best of things felt rather genuine to his past experiences. Maybe it is? He did tried to dodge Sofia Coppola wanting him to be Bob Harris behind the scenes which he eventually (read: reluctantly) joined the cast after several phone calls and letters being sent his way so, that'll explain why he looks so frustrated in a lot of scenes there! I'm joking, of course.

Not to say ScarJo's performance felt wanting in comparison for her own scenes but it felt more like it's supposed to be a stand-in for the audience who experienced and felt something similar, in and outside Japan. We all had that melancholic period in our lives where nothing we do brings us joy and we've felt a sort of crushing loneliness even with our friends and loved ones around. So the moment she hanged out with Bill running around Shibuya is where we start to notice that stark contrast between how superficial the stuff she's doing by her lonesome and together with Bill there. All the little things they did felt fun and exciting despite how otherwise mundane they appear to be. Kinda like how playing Borderlands is such a boring miserable experience until you get a friend together on the Xbox in splitscreen. Suddenly, it's now the best game ever and it's funny how being with good company fixes a lot of things, maybe depression too.

Now for all the things to praise about the movie, I think I'm not alone when I say the best part of it is how well the cinematography is done in here. It was nominated for an Oscars for it among others despite just winning Best Screenplay, which I think isn't as strong as how much the movie puts a heavy emphasis on visual storytelling and setting an atmosphere. Sofia probably picked the right time to film it around in Winter when everything looks miserable and drab for that extra sense of depression and melancholy without agonizing over filters like a David Fincher film. Sure, seems like cheating because everything looks miserable and drab in Winter (hell, you shoulda seen London then!) but it works to the film's advantage.

Though, setting the tone to the film isn't the only thing the cinematography is good at. The shots in a lot of locations whether in Tokyo in Shibuya Crossing or Kyoto in the temple where a traditional wedding ceremony is going on, they're just lovely to look at. But the real winner is the visual gags that you find throughout the movie especially for those bits you can encounter there.

One bit that even my friend who called this film too boring to watch himself laughed out loud was the part with the hooker Mr. Kazu sent to Bill, providing him "Premium Fantasies". That which is actually seems like a euphamism for giving emasculated middle aged salarymen an outlet to act like cavemen dominating their mates. So, what makes this awkward surprise encounter hilarious was how the shots were framed in that wide comedy angle as we see the hooker falling down and flailing her legs around trying her best for arouse some semblance of desire for Bill in her foreplay as he sits at the end of the bed, looking down both dumbfounded and so done with this. So, he tried to pick her up in and falling down himself, broke a lamp and it hard cuts to him having a quiet, sombre sushi breakfast by himself in the hotel restaurant.

To segue this, of course there's other less raunchy (and sometimes sad, YLYL) bits like how the director was trying to convey the mood and scene, saying Bill Murray should take a look at the camera like how he's greeting an old friend... in full japanese and his translator goes to him saying "Look at camera" *ONLY*, leaving him bewildered at the lack of details. The scene was shot so dramatically and so seriously in this case that makes the mood juxtuposition that much funnier, I find. Smaller gags like the fact that all the meat in the Sukiyaki restaurant looks the same when he's ordering with ScarJo and how Bill Murray towers over everybody in that small elevator gives me some chuckles about some similar experiences I had while travelling on Japan. And the bits of his wife bothering Bill with letters and calls (probably parallels how Bill felt when Sophia kept sending him letters and calls) were so sad it's almost guilty to laugh at the ridiculousness of the scenes he had to deal with on his trip in a near daily basis.

Not to say the framing of the shots are great only in visual gags for visual storytelling. There are some strong, poignant moments sprinkled throughout the whole movie here and there when Bill and ScarJo were together. Perhaps a couple of most favourite scenes were him and her together in some very intimate scenes. It's an overhead shot in a cool, white/grey background broken up by some closeups to them during their dialogue about their marriage respectively. Now, I'm not married yet but that line about him having his first child was something I think about from time to time and probably the one that won the Oscars for Best Screenplay. The other one needs no dialogue and while the whispers Bill told ScarJo is only technically dialogue, we don't want to ruin it by knowing too much. The closeup shot in the busy street might seem like a romance movie cliche but in this case, Sofia just managed to make it special by just showing that they might not ever meet again but always remembering the time they spent with each other on this trip. No dialogue needed.

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Retrospective: The Big Two pt.1

(images i will add soonish)

JAY ARE PEE GEE

Yes, I'm back after a few months of doing commission work, scribbling, college work, avoiding them altogether , and playing video games. Mostly spent on the very satisfying, very excellent Monster Hunter World but I digress.

I know I told you guys I might be talking about DaS or Simcity. I lied. Because now I'll be talking about Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

While you can find plenty of FF fans all around the world, you'd actually be hard pressed to find Dragon Quest fans all around the world. Except in Japan, where they eclipse EVERYTHING. DraQue may be insanely popular in Japan, as far as most gamers there would even take it over freaking Mario as their national game, FF managed to win more fans elsewhere else in the world.

Most would point out Dragon Quest seems very Japanese in design philosophy in one perspective, where Kaizen involves an existing product to continously improve while keeping it familar despite having new things implemented to keep it fresh. Not fixing what ain't broke. On the other hand, Final Fantasy is a game where it scraps traditional design conventions, preferring to explore new horizons instead of keeping it too grounded by the trappings of its own genre. Both are commendable and won them fans either way but which is better? New or Old? Can there be a middle ground existing in between and make it work just as good or better? Can we have both?

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Thanks for reading these pieces on Monster Hunter! I’ll be sure to make something up of SimCity or Dark Souls/Bloodborne soonish!

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Retrospective: Monster Hunter pt 4

A real man’s Big Dick Swing weapon. No exceptions

Previous Post | The Beginning

You’re probably wondering why am I talking about Monster Hunter without me reminiscing about actually fighting the mons. Well. Think it’s better to save the best for last, innit? Of course, I could never find a game apart from the Souls games that gives me a huge adrenaline rush just by going toe-to-toe against a crazy huge monster with comically large weapon. And LIVE. But no, it’s not really just the size of the weapon that really matters in the game. It’s how I wield it. In this case, the hammer. 

My dream came true!

Not always a hammer guy per se. I was first hooked on a weapon which I could easily understand and use at first: the Longsword. The reach, the damage, the slashes and the spirit buff you’d get after a good combo, it was pretty much a weapon that’s pretty easy to learn and master relatively to some more nuanced weapons available at your disposal. I nabbed my first Garuga kill, one of the worst blocks I ever had in MHFU, with an Eager Cleaver I picked up and killed the flagship monster (Tigrex) with it. But then, it’s clear that not all weapons are the be-all-end-all in every encounter. Even the Longsword did worse against certain pests in the game, so naturally i went to the arena to hone my skills, half the time for funsies. That’s where I learned how to love a big rock tied up on a stick. 

Hammers are unsophisticated weapons. They exist purely to get the job done. You see a monster, you mash it. To bits. On its head. With it’s relatively simple attack schemes and the lack of guard, you’d think it’s just a boring weapon, yeah? Not until you feel extremely satisfied that you managed to take a beastie you most hated down and start overpowering it like mad. A man possessed and what not. Hammers are all about charging, and making huge slams that not only feels powerful, they are powerful. It’s also one of the weapons in the series that just gets better each iteration. Once you know the joy of making a charged slam while leaping off an edge, taking down the big mon that just refuses to stay on the ground, you’re sold

That’s not the only weapon weapon I’m in love with though. In the ranged variety, I never found as much love as I did with a Light Bowgun. Sure, Bows are awesome as for how mobile you can be with it and Heavy Bowgun packs some mean firepower and really light recoil. but many don’t realize how versatile LBGs can actually be. Especially with Rapid Fire. Since I’ve learned how to abuse the hell out of it, I’ve been getting some actually great times against monsters. Just feels like I’m carrying around a machinegun that shoots larger shells, making dodge rolls and shooting around like a boss.

But still, you do get burnt out for using too much of the same old stuff that you might want to start playing some new toys, right? What seemed cool but not that great after you tried out the first time are bound to feel satisfying, the more you learn about the game’s tricky combat systems. And the Arena seems to be the perfect place to train and find new weapons to get into. I learned how to use the Lance and it’s tricks about guarding and evasion, the poking the shit out of monsters when they’re wide open. I learned how to like the so-called “beginners’ weapon”, the Sword and Shield and how mobile and versatile they are. I learned that even Greatswords needs charge, timing and even hit and run tactics to use effectively. All of these skills I picked up from the arena proved valuable, so I set myself a challenge: beat all of the monsters in the Arena with all the weapons they’re offering.

You know most of the MonHun community measure skills with kill times. Of course, getting a relatively short kill time is impressive in itself but min/maxing never really amounts to the game to be fun at all, just cold, calculated efficiency. Really, I could just let a robot play the game and I’ll watch how fast they can beat a Rathalos. Sure, it’s impressive at first but I wouldn’t feel the thrill of beating the thing with an impossibly small weapon against it. To me, skill in the game is also about utterly destroying the monster with just about anything you can get your hands on. Anything.

Even with “sub-optimal” weapons, yes. Really, it’s not about the kill times I’m really worried about here. Sure, I’m timed for that but that’s not the point. The point is that I can beat that thing even with a weapon i’m shit at. Sometimes, the feeling of mastery upon a weapon you’re not really good with in the first place in the most unforgiving situations is more thrilling than finding ways to beat mons at the shortest times. It’s like why people enjoy doing naked runs or using starter armors only for their games. Sometimes, self-imposed handicaps can be a good way to see the game in a different perspective. Or just a way to see how far you’ve gone from years of experience.

Like I said before, Monster Hunter’s thrills come from getting on top out of a brawl with something bigger than you but it’s no brainless hack n’ slash that you’d go around and whack anything till it dies. It’s surprisingly kinda a like memory game that you have to carefully read what a monster is gonna pull off next in the chaos. It’s never easy when you get a monster charging right at you when you just seen it. Your mind telling you to dodge or your ego reflexes telling you to man up and brace before making a big FUG U stab at the monster, taking crazy chances for desperate struggles in trying to take down your nemesis in a close fight. Sometimes it’s about conquering your fears and a cowardly mindset when you see a Deviljho (the world’s biggest T-rex with teeth all over) only to make an attempt on taking the bastard down. Stupidly brave, but hey, the thrill is there. Ultimately, best thing about coming out top after that in Monster Hunter, the rewards would always be worth it except for getting parts you don’t need after a lengthy grindfest. Even the music agrees.

Nothing’s better than the quiet satisfaction of a job well done

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Retrospective: Monster Hunter pt3

The very concept of this town screams ADVENTURE

Sorry for the lack of updates since the last one. A few days overdue and the beta is done after playing lots of World. But now, moving on!

Previous Post | The Beginning

As the first 3 games presented memorable and fantastic locations for players to explore in, chiefly the larger hunting grounds like the classic Forest & Hills, the scorching Deserts and Dunes, the cold, harsh Snowy Mountains and even the Ancient Tower that stands crumbling over the horizon, the fourth game tried to emphasize on where you go to before you went into the hunting grounds themselves. Not confined to one as a hub before you go anywhere, in 4 (and Ulimate/G) you have a variety of 4 to 5 locations to visit, as you progress. 

Val Habar, as pictured, was a fantastic first hub you set your feet to test the waters in as a fledgling hunter. The concept of the place is interesting: a trading post and hub for hunters everywhere from the desert to gather around, complete with caravans and old capsized hunting boats they converted to proper establishments. The biggest boat at the center of Val Habar is the Gathering Hall. Before you ask how gigantic boats like these ended up in the middle of the desert, well, let’s say Monster Hunters went on to hunt large literal sandwhales and their boats also sail in the desert like they’re on the ocean; which is actually pretty plausible considering sand does flow like water. The place is pretty much one big place for hunters to gather around to meet up like an extension to the gathering hall itself. Much like a mini LocLac then!

But in 4, you don’t really stay all in one place. You get your job by replacing the previous, presumably retired hunter and offering that you indeed are going to hunt monsters to random strangers for all that Zenny and dubious gains. Following this old guy trying to make end’s meet, you both gather various recruits that travel around and offering their respective services to their customers (most of the time, that’ll be you). The more you progress in the game, the more people you get to recruit, and by extension, the more places you get to explore with your roving caravan. 

The first place you’d explore is actually a Volcano populated by NotDwarves who have a bit of a problem with a bunch of monsters blocking the lava flow of the still-active volcano they set their place up in. This creates a place where the place is changed into a less hostile, much greener landscape where some of the wildlife thrived in as a tradeoff from the others not appearing as much (genprey roams the place instead of ioprey for example). Finishing some of the key missions there allows for a somewhat drastic change to its landscape, now the familiar places you explore had lava flowing in it. Along with monsters accustom to volcanic areas as habitats. 2 areas in one hub.

The second place you’ll be exploring (albeit by chance and a little accident) is a lost island full of cats(!). Obviously, they’re taken care of by an old lady who got stranded in the place but apparently they managed to make this place into a tropical paradise where the cats have some fun in the sun, and the perfect training area for the cats you recruit along the way. This place is obviously connected to the a jungle area where you’ll make your big hunts there.

The third and last place you’ll be travelling to is actually my favourite of the whole game.

Cathar

It’s high up in the mountains where your caravan managed to make an air ballon as an expansion after making a huge boat as a thank-you from the NotDwarves back then. I kinda had the feeling that both Monster Hunter teams, the main and Portable team, had a soft spot in making comfy mountain villages. This might take the cake, as breathtaking as it looks. It’s a small farming village with the best hub theme in the game where it houses some wyverians that takes care of the tower that’s just nearby: the Ancient Tower. Apparently, the old guy you travel with is also looking for clues to what the scale that he keeps in his hat, just to know what it is (BIG SPOILER maybe).  This tower is one of the ruins that pops up in some games like in the second with MonHun, the third taking place underwater. This one had one very high up the mountains, even some bits and pieces of the tower crumbles down as you set up the camp there. There’s always these oddly cute/incredibly annoying flying snake things called Remobras that try to spit poison and take a bite outta you that always roam around these parts . Apparently, they’re also believed to be bad omens for things to come soon, namely big monsters to fight. 

Of course, you get to wander around a map to your heart’s content still since the third game is released. Moga Woods is both the starting point of a number your quests in Tri and also a place where you can completely explore at your “free” time. As in, more going around and killing shit you find. It’s also useful to train yourself fighting and hunting more dangerous dinos or mons without worrying of being carted; if there are reports of them being around at the time, though only either of them by chance. Still, you could just ignore that and explore the map and learning from it to your heart’s content. It’s not that half-bad of a map, it’s actually pretty impressive considering the Wii’s capabilities. That idea is revisited in MH4 in the form of Expeditions in the Everwood map. This time, the map’s implied to be a maze of uncharted areas, never the same and when you get in this time and the next. That, while still broken up into a few bits and pieces of smaller map areas, the tradeoff is that you can always discover new parts of the map or at least appreciate how varied it could be despite how small and random they can be. Something MonHun actually needed more of if you ask me.

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Retrospective: Monster Hunter Part 2

This is probably the very definition of cozy in anything

The beginning

The first Monster Hunter game I was really passionate about was the second portable version called Monster Hunter Portable 2 (and eventually 2nd G). Also known as Freedom 2 and Freedom Unite, it replaced the earlier Jumbo village of the PS2 game with this rather cozy iteration. I’m no winter person, I admit and even I feel like I want to live there if I can stand the biting cold winds of the winter frost in the mountains. Monster Hunter after this continues to offer the cozy or incredible set-pieces of villages in later games. Some are even more cozy or interesting than others. In 3/Tri, the village is you would be in is reminiscent to the fishing villages inspired by southeast asian fishing villages that I’m all too familiar with. I’m Malaysian, hah. The village is called Moga village. It had all the quaint (and in a good way) features of the fishing villages with the little interesting setups there. The more you progress in the game, the busier it becomes. It also had the little commodity trading mechanic that I’m really fond of when it comes to resource trading stuff like that in my games. This is also probably the only place where you could see the shifts between day and night, with noticeable differences. Heck, even the theme seems to fit one of its inspirations really well.

Yukumo village from Portable 3rd, release very late in the handheld’s lifespan, also hosted one of the best designed villages of the series, continuing the tradition of topping the last iteration’s village in aesthetics. It may be a more familiar theme due to how incredibly Japanese it was in design but it remains quite exotic to everyone elsewhere. Even the Onsen was included, replacing the restaurants, giving a break in tradition to the Felyne-run eating establishments (although the hot springs is still run by cats). It’s a sharp contrast in terms of how dominant the earthen colours of the village in contrast to the blueish hue you’d see in Moga village, mostly due to where each respective village set in. But both villages are impressively done in their respective designs, regardless.

There’s never a more impressive sight than Loc Lac in Monster Hunter

It’s not always villages that you’d get your jobs in. The gathering halls weren’t really a thing until the portable games came along. The consoles offered something rather different up to the third, mainline game. There was Dundorma, a rather impressive, towering walled city ruled by a guy called His Immenseness (he’s literally a really big guy, no memes intended). This is where players would gather online to play online quests together and eventually initiate special online-only quests set in the defense of Dundorma against MASSIVE elder dragons laying siege onto its walls. Dundorma makes a return to the series later in the fourth game for the High-rank/post-game events of the story if you just wanted more Monster Hunter or just simply for nostalgia reasons if you experienced it from Dos.

The third game had two locations: LocLac and Port Tanzia. One for Tri and one for 3 Ultimate respectively. I personally have never played 3 Ultimate due to how late I was in the party when the 3DS games were launched, so Port Tanzia eludes me as embarrassing as that sounds but LocLac on the other hand... now that was a city.  It was quite huge, though, more often than not, a bit empty despite the cutscene suggested. But it had all the interesting setups there, everything from the village, The Combinator and his pet frog, that arena guildmarma and of course, what else? The Tavern! That place is where you gather with a bunch of strangers in a room and band together in the quest to take down a giant murder pickle for instance. But before that, the winner got to decide whether to take the quest or not. In a hand-wrestling competition! Perhaps that is where the tradition in online MonHun culture is born out of. Something as simple as a hand-wrestling match could bring all sorts of laughs and frustration from losing the match, they keep coming back in the game even in the new ones. The icing on the cake was how your hunters react to losing or winning, which makes the thing all the better or satisfying. 

Unfortunately, the servers shut down somewhere in 2013, players all over the net gathering to say their last goodbyes to LocLac before Capcom pulled the plug. It’s a good run however, seeing it surviving up to almost 5 years before closing down effectively. The community there were a friendly, supportive bunch. Rarely there are terrible That Guys that popped in the servers; most are more than happy to come in hunts to play with the gradually smaller, tight-knit community of random hunters trying to enjoy the game together before its last legs. 

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Retropective: Monster Hunter

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Or in heat. May the Lord have mercy upon thy soul

So, you played all those newfangled Souls games but you crave for something a bit more... different? You’ll probably feel confident enough to take on this odd yet incredibly popular Japanese game which sadly, suffered the same fate in terms of how well-known it is in the West. It has all the bells and whistles that makes the combat just as nuanced and perplexed as a Souls game would. But then, when you just try to get that woolly mammoth thing’s delicious meat and all to barbaque on a spit you brought along in a snowy place, you’ll suddenly get greeted by a huge dragon-like creature that would crawl really quick right to you after dropping straight down. A roar that could send an avalanche rolling down, snapping its jaws, sharp teeth and all. You’re just armed with a toothpick. And wear paper for armor. It’s 5 feet right in front of you. 

Welcome to Monster Hunter.

The recent developments of the game, having an open beta of Monster Hunter: World this week (which unfortunately, only PS4, PS+ users are allowed to take part in) for a stress-test of their servers, had me hyped since the game was first unveiled in E3 this year. It is a fantastic, long-awaited take for the game itself. Finally there are changes that makes sense in the game that long-time players would be more relieved than be disgusted by, honestly. At least in my opinion. But I do find it a bit awkward that these kinds of changes that I would had fantasized of when I was just a new player back in ‘08. It’s uncanny!

Monster Hunter is a game that first came out in 2003 when Capcom was not crap trying to make full use of the PS2′s internet connectivity option for online multiplayer. So they came out with 3 games: a racing game, a Resident Evil/Biohazard: Outbreak and... this. Of the lot, Monster Hunter actually managed to came out top, even against friggin’ RE which is not exactly a bad game though with somewhat questionable implementation. The thing is, the team that wanted to make this game put a lot of effort into it. It wasn’t generic or half-assed like the other two, it actually had a more unique gameplay mechanic in comparison. The music produced for the game is gorgeous, the worldbuilding around the game surprisingly meaty even if most of it isn’t really fleshed out in-game, they have adorable cat-men made, and basically the whole pull for the game is that you constantly beat the hell out of the dragons and dinos you find and wear their skin as hats. Awesome. The game later managed to be honored with a remixed version endorsed by Capcom that added the G-rank, more monsters in the roster, more weapons, more maps, some new improvements, just about everything! And you get to pay for it full price after buying the first game. Typical Capcom business as usual.

But the series never truly shined until it comes to the handhelds. Sure, it had a console release soon after with Dos but the real reason why this game is developed because the game emphasizes multiplayer a lot more than you think, having the Gathering Hall readily available for online play. Unfortunately, consoles don’t really solve the age-old problem of Japanese salarymen lacking time and money to own and play consoles at home, their very target audience. So, let’s say getting the game to run on the PSP is not only technically impressive, but it does make a hell lot of sense. You could go for a quick curbstomp with some random strangers or friends travelling along the train ride to and fro, the rush hour is always a frantic but sometimes frustratingly dull daily routine. Or, get to your friends’ house to play MonHun together instead of theirs to play. Either way, a 4-man hunting party taking down a fiery dragon is always a magical experience, not quite like how you’d have seen before outside of a drab MMO. Strategy and skill (and a big stick) is what you need to kill a monster but teamwork makes the job all the more enriching than taking one down alone. Even the later Portable versions of the game pretty much made the game mandatory for multiplayer, even in singleplayer with the introduction of Felyne Comrades (later known as Palicos), adorable little cat-men decoys/light support hunters that you have them tag along in hunts. 

You just can’t say no when it says it wants to go with you!

Of course, all the big fancy fights and nice weapons and armours you’d get along progressing the game later would ultimately boils down to slow, hard, meticulous, gratuitously grindy work. A very Japanese thing sometimes. Besides, you’re not a Monster Hunter just because you happen to have a chest full of weapons and armour that popped out of nowhere right? You have to understand firstly that your character here took this as a career. Your character definitely signed up for this. Most of the time, your character will start off as the village Exterminator- I mean, Monster Hunter, where he/she accepts quests from the local village chief to do jobs and bounties posted by just about anybody in the game. A newlywed? Chef? A friggin’ Princess? The Chief? Yes, anybody! Sometimes you don’t even need to go through the details why, just take it for that sweet, sweet zenny reward. And maybe you’d be able to make that hat you always wanted along the way. Or if you’re down with the fluffy bits of the game, you could get to know who your clients are with the descriptions detailing the job you’ll be taking. Some desperate for reprisals, some makes sense, some petty, some irresponsible, some are dubious. Some even came from kids who just wanted you to gather some plants in the woods. Yes, you don’t always get to kill monsters in this game, filling out that hunter-gatherer criteria of your job. 

In that matter, gathering (and eventually hoarding) stuff in the game would be your bread and butter in the experience. To get plants and mushrooms totally for medical stuff is one of the earliest thing you have to do in the game. Preparations before taking on the big ones are key to surviving your fight, just as crafting, farming and cooking would. In this early phase of the game, the really slow burn, grindy part of the game would center around you familiarizing with the game before eventually getting to finish the main story in the game in less than 10 hours in-game when you come back a veteran. Hoarding enough of your stuff in the wild would eventually lead to you actually make cool stuff with it too! Mainly the fancy hats.

Capcom might have called this a hack-n’-slash but you never get to play this like you did with Dante in Devil May Cry (another Capcom release). When in that game, you’d be more aggressive and pulling your attacks, lightning-fast and never get tired from it, Monster Hunter is much less so about that. Even the fastest weapon you can play in the game stresses in a way that you must position yourself in a good spot before pulling off some fancy moves. Wrestling with how the game’s control scheme shits on the more simplistic, button-mashing style of gameplay in most hack-n’-slash games could be half the pleasure, especially if you happen to master them as well. But the game still relies on you methodically placing your attacks, learning attack patterns of your enemies, knowing when to run, set up traps, manage stamina and health, noticing telltale signs of it about to pull off moves or ready for capture. All the while not knowing when you’ll know when the monster would drop with the lack of a health bar. It does sound complicated on paper but in practice, well, even less so. All those things would happen in the heat of the moment and it’s up to you to manage them. No amount of preparation could save you of you can’t utilize them properly here. The weapon animations are, however, mostly uncancellable and sometimes you got to drop the hammer in the right place in the right time if you want to do some serious damage. That includes finding openings for the monsters and targeting their soft, squishy parts for that extra DAMAGE. The game would really punish you for doing haphazard attacks but sometimes it’s not really your fault as much as the game itself.

What do I do to deserve your hitboxes?

It may sound like a feeble excuse of not being good at the game fighting it but there is a reason why the Plesioth, the big fish monster thingy, is universally reviled as a monster to fight. Simply because hipchecks are incrdibly annoying when mixed with the large hitbox sizes in the earlier iterations. Capcom managed to fix this AND not having it back in later games, thankfully. So all is well.

Outside of combat, you’ll notice how explorable the maps can be when you step foot in the hunting grounds. Most of the time, they felt like natural locations, sometimes asymmetrical but never quite felt like it intended to direct the players to a certain location like some level designs would. More like, how much you could explore the whole place to sate your ever-growing curiousity. Hiddn paths, shortcuts and potentially exploitable  spaces you’d find along the way while looking for your prey. It’s also the little things about the whole environment that you’d notice. It’s incredibly diverse, never feeling samey or generic as most fantasy-themed game would when involving dinos and dragons to kill. Sometimes you’d enjoy the little details surrounding the map, like a giant shell of an elder dragon on top of a mountain or  how nature had reclaimed an age-old ruin in the middle of a jungle, large swathes of desert sands or lava that actually behaved differently depending on the time you are in there, day or night. Or simply something more aesthetically pleasing like a mountain you see right in front of the first area of the map or islands with waterfalls come crashing down from a height as far as the eyes can see. Those maybe just blocky polygons and textures at the time but they never fail to capture my sense of wonder and the fact it reminds me that I couldn’t explore at those parts of the game. If you want to know how immersive the game world can be, look no further.

Perhaps this is what their newest game wants to convey to us. The maps of the previous games are beautiful but barely interactable. You could only hop onto ledges, swim and gather at select sites at that point. But nothing further from that. The new game, Monster Hunter: World would explore more on this, allowing players to actually do something cool about it. Breakable obstacles, environmental destruction for opening new paths or traps, places you could actually hide in, animals you can find there to travel to new areas or inflict status effects, the amount of the detail they put in this is crazy, limited only to your imagination. All in one, massively seamless map. One might fear these could lead to a wasted effort since sometimes it’s not a big focus during fights, especially when you’re timed during your job to take down one big monster before it’s up. The emphasis on exploration could potentially be ignored in the favour of a more direct action-oriented play. Players more accustomed to focusing their efforts onto fighting monsters for more than 4 games may not even try something new for that but it remains to be seen. What appears to be a novelty may evolve into something bigger when you have all the time you need to explore on the map, opening up more possibilities to what you can do in the game-world later in the full-game.

[vonsvarietyblog]

Hope you enjoyed the whole walls of texts I put out there! Next week: Monster Hunter!

[vonsvarietyblog]

Retrospective: Animal Crossing pt. 4

The bane of no-good, resettin’, save-scummin’, cheatin’ little twerps. Makes little girls cry. Fear him

Continued from last part | Start at the beginning

It’s not just your neighbours that are interesting in this town. You’d get reminded the vendors you meet aren’t just simply “there” to buy and sell with you. They all have interesting backstories waiting to be released out to you for them to share. Episodes, if you will. If you look out for them that is.

Take Mr. Resetti, for instance. People know him a lot for his excessively intense tirades to the point of frustration. Not surprised if people hated him as much as the next guy I know I do but his tantrums aren’t exactly unfounded. From a gameplay standpoint, you’re supposed to carry on with your save files despite the mistakes you make in there. It allows the game to progress rather than the players wanting an eternal Groundhog Day of resetting everything and potentially breaking the game in more ways than one. So he comes in to be that failsafe to remind you of that. One time, and I swear it’s by accident, I turned the game off without remembering that I should’ve save. Then, naturally he pops out. I’ve been trying to tell him that I forgotten about saving and of course he wouldn’t believe me! After a bit of a lecture from him he mentions a bit that’s actually matters: everybody makes mistakes, that’s life. And no amount of resets would fix it even if we wished it would. Sure, I can just shrug that off by saying, it’s just a video game and I can do whatever I want with it (he breaks the fourth wall for this too) but am I really going to throw away a life lesson from him now? After a while, his big brother Don would fill him in on his job after he had problems with his blood pressure getting too high guess what’s causing it and turns out to be the exact opposite of Mr. Resetti’s personality. The nice mole guy would still lecture you about not resetting the game and thanks you for putting up with his little brother but he’s also telling you his brother is doing this only because he cares. And if he doesn’t, who would? They’ve got heart, both of em. 

Sable, on the other hand, is another interesting villager who’s incredibly reserved at first. Her sister Mabel would always be there to help but I can’t help but notice how much she tries to occupy herself with work. Eventually she would warm up to you as you come into the shop to do more than just shop for clothes and start  speaking to you, even. Her backstories are probably what made her a favourite of mine in the series. A little tragic but they’re beautiful when you get to hear them after a while. Curiously enough, this leads to a reveal that she’s got some history with Tom Nook before he became... that. Especially when you start speaking to her in January during her birthday. 

It’s a little thing that her memories that she clung onto for all these years about the earlier days. Tom Nook was more of a dreamer than a businessman and he was a very good friend to Sable those days. At one point, he went to the city, looking for a job and chase his dreams, he’s been sending letters to Sable frequently. But one day, a wooden box was sent to her bearing a gift (it’s not a ring) and she opened it up to find a pair of fine quality scissors! But that’s not the thing she remembered the most, as it also came with a letter: Happy Birthday, Sable! It was something heartfelt to her that he still remembers her birthday even when she virtually forgotten about it. His job paid terribly but he still managed to muster up some cash to buy a gift such as this for her. Shows how much of a sweetheart he was back in the day. Sadly, Nook wasn’t the same person as he was before when he came back to town. It’s implied they may not be friends anymore because of this but she believes the fond memories they had should be cherished. They might be sad but they can be a balm for his heart. If this reminds you of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, minus Barrett’s drug problem and replacing it with Nook’s soul being crushed out of work, you got it.

This game gets real deep with stuff in places you wouldn’t expect, as silly as the whole game can be

If there’s one thing I can take from Animal Crossing was how much it can be relateable to our lives. The designer for the game, Katsuya Eguchi wanted to create a game based on his experience of being a lonely guy, out of town from Chiba to Kyoto, where Nintendo’s HQ is based in. There it came to him that having familiar faces around, talking to your family and doing stuff together with your friends are incredibly important in life. That loneliness probably had given him an epiphany to create a game where he could share feeling that together with his family and friends. No, I don’t mean loneliness, but companionship. 

It teaches us a lot more things than just those as well. For example, all the things you do in the game like fishing, or playing hide-and-seek with your neighbours, catching bugs, kinda reminds you that you could do all those things outside as well, give the game a rest after a while; especially when the game feels like it’s trying to remind you that along with it keeping track of your play hours. Yeah, I tend to get my neighbours telling me that I should rest up a bit occasionally past the 2-hour play time. 

And, they’re kinda right with the two-hour resting bit. I couldn’t find much to do but walk around and maybe find fruits, fish and bugs to hoard and sell to Nook/Reese after a while. Past that, it actually helps me sleep, funnily enough! But no, I’m not dissing this game or anything. I’d argue you should play this game in short bursts and enjoy this slow burn experience.You’d get some life lessons along the way, and if you were a kid playing, teaches you to grow up. 

It seems to be less of a game, more of a experience. You get to live another life as another kid in a virtual world, making new friends, seeking new places and build up your own town, etc. Living a quiet life or make a town prosper, it’s all there and it’s all up to you in this experience.  

So the question still remains: why is this game fun? To me, it might be for this one reason: it had heart. And it shows.

[vonsvarietyblog]

Retrospective: Animal Crossing pt.3

Pick your own darn fruit, Snake!

Continued from part 2 | Start at the beginning 

The thing is about these guys sometimes is that they like to ask you to do chores. Okay, that’s fine. Decency is a virtue in itself and it pays a lot to give those in need a good turn. Because, they’d give you another, usually in a form of a reciprocal gift. But sometimes, they can get a little needy with you when they want you to do simple chores. I did get asked by that little doofus on top to grab some fruit for him as a solid... right beside a peach tree when he could just pick a peach by himself. And you call yourself a Jock, buddy. Like, really, Snake, you can shake trees in New Leaf now, it ain’t that hard! But yeah, the thing is, the game unintentionally had the neighbours become maybe a bit lazy on how they wanted to do things by themselves even for really simple tasks, the more you go on and say “Yes”. From a gaming standpoint though, it’s simply just more things for you to do around in the town, I guess. And have a cookie. Ultimately, in the game, it’s fine since kindness deserves a reward. It’s a bit sketchy in real life however. You gotta admit, sometimes, you gotta try to learn not to be a doormat or learn to say “no” if you have a lot going on, in real life. Though, not saying you should be a dick either, so you gotta try to at least help those in need if you can, out of decency. 

Also, the neighbours can get sick, and this is especially true in Wild World where sometimes I notice why aren’t they out. Turns out a little dark cloud on their head and them walking around like a zombie, sneezing, is any indication of them getting a bad cold. Medicine bought from Nook’s (or his nephews in New Leaf) is pretty much a miracle drug as far as I know  that could cure any ailments my little dude or the animals have. I tend to get stung a lot when I shook trees only to find some bees trying to murder a kid because I broke their hive, so I do have some spare medicine in my cabinets back at my house. Luckily the spare medicine works on my neighbours and they perked up right quick. Doing solids like these would really put them into their good books and sometimes, they’d even give medicine to you too if you’re stung! 

Speaking of getting stung, some villagers might make fun of you for that, laughing out loud right in front of your face (SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!). Talk about being a dick! So, a quick flick with your bug net, a shovel, a pitfall trap or talking to them repeatedly in one go (though sadly, not an axe) could annoy them a hell lot for vengeance! 

VENGEANCE

Or, to dick around because you’re as bored as Flowey is, making people’s lives as miserable as possible. There’s one part that you could be a huge nuisance intentionally, by taking a shovel in the middle of the night and slamming it reaaaaaaallly hard on people’s doors for instance. Okay that was Nook on the Gamecube version but, damn, that’s mean. I know some people intentionally bully their neighbours like this so that they’d leave town out of spite or anger but you can’t help but sometimes feel sorry for them being subjected to those terrible things happening to them, especially if they end up being breaking their hearts instead of pissed off. Or maybe I’m just a wuss 

Sometimes, you get to be a dick when you don’t mean it. Before New Leaf, your neighbours might want to meet up with you or invited you to their house, for example. A promise for a date or appointment means that you need to set a time for that in real hours, like, say, 10pm. And man, they really do get sad or angry when you missed those appointments. It’s something that I can’t really help that, at times, that I can be absent-minded. Even when I invited them or them inviting me to their house at a set time, I could forget about it. Maybe it’s work, maybe I lost focus, a lot of things. But keep in mind, a promise is also a promise, even when I do it to a bunch of pixels. And nobody enjoys getting stood up. Though, things mend as always. Goldie may dislike me for that missed appointment but I do managed to fix things between us later. Heck, she probably forgotten what pissed her off before! It’s some sort of negative reinforcement that’s oddly missing in New Leaf however. Last time, I missed an appointment with Mira, since I went out for a while and Mira was just wondering why I haven’t come to her house when I came at like, 8pm from 5:30pm when we agreed on. She wasn’t angry at all about that which is refreshing but... odd. Could shrug it off as something that I don’t do every time we made an appointment but I can’t make that a habit either. The funny thing is that they do that to me too sometimes! (I still love ya, Bob. No biggie.)

[vonsvarietyblog]

Retrospective: Animal Crossing pt. 2

People probably joked about him being pantsless too much that they gave him some new duds

Continued from part 1

Aptly named Kapp’n, he’s the first guy you’ll meet in the Wild World version instead of a wide-eyed cat called Rover (you can meet the guy later in the bar cafe sometimes). It’s quite a rainy day outside and the first series of questions he asked were the usual stuff. Name, boy or girl(!) and the town you’re headed and then drops you off near the Town Hall. And ran away with my luggage. Okay. He also probably asked why you’re moving away but it’s been years since I’ve played Wild World. My memory’s a bit fuzzy on that. After a little while spent in the Town Hall, I managed to get a house oddly quite easily but this half-naked Raccoon Dog called Tom Nook (HAH) apparently said I... owed... him. THE HELL, MAN.

Well, it must’ve been a quick rush for the kid character I played as to move and have his luggage driven away by my cab driver. Now I have to deal with Nook here and my mortgage. We haven’t agreed on this, Little Me! But the guy isn’t really as antagonistic or a loan shark everybody (albeit jokingly) made him out to be. He’s thankfully flexible about it and I can pay him, 0% interest! Even a JOB! Which last about 15 minutes. Dang. Trying economical times indeed. What I don’t understand was that, why buying stuff from him (he owns the only general store in the town) don’t count as paying my mortgage as well? Uhh, that’s just business, I guess. FUGG

This is the most Malaysian thing ever!

I do still savagely search for fruit trees and make my private orchard near my house to harvest more fruits that, quite surprisingly, grow quick. In every 3 real days the fruits pop up for you to harvest, even for a measly 50 Bells each. The fruits I planted would have 3 with a very rare “perfect” version of the fruit where you should just immediately plant and wait for them to grow and plant more instead. If you want more than just that, you’d get turnips to plant from a sow named Joan and play around with the local markets! Ah, yes, sweet capitalism...

Other than just doing your own thing and making a wad of cash for yourself, there’s people to socialize as well! Or well, animals. Which are probably the real stars of this little game. Along with the music, you’ll get to meet some of the most charming, if not the silliest people in gaming. Not silly as in an incredibly cartoony sort of way, just what they do or how they talk to you. The neighbours are all animals that you could socialize with. The chibi, furry kind anyway. Complete with different preferences and personalities painstakingly implemented here, they would all react to you and your actions differently, even if only slightly. 

Take Bob, for example. The cat’s pretty much a hallmark of how a neighbour with a Lazy-type personality would be: Loves food, a chillout attitude, a guy who you’d lounge around a sofa with in a lazy Sunday morning, and overall a lovable kind of lazy cat. Contrast with a neighbour with a Peppy personality which is really a Genki-girl kinda attitude, full of energy, cute all around and dreams to be a popular idol, one day. However, the designations for their personality seem to be varied across each gender like Smug being the male equivalent of Uchi/Big Sis despite some noticeable differences. Still, some are varied enough to be quite different from each other despite some similarities. 

This didn’t stop Nintendo from implementing some common sense or the little things for which makes them so endearing. There’s telltale signs that the animals felt like they had formed a friendship between my little dude and the critter, chiefly in their dialogue. Their tone pretty much changed when you start to warm up to them for one and they start giving you presents and sending letters. It warms my heart to see one even just writing a letter saying Hi, like they’re writing for a friend they haven’t seen in a while. Speaking of, they’d even notice that you’re missing for a week or haven’t spoken to them!  Sometimes the animals I talk to begin to warm up to me the more we get along. In my current run in New Leaf, I don’t think I’ve found a neighbour like Pietro that teaches me a lot about not judging a book by its cover. I didn’t really like him that much at first, seeing him as he’s a silly clown sheep and probably would be annoying or with a Lazy attitude to boot. But what I got was the most well-spoken, kind and polite neighbour that’s ever settled in my town. 

I’d never thought I’ll ever meet a nice clown until he came along

It’s always a joy to be around him and it’s hard to imagine parting ways with him, considering New Leaf makes that a dilemma rather than an inevitability. You know, when you have a neighbour you like in town, you could grow a sort of attachment to them sometimes. Letting them go isn’t very easy. Could be harder than you think especially if you know they could be gone forever. That’s particularly true in the games before New Leaf where they could be moving, sometimes without warning, in a day and have packed their stuff before moving out. It kinda breaks my heart to see my little dude to just telling a neighbour he’s friends with not to move and the neighbour ponders whether it’s the right thing to do. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s sort of a gamble those days but, like real life, there’s always a silver lining to that eventually. New people would move to your town, eager to meet you when you greet them personally. There’s the thing about your neighbours moving out sometimes, it’s meeting new people. Fresh faces keeps the game, well, fresh and it’s a nice way to get to know the full roster of animals in the game. Hey, maybe you’d meet somebody you’d adore along the line and never thought you would! But then, if the ones that moved like you enough, there’s always a keepsake for you to remember them...

[vonsvarietyblog]

Retrospective: Animal Crossing pt. 1

‘‘Hello there! You came to play did you?”

Honestly, I’m even not sure “game” is the right word for this piece of fine multimedia production. Maybe in a loosest sense where I go running around in a virtual town my little dude moved into with a bunch of animal-people living in it, make a living by exploiting the hell out of the town’s natural resources selling fruit, fishing, catching bugs and.. digging up dino bones? Yes, apparently I’ve stumbled upon a site of significant archaeological value despite having a town built on top of it without anyone noticing that. Maybe except for Blathers, who runs the museum where you donate anything you gather that’s not fruit. or garbage. Either way, somehow, like some kind of unknown sorcery Nintendo casted onto this game, all the incredibly mundane-in-hindsight stuff I do in this game is somehow... fun! Like a miracle in action, the way I see it. The same thing I do in every iteration of the game never quiet felt like it gets old as it should. And each new iteration seems to add in something new to keep the game fresh as ever. So, the big question is, why does the supposedly boring stuff to do in the game is... fun? Why is that?

The first game was developed curiously late during the end of the N64′s life cycle, around 2001 where the PS2 is finally unveiled to the world and took it by storm. Then called Doubutsu no Mori (or Animal Forest) was kind of a surprise hit, managing over 200k units, securing a greenlight for future titles to be released. It had a Gamecube version later after 8 months as DnM+ where you can transfer your old files into the new system, something Ninty offered before shutting it down for obvious reasons. But being Malaysian, the N64 and Gamecube never gained much traction as the Playstations, so I ended up missing the titles well into a few years after release. Until the DS version came. Even then, I never managed to pick up a DS until later too. The first time I knew what the game was about was a curious little snippet I caught during the time when G4Tv wasn’t dead  and Filter was on when they made a run for the E3 story in 2004 I think. It was a cute little game where you can talk to some animal people, do stuff in it and send messages over to the others playing the same over the internet straight from the DS and I found that it was quite an interesting thing. And so, I managed to grab that years later. Better start late than never, amirite?

Let me just say that firstly, I’m really happy how they took the direction for this game’s music. I adore it. When you’re usually greeted with some cutesy, upbeat music with whistles and stuff you hear in the 2135625351341567145th tutorial video on the internet or anime made for kiddies in cute games like this, the composers (Totakeke was one of them) managed to make up something with a very good balance of probably some of the most beautiful, relaxing soundtrack ever done for a video game. Here’s the main theme of Wild World. Kinda like Bossa Nova but a more relaxed and still somehow, upbeat take on the genre. So when I’m done hearing the music after a solid good minute, went and start the game up, I was greeted by a Kappa.