PixlBit

A hot minute.

 

It’s been a while…

 

Normally I take summers off when it comes to gaming, thus the lack of blogs on gaming. Mainly, it is way too hot to comfortably sit in front of a TV or computer monitor to play anything for too long because I have no air conditioning. It’s never really been hot enough to justify installing an AC unit since I live in a higher elevation, in the mountains in Los Angeles,  which typically has cooler weather than the rest of LA. However, these are unusually bizarre times with weather and I live near those very mountains that you might have seen burning if you’ve caught any of the footage of the hell fires in LA on the news lately.  It’s so hot a lot of my electronics in my house overheat and can’t even turn things on. This went on for a week! What the hell!

 

Apocalyptic weather aside, I’ve been spending more time outdoors hiking in my local park since the sun sets at around 8PM and I can just relax listening to podcasts, music or bring along a book. Also, I can’t really afford to buy new games so I’ve mainly been clearing out a backlog of older games, F2P games on Android tablet and catching up on some books and manga from my backlog as well.

 

Anyhow, on to games!

 

I usually don’t feel compelled to blog about games if I’m just replaying an older game that no one cares about anymore, but I have completed 3 really fantastic games and still chipping away at a fourth.

1)   Mario 3D World- quite a beautiful Nintendo game. I loved the 3DS original and I love this sequel. It reminded me a lot of Mario Bros 2 with the 4 selectable characters. I didn’t particularly like the new cat suit or how it controlled.  I felt it made certain platforming levels tedious, the way you dive bomb in mid-air, but maybe it’s just me. I couldn’t put the game down and this hasn’t happened to me for a while.  4/5

2)   Bayonetta 2- I played the original on 360 and loved it then. The sequel is quite beautiful and amazing and I finished it in a couple of nights and replayed with the second character. It is quite an achievement and very addictive combat. It has that cool slow motion mid-battle to make things easier when things get crazy. One of my favorite action games of all time for sure. 10/10

3)   Metal Gear Rising- Not sure why I missed out on this one first time around. Maybe there was bad buzz around it? I think with Metal Gear I just want Kojima involved or at least something related to stealth I guess, but like Bayonetta, I found this game to be very addictive and fun. The soundtrack is insane. 8/10

4)   Monster Hunter 4 – I am still slowly grinding my way through this. I do love the MH series and typically pour tons of hours into them. It requires a lot of time investment, but I do love going on missions on my own and tearing down giant foes. It’s very satisfying. I put off from buying for years because I knew it would be like crack! It’s like crack! 10/10

 

I Recommend…

Monster Hunter Stories Demo

 

Guys! I love this game!!! It mixes MH with Pokemon and works really well. I think MH can be intimidated to new players because the game doesn’t really explain it’s nuanced rules and also, you have to really work to study enemies to take them down, like a real hunter. Some missions in MH can take 30-40 minutes and you might end up running out of time if you aren’t prepared.

 

MH Stories though, first of all, is fucking beautiful! It is one of the best-looking games on 3DS yet, and I have no idea how they crammed this gorgeous looking game onto that little console. It looks like a cell shaded WindWaker or an anime. It reminds me of NiNoKuni. Actually, like NiNoKuni, your objective is to collect Monsties, or monsters from MH and train them like Pokemon.

 

The world is open-world design and combat is turn-based like an RPG. You add monsters to your party to fight with by exploring random dungeons on the world map and stealing eggs. Then you take them down to the village and hatch them. Also, you can mount your monsters to ride around the world and you can mount them in battle to do special attacks. There is a real simple paper-rock-scissors system where you have to choose between Power, Speed or Technique attack and then it turns into a duel.

 

Everything about MH is here. The character customization is pretty generous and detailed. You gather and farm items from the game and can combine to make consumables with recipes. The demo only has a few weapon choices,  Giant sword and Sword and shield, but there seems to be more in the full game. There are also tons of NPC quests as well as a job board and main story quests with little story cut-scenes which mainly require you to defeat hard bosses from MH series. It’s basically an introduction to the MH world for beginners, but the game is pretty challenging honestly. It is a real good JRPG and a REALLY GOOD DEMO!  I love it! Love it! Love it!

 

Everybody go download this demo NOWWWWWWW!!!!!!!

 

On another note, I’m pretty excited for Tera coming to PS4! Another great MMO that works well with controller setup! Can’t wait!

 

-asreal