11 posts were merged into an existing topic: tacoma domed
13 posts were split to a new topic: tacoma domed
monster hunter never feels exploitative to me the way almost every other Big Violent Game does, i guess, and it would be very easy for it to. there’s no zooming in on headshots or glory kill pop-ups. the end of a hunt is businesslike, and you’re invited to sigh in relief much more than to revel in a kill. odogaron limps off, but it wants to keep fighting you if you let it sleep for a minute, just like i want to keep fighting it if it will let me drink a fucking mega potion for a second.
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tbh for me the real characters of monster hunter are the monsters themselves. They have more personality than any other humanoid character in the game and i think that’s on purpose. The game is about the monsters. You slay or capture them, but there’s always another rathalos or jinouga or yan-kut-ku or etc for you to meet the world. the game is about getting to know them and their behaviors.
usually i just leave the monsters alone if i don’t have to kill them and they’re not trying to kill me. but i also get the impression from this world that humans are a lot fewer in number and just trying to survive like all of the monsters are.
it’s not like the monsters don’t attack and kill other monsters invading their turf. it’s nature. everybody’s just doing their thing and trying to live
but also like @bib said, the game doesn’t go out of it’s way to make what you do particularly gruesome and celebrated? (i think that is one reason blood splatters are absent from world — with the graphics being so realistic i think it would have really changed the tone) anyway better to get your kicks killing fantasy monsters than killing real animals? game rules and i’m not gonna stop playing but i already knew i was a fuck with no empathy. the monsters are inflatable punching bags to me that bounce down to the floor and back up to smack me in the face later when i’m not looking.
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yeah i agree, i love the monsters, they are my buddies. i’ve been hanging out with diablos for years and i miss my buddy nargacuga and hope it gets to come back soon. in monster hunter 7 legiana is gonna show up and i’m gonna be like hey buddy i’ve missed you
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gonna echo the sentiment from earlier about how it’s kind of just part of consuming games and other media to sometimes extract the value from the conflicting whole. I like the concepts of oneness with nature in monhun and I can also accept that videogames have kind of an unstoppable momentum with mechanics and structures of gaining capital and diminishing the capital of others because something something we live in a capitalist world and etc etc
in the same sense that I have abstracted in my mind what it means for maryo to stomp the goom-ba, I have abstracted the reality of the hunt. my character is a researcher of the world who happens to get into big boxing matches with godzillas and cut their tails off and then another shows up. it’s a comical world with shonen action and it has progressive concepts that aren’t fully enacted to the letter so much as suggested because its priority is the experience of that comic action.
like, I’m okay with things being complicated when they have limited reach beyond the scope of themselves. I play the pokemon and I extract the narrative of familial abuse and patch it where I find faults in the writing.
this is where I admit my sin of the time a rathalos exhausted me so I picked up its egg from the nest and threw it off the tree after it was dead 
i was the monster
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yeah, i honestly feel this way. i finally fought tobi-kadachi today and it made me wanna hang with narga again actually. heck i miss all my old pals. i didn’t get too far in 4 but the spider and combining beetle couple ruled and i hope more insect monsters are in this game soon.
like it’s genuinely a cartoon to me. road runner and wiley coyote dynamic. like deviljho shows up in the middle of my hunt to fuck with things and i’m like, “that’s so jho” with the usual twinkle in my eye
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also, like, we have all had the ongoing discussion of “games don’t make you bad” and “well, what we ingrain in ourselves makes us bad” and “ahh true but I just wanna enjoy my game”
pretend this was a galactic brain meme
edit x2:
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Those were so good, certainly highlights to me. The incredibly intimidating spider that I eventually mastered, the pushover beetle whose boss eventually showed up!
Ngh, why is there a god damn half hour unskippable cutscene at the start. I thought we learned our lesson a console generation ago.
I suspect I have to be on PS+ to join the squad don’t I? 
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PS+ is needed for anything online.
Maybe I should actually try to play this this weekend, I keep being distracted by playing Dragonball or doing errands and stuff.
I’m used to the PC side of things where I don’t have to buy a monthly subscription on top of internet access. *sighs*
be like me and buy it just for this game after three years
I beat Diablos on my second try with the help of some guy who called me a twat immediately upon joining and another guy who showed up at the very end named “monstermilf” and said something in German then promptly captured him!! That was a great fight!! I kept getting all three buffs and his ass is very vulnerable!!
Rathalos is going… Much worse
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honestly, rathalos seems easier in this game than, say, MH4U, where he would frequently fly way above and lock on with talons. You almost always had to dive to survive.
(flash pods are your best friend)
but I could always be surprised by a subspecies!
I can’t even seem to engage him other than in his cramped nest, I can’t figure out what status effect he’s giving me (I think it’s poison but an antidote didn’t seem to work and if it’s bleeding there’s nowhere to hide), I can’t figure out where his third buff region is, and I can’t seem to get anyone to answer my SOS!
I love it. Just going in there, spreading some rotten meat on the ground, and rolling around in it hoping he somehow contracts tuberculosis.
If nothing else the aforementioned colonial overtones sure are moderated by getting your ass beat
Thinking of taking some time off to write new lyrics to monster mash as an ode to monstermilf
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oh it’s definitely poison. it’s possible you might have interrupted your antidote or something? I agree that his nest is a terrible spot to fight, but as all monsters do, he’ll fly off as soon as you adjust.
felix i’ll kill rathalos for you nbd
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Cool I just finished dinner, let’s fuck him up
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Yeah this comment gave me a flashback to Okami. Does this game respect the player’s time after that in the early game or does it take 20 hours before it gets interesting? (I’m still deciding whether to get this – I’ve been interested in the series but only dipped my toe in so far and waiting for the right one, sort of like the first Pokemon game I ever finished was Moon.)