RDR2 is slow.  Infuriatingly slow.  Purposefully slow.

I’m down from the mountains and the snow, which is essentially the tutorial section of the game.  I’m now in the town of Valentine, which is where the game proper opens up.  Pieces of the game are still opening up to me.  Bounties, the concept of snitches, bar fights, sub-missions, general stores, stealing horses, exploratory events…  It’s starting to feel like a never ending list of things to do.

But they always seem tempered by game speed.

The bar fight is a good example, where in many games it’s more about offense and active dodging.  Here, it’s about methodically taking apart your opponent with strikes, chokes, blocks, and movement.  God of War may have a 10 hit combo chain, here you have starts and stops of fisticuffs.  It’s both jarring and oddly realistic.

Even the time spent between the various events is slow.  The distance from town to camp is a solid 3 minutes of just following a road/trail.  The farther a task takes you away from a hub, the longer it takes for you to get back to said hub.  You know this is a factor since when you complete a task it actually has timed targets in order to increase your rank in said task (e.g. getting a bronze medal).

Yet I am in no way motivated to do any of these things faster. I’m in no rush to complete anything faster than the game projects the options.  And in an immersive sense, this works wonderfully.  If you can find the time to sit down, play through, and just enjoy the experience.  It doesn’t work at all if life is pulling you in a dozen directions, or if you have but a moment to spare.  It doesn’t work if you are playing any other game and jumping between.  It is the antithesis to real life.

But good golly is it rewarding when you take it in.  When you consider the effort put into each little detail.  The fact that your hair grows and you need to keep it clean/trim is an insane detail that someone must have dreamt of. The mo-cap details for some of the interactions (and there are seemingly infinite interactions) are spot on.  Even things we take for granted, like camera angles, are in nearly all cases put in the perfect spot to capture what’s going on.

The purposeful slow approach to this game really makes you take in all the pieces.  I am continually amazed at what pops around the corner.

92gigs.  I can still remember when floppies had massive games.

I could pay more for better download speeds, but I don’t need to.  Netflix on 2 boxes is about the peak requirement, and that’s a really rare occurrence.  Downloading on Steam + Netflix… well I need to throttle Steam.  This sucker made my internet melt for 8 hours.

Slight gripe to start.  I’m struggling to figure out why this isn’t on PC, or at least scheduled to be. It’s the same engine as GTAV…

The Start of the End

RDR1 is set after this game, so we have a decent idea going in how this thing will bookmark.  The starting intro cards also speak about the end of the wild west, as the east’s laws start coming across.  Pretty clear this story will not be a cheerful one.

The game proper starts you off in a blizzard.  I’ve seen a fair my fair share of snow storms, and rarely are they well represented in games.  The visuals here are super solid, really capturing the desolation of snow.  No one sounds like they are in a Blizzard though.  And the way everyone’s tracks are not only captured in the snow, but maintained for a long time…that’s got to be first.

(Sidenote.  In Spider-Man, they recorded all of his lines twice.  One at normal rate, another to simulate him exerting himself while moving across town.  That touch was super immersive.  So far, all the lines in RDR2 sound like they came from a recording studio.)

The first couple missions are just intro work.  The starter has you enter a firefight while searching for food.  In one, you see how John Marsten (main guy in RDR1) got his scars.  In another you attack another camp with your seeming arch-rival.  They are exposition quests that provide fancy tutorials.

I won’t sugar coat this; the controls are like molasses and the UI is attrocious.  The number of button presses and menu options is so very high. It is so jarring as compared to pretty much any other modern game (God of War really hit a new benchmark for me).  It’s almost justifiable since it’s not like the West had auto-rifles, or accelerators.  It feels much more like a simulation in that sense.  But then you get things like auto-aim, or auto-navigation.  It’s a weird mix.  I’m not sold on it.

Simulate Me

You need food to stay healthy, you need to keep your horse in health, you need to keep the gun clean, you need to rest, you need….That’s the entry fee for just playing the rest of the game.  I’m not a fan of survival games.  Primarily because they do such a horrible job showing what survival really is about.  Survival isn’t about eating one of the 100 cookies you have in your bag.  Survival is about never having enough.

I am really early in the story, but that’s certainly the theme all around.  Surviving in the world when your type of life is on the way out.  The characters all have an air of desperation, of defeat, of one more hill to climb.  They are somewhat sympathetic.  Feels a bit like rooting for the most likeable bad guy.

I think the series Firefly did the best job of showing what it’s like to live out on the edge of civilization.  Mal had his own way of thinking, but it failed as often as it worked.  They never made it big, but were always chasing the next big score.  They had their own set of moral code to follow.  It worked because everyone was a bad guy.  Mal is isolation would come off as a jerk – put him in a room full of jerks and he’s pretty OK.

I’m certainly looking forward to RDR2’s story moving forward.  Rockstar’s characters have always been impressive, and I’d expect no less here.  Going to take a long time to get through it all.

The first time I played Monster Hunter: World on PS4, I reached the Tempered Kirin fight, which had a requirement of hunter rank(HR) 49.  It was a fair chunk of time invested.

On the PC, I’m currently HR 23 which isn’t exactly reflective of the middle point of the game.  In fact, I’ve killed every single target but the two who were not in the PS4 version when I stopped (Deviljo & Lunastra).  Now it’s about taking on monsters to fill out specific armor/weapon sets.  So I guess you could say I’ve killed half the monsters that I did last time.  Now it’s about putting my head down and running investigations on repeat.

One of the neat things about RPGs is the player flexibility when it comes to power progression.  MH:W is a prime example, where all power increases are based on player choices.  If I took off my armor, I would be as powerful as a level 1 character.  Every weapon, armor, charm, decoration has a direct impact on power.  Every temporary buff (potion or food) has a direct impact.  And it’s time/effort to unlock those various pieces.  Not like all of a sudden you get that 1 unlock and game transforms – it’s a slow and steady build.

Example.  I had forgotten about Power/Armorcharms.  There are two items you can buy that sit in your inventory and provide passive boosts to DEF and ATK.  You can boost this effect through crafting by combining a drop from Bazelgeuse.  Then buy the base items again.  The progression goes 0/0 –> 12/6 –> 18/9 –> 30/15.  To compare, one piece of rank 5 armor has ~40DEF.  Rank 7 has ~70DEF.  So when you first get this piece, well it’s a near 20% boost of power.  As you get much stronger, the effect is still there but the overall impact is lesser.  To compare again, a large food buff is 15ATK, but goes away when you faint. Every bit helps.

In Practice

Great games operate on the concepts of gradual improvements, and a world that grows with you.  There are times where it’s fun to just faceroll through an event, but people typically play for the challenge.  MH:W has ever increasingly dangerous enemies that you can tackle, either through pure skill (bit of luck too), or through investment in power levels.  I’m sure I could kill Teostra in beginner gear… it would just take 50 minutes to do and a whole lot of attempts.

In my journey so far, Diablos was the one that gave me the most headaches.  I was trying to learn to guard point (use shield to be invulnerable) and it really wasn’t working for me.  I’m sure I tried that quest a dozen times until I got the timing just right.  Well, I needed to capture the bugger for a quest and ended up fighting him in the Arena the other night.  He died in 4 minutes.

Rank 8 weapon and  Rank 7 armor, all the canteen items unlocked, a Palico with rank 8 gear and a maxed Palarang.  I put on the Vitality Mantle (prevents some damage) and went to town.  Running up walls and crashing down to mount him for massive damage.  Dodging at the right time.  Using Guard Points on every charge.  I felt like one of those instructional YouTube videos on how to play the game.  With a Charge Blade and long windups, you really need to have some luck on your side for a couple of the swings.  Felt super easy.

That was the last arena battle in normal mode.  I’ve done nearly every optional quest available, but one hidden part of the game is the need to capture monsters and fight them in the arena.  I have most of them for High Rank mode… now to get 1 or 2 more.  If it goes anything like Diablos, it should be fairly smooth sailing.

If.

Where the true journey begins.

Xeno’Jiva is down, which effectively marks the transition from story game (and High Rank) to end game.  From the start until this point, there was mostly linear progress.  I am now in the horizontal progress phase.  What I mean by that is that I never felt the need to hunt a specific monster for a rare drop.  I just kept plugging away at the Assigned (story) quests until I got here.  It’s provided me with a rank 5 (of 8) weapon, which has been quite enough for most cases.  I’ve also acquired a fair chunk of armor upgrade, making earlier battles a lot easier.

What’s next is the question.

Breadth & Depth

In terms of weapons, I need to fan out with a few more Charge Blades that address specific monster weaknesses.  The one I have now is focused on Blast damage (build up for an explosion), but it would be extremely practical for a set of water/fire/ice/dragon weapons to dramatically speed up specialized farming.

Some high level theories on damage.  Some weapons provide innate elemental damage.  That listed damage coverts ~10% per attack (depending on weapon speed).  So if a weapon lists something like 500 normal, 250 elemental, then on a monster weak to that element, you will be doing 50% more damage per attack.  In practice most weapons have a 25% bonus through elemental damage.  This can be further boosted through weapon enchantments (gems) up to their cap.  That cap depends on the base damage… more complicated than need be so here’s a link to explain it.

This is all discounting the fact that some weapons are just plain better on some enemies than others.  The Charge Blade (Hammer and Greatsword are similar) are skill-based weapons that require very good positioning.  Something like Dual Blade or Sword and Shield can be much more mobile.  Some enemies spend way too long in the air, or have some seriously deadly AE attacks, making ranged weapons a better alternative.

A Good Defense

At the base, everyone needs armor.  It has a linear relationship to the amount of damage you take.  High rank gear makes a tremendous different when it comes to a generic armor set.

Yet similar to weapons, armors have elemental resistances.  Something like Teostra who is pure fire, would be best served by fire resistance.  It’s entirely possible to find a piece of gear with amazing armor stat but resistances that make you into a wet tissue.  Fighting Kirin without Lightning resistance is key to a bad time.

I will say that elemental resistances are the safety net of battles.  If you are significantly overpowering your target, then it doesn’t matter that much.  If something like Teostra is taking half your life with a single swing… then get some fire resistance and see a world of difference.

Putting it into Practice

Bazelgeuse.  I need his horns.  I wasn’t too flustered with him in the past as a dual blade user – easy to get in and out.  Charge Blade is more of a challenge since you can get move locked and then he decides to blow up everything around him.

This particular mission decided to have Deviljo show up.  For those unawares, he randomly spawns in HR zones and is top of the food chain.  He will attack anything, and doesn’t give up chase.  I didn’t realize he was in this zone until he roared (stunned me), which gave Bazel ample time to finish his dive bomb and wipe me out.

He is massive.  He’s even deadlier when he has a monster in his jaws.

My second death was also due to that bugger shoulder checking me into the wall, then body slamming Bazel on my body.  Ok, enough.  I knew I had Bazel on the ropes, he took a nap and I put a barrel bomb to get things going again.  Deviljo was far away, so I figure to finish it off with a mount.

Sure enough, as I’m in the middle of the final swing of the mount attack, Deviljo shows up.  Maybe I lucked out, maybe it’s the code, but he didn’t attack me while mounted.  He did however attack me when I dismounted and couldn’t move.  3rd faint and will need to give it another shot.

So now the journey begins to round out the gear set.  Less large jumps in power and more about targeting specific builds for specific monsters.  Make a goal and work back from there.  Fun times.

Einstein was right.

There’s an interesting argument to be had around the duration of an activity in relation to another.  The old “holding a burning pot vs a loved one” argument. Mega Man’s 25 screens/level format feels just the right length of engagement, while the time spent travelling between one location and another in Pillars of Eternity can feel like years.  Clearly, it’s based on subjective pleasure of an activity.  More than that, it often relates to player engagement.

Menial tasks are not engaging.  Very few people find pleasure from the act of cleaning a garage, though the end result is certainly pleasant and cathartic.  Games that focus on the menial busywork lose my attention quickly.  I certainly don’t mind fiddling with details, but those details need purpose and impact.  Back to PoE2 for a second.  I’m still stuck in the first part of the game because travel takes so damn long and does nothing for the game.  I’ve never had a random event, a ship battle, and only seen 2 isles to explore – all without combat.  Why pad on 2-3 minutes of non-interactive and repetitive gameplay?  Spider-Man has a ton of travel, but the act of travelling is chocked full of random events and interactive gameplay.  You learn the ability to fast travel long before you’ve completed the checklist of random events.

The disengagement from WoW relates strongly to this as well.  World Quests are even more menial than in Legion.  Dungeons (non-M+) could have been mistaken for MoP dungeons in many cases.  The world and story items are excellent, but they lack replayability.  I truthfully miss Suramar’s evolving story, or the Withered dungeon, or the Mage Tower.

MH:W’s missions are generally time-based – 50 minutes a shot.  Sometimes less if you’re on an investigation.  50 minutes that cannot be paused I may add.  When you start off the game and learning the ropes, very few battles go over 20 minutes.  As you progress, the larger enemies start taking a lot longer.  Either due to them having larger HP pools, or due to the combat mechanics requiring more patience.

Example is a recent Lavasioth fight.  30 minutes to hunt, and I wanted to actually capture it for the collection.  Capturing and fighting all monsters in the Arena unlocks extra gear bits.  He’s a bit of a bugger as his armor gets more resistant over time, until he goes back in the magma.  He also has a tremendously powerful fireball attack, so positioning is key.  Throw in a roaming Rathalos and you have a potent mix for long fights.  I ended the fight with about 2 minutes to spare.  Dung pods would have helped with the Rathalos.  Making the fight go faster still requires a better weapon (such as water-based), and overall better skill with using the weapon.  Considering I’ve just completed Nergigante, I need a whole lot more drops to widen my weapon arsenal.

Still, if I were to randomly capture 5 minutes of that fight, it would likely include a whole pile of dodging, rolling, striking, healing, and getting thrown around.  It would be more hectic than practiced, that’s for sure.  But every piece of that would be engaging to me.  Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly menial tasks in MH:W- like killing 8 Girros or some such.  But they are so rare, that they feel like reprieve from the walking death machines on other quests.

MH:W doesn’t do bite-size gaming well, since you can’t really leave a quest mid-point without losing all the previous progress.  It doesn’t try to.  It does moment to moment gaming very well, so that you don’t see the time go by.  Better than a whole pile of other games I’ve played in recent years.  I often find myself losing track of time, thinking I’m a minute away from my goal.  Then the dreaded “one more turn” thought comes in, and there goes 15 more minutes.  That’s an oddly good feeling to have – wish it applied to more things in life.

He’s a zone unto himself.

MHW has 3 phases.  Low Rank (LR), High Rank (HR), and Tempered (T).  Each tends to focus on an Elder Dragon – some mean buggers.  Low Rank is all about Zora Magdaros.

That’s a walking mountain

The missions with Zora are not at all like other hunts.  They start off on his (it’s?) back where you need to destroy 3 cores that do fire damage.  You also have the option of fighting Nergigante – but that is seriously a bad idea.  While roaming on his back, you can mine a few ore spots, for much needed material to craft some decent gear. The next part varies but the repeatable version includes you shooting canons, a dragonator (a giant spike), and ballistae for about 10 minutes until he finally drops.  The only difficulty here is not dying to the magmacore fire attacks.

If you luck out, you can do this quest 2 more times after the first, and that should give you at least 1 HR piece of Zora armor.  Which is a significant boost.

From here you reach the first major interlude.  The goal of which is to enter HR areas and find some Rathian clues.  Just regular exploring will work, but you’ll need to spend a lot of time doing it.  You can boost this by completing some rank 6 quests.  I’m at this spot now.

If I recall, the game then takes a more open approach following this step.  You’ll get a bunch of optional quests, but the main one will be about finding the 3 elder dragons, killing Nergigante (super death mode), killing the 3 elders, then finally Xeno’jiva.  From that point forward you’ll have access to Tempered monsters.

On paper, I’m about 75% of the way there since I have 7 monster kill quests to go.  In reality… not so much since I’ll need to improve my gear to take on those 7 monsters.

Guard Point

My previous playthrough was focused on Dual Blades.  It was extremely visceral and had little to do with thinking.  Sure, there was a skill ceiling higher than just mashing buttons – but mashing buttons was so fulfilling!  That generated a lot of hard walls to climb.  Anjanath, Pink Rathian, Nergigante… those buggers were death incarnate.  I had to really learn the game mechanics to get past them – in particular monster weaknesses, attack patterns, and the i-frame dodge.  That last one is extremely useful for Nergigante’s attacks that can/will 1-shot you.  If your weapon is sheathed, and you dodge, you’ll actually throw yourself to the ground and be immune to damage for about a second.  Given you need to sheath, it’s not something you can quickly react to.

The Charge Blade has that dodge as well as a thing called Guard Point.  I’m pretty sure the Sword & Shield have this too.  The thing here is that you have 3 particular movements that present your shield in front of you, and if the monster hits that shield they take damage and you take none.  It took a while for me to learn the timing of this, and Diablos is the best one to try this with first.

When I figured out how to properly use Guard Point, my gameplay changed.  I tend to be somewhat conservative, looking for an opening, and then striking.  Effective use of Guard Points means I can go all out, and counter 90% of physical attacks.  And with a boosted shield, I can do even more damage, countered with an immediate SAED.

It took a while to figure out the timing, but wow, does it ever make combat more engaging.

Games are a series of meaningful choices.  Meaningful.

Snakes and Ladders, Candyland, games of that type have no choices.  It’s entirely random.  Something like Yahtzee has choices based on statistical chance, so the odds certainly favor someone strong in math than just a random roll.  The rolls in one turn have minimal impact on the next turn, just the overall score.  Compare that to say, Risk, where early decisions (and random luck) will impact nearly every other turn that follows.  The complete other side of that is Chess or Go, with no randomness with players who understand the mechanics.

Then we look at replay value, which is often predicated on the number of choices present.  7th Continent is a really good example of a game with a solid set of meaningful choices, but a limited supply.  Once you know that A does B – every time – then you can choose to pick or skip A.  The choice is effectively removed.

I’ve been thinking a lot about meaningful choices lately.  MMOs seem to be going more towards the removal of choice, and focus on randomness.  Single player games are all about choices.  Spider-Man, God of War, Horizon, Zelda… all games where the player is in control of their choices, and there’s a clear line between their actions and the consequences.  In the GoW Valkyrie fights, I never once felt cheated by some random event.  They were extremely hard, and each death was painful, but they were all based on clear choices I made.

Running through MHW anew really brings that point home.  I can remember the large scale items of the game, the systems, the layouts of the maps, the types of enemies, and their general habits.  I know that if I need Ancient Bones… well, I’m only going to find them in one place.  Same with Mosswine.  But the specifics, I don’t remember that part.  For example, I know there’s a campsite in the northern Wastes if you drop down a small cubby hole.  I have no idea what materials are required to actually unlock access to it.  I know that Barroth has a tough armor to crack, but there was a way to get around that without Mind’s Eye that eludes me.

It’s a bit like having a lot of puzzle pieces and the picture on the box is fuzzy.  Knowing something but not quite remembering what it is.  It’s both frustrating since you feel like you should know, and fulfilling when you do get it and get a really solid ahhhhhhh.

Long story short, MHW is more fun now since the frustrations of obtuse mechanics isn’t there anymore.  I can focus on executing my strategy, and then the moment to moment events.  Like having to collect 20 mushrooms and ending up killing a Great Jagras and Pukei-Pukei in the same run.  That just doesn’t seem to get old.  Next up is my previous nemesis, Anjanath.  The fire breathing T-Rex.

I have an aversion to repeating tutorials.  Many of them are built for people who have never picked up a controller before.  While I’m sure those people exist, I am not one of them.  Monster Hunter World however, the “newbie” tutorial lasts about 1 minute and it involves moving up two walls and jumping off a dragon’s head.  There are worse things in life.

The tutorials past that point are almost as obtuse as the game itself.  I still recall my first 10 hours on PS4, still not understanding the basics of just food – let alone elemental effects.  There are even embedded videos to show you how to properly use one of the 14 weapons but not a single one does justice.

I have experience with Dual Blades (by far the most offensively mobile), the Switch Axe (easy controls, decent damage), and the Charge Blade (technical, with highest damage potential).  And that’s with hours and hours of practice.  I decided to give the Charge Blade a go as primary in this run, and woo-boy, do I have rust.

Here’s one of the better tutorials for that weapon.  It’s 18 minutes.

Rust is polite.  The first few fights are simple.  Some generic lizards (Jagras), their ugly uncle (Great Jagras), and then the Kula-Ya-Ku (a slow witted bird).  If you can aim, you can take these buggers out.  And that’s my issue with the Charge Blade – aiming.

MH:W has a dance to battles, a rhythm.  You press buttons in a specific sequence, and depending on the state of animation, you press other buttons.  Charge Blade is really strong on that latter item.  I have a shield charge attack that starts with holding a button… press it too long and it deflates.  Charging my shield requires me actively cancelling another attack.  Charging my sword is the same.  If I time it all perfect, then I get the shield charged, more phials, and can launch ultron mode (super amped elemental discharge – or SAED).  That attack can take out 25% of an enemy’s HP.  And if I time it right, I can get 2 of them off during a single enemy stun.

So the potential is there.  I just need some practice to get back into the groove.   Well that’s a bit of a lie, I was never excellent at the Charge Blade.  Dual Blades were my life source, and I took down every possible enemy with that thing.  The true test for any weapon is Nergigante.  Kill him, and you know how to use a weapon.  I did, but never in a single try.  Always room to improve.

So starts my MH:W journey on PC.  I am 2 quests in, haven’t yet managed to eat dirt, an d have hours and hours of things left to unlock.  Knowing they are there to get, and knowing what the benefits are, that’s making this quite an interesting run through.