Recent reviews by pooky

Poker but not Poker. And a bunch of Jokers work with you to defeat a bunch of who knows. But you have to make more money than them. That's my bad description of this game.

I took a gnome's boots just cause I could. They were nice.

Not my favorite in the series, but pretty fun. And good to play anywhere with a Deck.

Fun collection of small VR games.

I'm 60% on recommending Iceborne. As much as I've enjoyed it, there are a lot of changes they made that really took away from the base hunting experience. Beating Alatreon and Fatalis made me realize just how sick I was of the clutch claw and what a huge relief it was to see Monster Hunter RIse not include the clutch claw.

I can deal with the HP bloat, the reduced hitzones, poison no longer working on Kushala, and the fastest monsters in the series, but I can't overstate how sick I am of the clutch claw. Somehow, it beat swimming in MH3U where I started in the series. I actually like the Alatreon fight. Fatalis is disappointing.

Music is excellent as always and a vital part of the game. Sound design is also excellent. Definitely a game you want to pace yourself. Unless you're an idiot like me and ram your head into Fatalis until it dies for two evenings to beat it out of spite.

One of the best controlling Monster Hunters with caveats in game design since my own entry into the series at MH3U. The weapons feel great to use and mobility feels a bit more convenient. While mobility through healing is nice, it is definitely slower to heal than the Superman pose of older games.

Overall, the game is an excellent entry for newcomers to the series. But for familiar players it will feel pretty easy with all the convenience upgrades the hunters received and monsters having nothing but stun as a real danger. Capcom seems to overtune one status effect for each game. For MHGen it was wind pressure, for this it's stun.

For me personally, the monsters range from easy to obnoxious. Kirin was always a pain to fight, but somehow it has gotten more annoying. And tempered status makes no real changes to how I fight monsters which is slightly disappointing. It's pretty much the same fight but they hit a little harder.

The most disappointing part of MHW are the timed events. I've always been used to taking on quests when I want whenever I want on my own. And from what I've read of the FFXIV crossover, they tried to fit the square block in the circle hole in both games. The fact that Behemoth is impossible to do solo is genuinely surprising for a Monster Hunter game.

The second most disappointing part of MHW is the lack of content. I'm not going to pretend to know what they went through to develop this game. But this is the shortest Monster Hunter I've played so far. 200 hours in and I ran out of stuff to do 50 hours ago just running stuff trying to find the magic again.

Maybe this review has skewed towards a negative outlook of the game, but I genuinely enjoyed the game when it came out. The controls are the best in the series and weapons all feel great with their redesigns. Quality of life improvements across the board. But like I said, it's a great controlling game with caveats in game design. It's a strong entry to the series, but certainly not the best. I look forward to seeing what Capcom learned from this game for their next Monster Hunter.

Great story, great fun. Co-op is a blast where you can simultaneously help and betray your friends.

17 years later and Quake III Arena is still the top tier in fps. Still gots the original disc.