RotR

You can almost smell the excitement in the air!!

I didn’t really know much about the MCM Expo before I left Manchester early Sunday morning and started the long train journey down to London. All I knew is that Capcom were there promoting Monster Hunter Unite and that was good enough reason to me to make the journey.

When I finally got to the Excel Centre in London 5 hours later (damn you British Rail) I learnt a new word, “cosplay”. Maybe I was pretty naïve heading to an expo on manga comics and media, but I really didn’t expect to be surrounded by thousands of pale people dressed in home made cardboard outfits carrying plastic swords. I was a pilgrim in an unholy land.

Still, I ducked and dived my way through the throngs of pale fan boys and fan girls, who were offering free hugs and swine flu, like a ninja dodging nerdy samurai until I reached the Capcom stand. The chill out area was a very welcome sight, a load of bean bag type chairs scattered in a square stand, fenced off from the hoards of plastic wielding fanatics.

Sadly though the promotion of Unite was severely lacking in my opinion, apart from the display boards on the stand the only other display was the running of stock MHFU footage on two crappy plasma screen TVs in poor resolution. Only existing fans of the series seemed to be taking any interest, there was nothing to engage those who’ve yet to discover the pleasures of dispatching nature’s mistakes with unfeasible large weapons.

Given the nature of the show and the large numbers of people in costume I would have expected Capcom to have some cute girls dressed as the Guild Ladies, or a Felyne Fighter wandering about or some of the fun they put into their Japanese promotions. They didn’t even have playable demos of the game unlike the other video game stands, and not a scrap of merchandise. They even ran out of the free t-shirts just as I arrived, how’s that for poor planning?

I stayed and played a few quests with some of the other monster hunters there, cut a tail off a Teo, had my arsed handed to me by white fatalis and then failed miserably as a group as we tried to teach a girl new to monster hunting how to kill dual plesioth.

After a while I decided to have a look around. The Capcom guys were mostly playing quests among themselves, so I took my leave and took in the rest of the show. It was pretty manga intensive with lots of stalls selling plastic Final Fantasy imitation swords for £40 (that’s $65 for non-brits). The highlights for me were the Ford Mustang painted up like Bumblebee for the new Transformers film and meeting Linda Hamilton of Terminator fame.

On the whole I came away a bit disappointed. I really thought Capcom would have made much more of an effort in their promotion of Unite, and of course I was gutted to come away without even a t-shirt to show for the 10 hour round trip.

The only real news I could squeeze out of the guys on the stall is that the planned Gathering Hall opening in London this summer is a trial and other drop-in centres maybe on the cards if it is a success. Though unless Capcom pull their fingers out of their arses and really start to seriously promote the series outside of Japan they might not get the numbers to justify the cost.

A few lame virals really aren’t doing this amazing game justice guys, please put some effort into it!

On 11. March 2004 Monster Hunter for PS2 went on sale in Japan. Five friggin’ years ago.

Happy 5th!

Happy 5th, dear Rathalos.

Ramalos

GoNintendo published the following:

“There is no significant change in Capcom’s strategy, and we will primarily release game titles for PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. In addition, we plan to release our leading titles overseas to acquire game users, as the overseas market for Wii is extensive. One of our leading titles is ‘Monster Hunter 3 (tri-).’ If we can gain recognition of this product in the European and North American markets, our market strategy will see a noticeable change. Meanwhile, we are reviewing the possibility of releasing new titles besides ‘Ace Attorney’ for Nintendo DS.” – Capcom statement

I haven’t found a confirmation at any Capcom site yet, but let’s just believe that goNintendo wouldn’t publish anything like that without proof. So let’s welcome MH3 soon!

I couldn’t resist buying this when I saw it on ebay. A replica Smoulder Dragonsword letter opener! So far credit card statements, gas bills and tax returns have all proven to be weak to dragon element!

Fear the letter reaper!

So, two days earlier I’ve celebrated my birthday and received the gifts from my peasants.

Among many mundane things like wine, body lotions and underwear there were the following two gems:

iPod Touch 32 GB (lol MB)

And even better, my wife brought me this:

Stationary

Wanna have some?

And not to forget, my dear Adelaine is blessing my with a blog theme. Expect the goodness coming soon.

I’ve just heard that Monster Hunter G’s online play is going to be charged via a monthly fee, and could also have some kind of Wii points system to buy more time.  What is this?  I mean I know it’s not even going to be released over here, but I don’t think any other game on the Wii charges for online, and even XBox live is reasonable it that you can, you know, use any online XBox game with it.  And this is for a game which is 4 years old.  4 years!  Many games get reduced to about half price after 6 months if they haven’t faded out of public conciousness by then,  but this is like releasing the original fable on the PS3, at full price.  And then somehow bypassing any existing online infrastructure, and charging for online play.  What the hell Capcom, what the hell.*

*Yeah, I know the existing MH online setup doesn’t work with friend codes, but come on.

Kushala Daora. He has won the monster battle and he has for sure obliterated more than one newbie hunter who took him to easily. I take it as my personal task to give all those some tools and tips at hand.

Kushala can be encountered on different locations: Snowy Mountains, Jungle, Desert (Night) and in the town. While it is normally not worth mentioning Kusha has some traits in each of those areas which are nice to know. So I will make a tactics guide in several parts with some tips about the areas and most of the information in the general part.

Information which pertains to MHFU are in italics. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the things which drive us to play games are the rewards. Gratifications, medals, stamps, percentage completed, anything which marks our progress as extraordinarily or stunning.

Many PSP games have this simple feature. GTA wants you to complete all story and side quests to proceed on its percentage scale; Ace Combat forces you to redo your missions and shot specific targets outside the mains to gain access to the medals and special parts; the Lego games let you replay your missions in freeplay mode for the goodies and so on. Read the rest of this entry »