Just kidding. My little girl is a morning person, so I’ve been getting up early with her and enjoying our time together. This is a short update to get things kicked off, so expect more soon!

Here’s a shot of him the in Nordenwatch scenario!

I’m going to make a more conscious effort to post things about my life so I don’t seem like a complete recluse. Despite my education in communication, that single area seems to be my weakness when it comes to keeping people apprised of my life happenings. Facebook happens, but this blog should be far more interesting. I will work to make it so in the coming days. The blog lives!

• Pursue a new form of employment
• Begin writing more consistently
• Dedicate myself to learning computer programming

These three projects of mine are aimed to directly impact my personal and professional life. I have a vested interest in being a writer and computer programmer,  both of which I believe will help me attain my first goal.  I am currently seeking an entry-level corporate position, using my B.S. in Mass Communication and the skills associated with it to give me an edge. I don’t know where this will take me, exactly, but I am eager and willing to find out with my family.

On a lighter note, I plan to put my computer know-how to good use by designing and creating games for the PC, as well as more employment-oriented tasks. As a long-time gamer, I’m excited to try my hand at crafting my own and putting my creativity to the test. I’ll be building a number of books together as a sort of wish list, which I will place in a later post. Feel free to recommend any titles you think are good reading and practice. Currently, I’m looking to learn C, C#, C++, Java, and Python.

*coughs*

Wow, it’s been a while! I disappeared for a few months there, but now I have plenty of updates to share. For one, my wife and I found out we’re expecting! She’s just over six weeks along and everything is going very smoothly. I may be getting a job with Regions Bank, and I’m waiting for a phone call to see if I have a second interview. I have also decided to start pursuing skills in the computer science area. After a long and careful debate, I felt my love for computers and gaming was strong enough to invest my time and energy into as a hobby until I have enough skill to present myself as a candidate for a job in that field.

We still live in Columbia, but if I get the job at Regions we will be moving more toward Nashville. I’m crossing my fingers that we get to move. I like this place, but I’m ready for something with a bit more space and a few more windows.

As for future posts, I’ll be concentrating my writing on my ideas in the fields of journalism and computer programming. I’ll also be tossing in some life updates and maybe some pictures as I go along.

Still playing Monster Hunter and have logged about 120 hours into the game. I think that says I like it. =D

Work is ramping up for the holiday season. Apparently Gamestop does 70% of its annual business in the 8-week holiday peroid which, while not very surprising, is still a little overwhelming when you’re working it. I wonder how other stores are faring?

School projects are coming up. I need to buckle down and hammer them out. I’ll throw in a few more metaphors while I’m at it. See how many you can count.

Home is in a state of recovery. The water heater busted and we had it replaced, but the carpet is still wet and will need replacing as well. I miss being able to sit downstairs. My wife and I may be considering moving in the coming year.

That is all for now. Please excuse the brevity of my post.

Friends work together in MHFU

Monster Hunter is set in a fantasy world where you and up to four friends can take mission from a central hub titled the Hunter’s Guild, in a small town that is your home base. You can only access areas out in the wild by taking missions specific to that area (That may seem like a downer, but trust me when I say it isn’t.) You can meet up with the aforementioned friends in an online guild lodge lobby via ad-hoc mode. I’ll talk about the online details later in the post.

Your hunter starts out with a basic set of equipment and a weapon. From there you can take tutorials in the village that simulate real missions without the potential penalties associated with the real deal. The learning missions cover the different weapon types in the game, the mechanics of gathering and combining, monster hunting tactics and more. This, I found, is absolutely essential when starting out. If you are not already familiar with the Monster Hunter games, the learning curve is steep. You will need to go through each of the tutorials in order to fully grasp and appreciate the depth that the exploration/gather/combat systems go into and put it to good use. That is not the say that these missions are not fun. I spent a few solid hours going through them and never regretted it.

After learning the ropes in the tutorial missions, I had a good sense of what weapons I wanted to focus on using and the monsters I wanted to hunt. At least, I thought I did. The first area that you are given access to, and the area the training missions are based in, is the Snowy Mountains. Let me take a moment at this time to say the graphics for this game are impressive. There are pretty games out there, but Freedom Unite is shiny. The detail put into the monsters and environments are top-notch, and aren’t too flashy or too bland. It’s pretty easy to get pulled into the world when you start playing.

With my starting gear and weapon (a sword and shield) in hand, I had my first mission in the Snowy Mountains; to collect herbs. “Wait Theo, I thought this game was about hunting monsters…” It is, but that theme isn’t oppressively dominant in the game. Rather, it is woven in to keep the concept fresh and exciting even in the most basic of quests. In the herb-picking quest, I didn’t encounter anything with exceedingly pointy teeth. Instead I became familiar with what wasn’t going to kill me on sight. This is actually important, as you can engage the more docile animals in combat to reap the rewards of meat and materials without fearing for your life. Some of the animals, if given a chance will fight back, but they are slow enough that you can block/evade their attacks with relative ease.

A pictureque view from the Snowy Mountains

The beginning quests also give you the chance to explore and memorize the environment. If I hadn’t take the time in the tutorials, my herb-picking mission gave me a second opportunity. Learning the terrain is important, since the larger monsters will often run away when weakened to find a safe place to rest and recover. You don’t want that to happen, so knowing all the spots it can hide is important. To help you in your endeavors, a map is available in a supply chest in your main camp. This map will show you all the parts of the mission area on your display. It does, however, get in your way when things get busy, so learn the area well enough that you can free up that otherwise clear space. If you don’t use the map, you can still see the area around you on a smaller scale.

After I studied my map and figured out where common gathering points were through exploration, I found the herbs I needed and dropped them off at my camp for a small reward. As a bonus, I got some supplies for completing the mission! Gathering quests, I found, give you the reward of things you can use in a place called the Pokke Farm. The Pokke Farm is an attachment to Pokke Village (your resting place between missions) in which you can gather resources. When you first get access to the farm, there isn’t much going on. Things look pretty dumpy, actually, so it’s up to you to fix it! By earning Pokke Points through gathering “Account Items” you can find in your missions, you can turn them in to get points, which in turn can be used to upgrade your farm. This place, I found, is really helpful to get items that you may not have been able to gather while on a quest, and is a nice supplement to the rewards you get.

“Okay Theo, you told us about the other stuff, but what about the MONSTERS?” Yes, yes, I’m getting to that in my next quest, hunting the Giaprey! Giaprey are one of many variants in the ‘prey family. The Giaprey and their relatives look  like raptors. The Giaprey in particular are hues of blue, with large claws and talons and a red crest on their heads. The buggers are quick, and if you aren’t careful, will launch a jumping attack from a distance and knock you down along with your health.

So, in the Giaprey hunting quest, I had to take down a certain number of them to meet the requirements. On your first real hunting quest, you’re going to learn a number of things.  The first is that you aren’t as good as you may think you are. I got hurt, badly, and used far too many items to keep myself alive. Expect to hit some rough water here if you are completely new, even if you did the tutorials. You need to learn the attack patterns of your enemies and hit them where it hurts, all while learning when to dodge, block and rotate the camera to keep the enemy in view.

Speaking of the camera, it is the most technically tricky part of the game. There is no lock-on feature, so you have to manually pivot the view with the directional pad to keep the upper hand in battle. At first it can be daunting and frustrating, but if you take the time to program the reflex into your fingers, it becomes second nature and far easier to use. After spending some time in battle and seeing how things flow, I understand and appreciate the lack of a lock-on. Back to hunting!

When you slay a monster, there is a set amount of time you have to carve off resources before it decays and disappears. With the ‘preys, this time is short, so you have to be quick and get your carving in even if you’re still in a fight. It’s risky, but part of the experience. I’d recommend getting comfortable with combat first before trying it though, else you’ll get back-attacked or something equally nasty. However, when you get the hang of it, you can gather a healthy amount of materials to engage in a critically important part of the game: Crafting!

After killing the Giaprey, I was feeling confident. I got some monster materials and the mission reward gave me more on top of it to grant me a greater haul. The beauty of the mission rewards is it’s complimentary. That is, if you’re on a mission to slay/capture a specific monster, the reward from that mission will have extra materials that are associated with said monster. It’s very helpful when you need a lot of a certain type.

So, having some materials, I wanted to create some new armor to boost my stats. Since your strength and defense is based on your gear, not a leveling system, equipment is absolutely essential. Plus, the starter gear sucks. So I went to the crafter and, lo and behold, I had access to gear made from Giaprey materials! With the money in hand from my missions, and the materials I gathered in the field, I was well on my way to making a nice set of new armor. The gear system opens up another world of learning in Monster Hunter. Knowing how much defense you can get, elemental resistances, and skill modifiers on equipment there makes a big difference in what you choose to make. This is a section I cannot yet expound on, so I’ll just leave it at, “There’s a lot to it, and it’s worth it.”

After learning the basics, getting familiar with the terrain, taking on some small monsters and getting some new stuff out of the deal, it was pretty safe to say I was hooked. I was just getting started and I had already spent a good five hours on the game. I didn’t mind it, though. I was having a lot of fun. Now there are a lot of things I have yet to mention. There is an item combination system that uses the materials you find in the field to create stronger versions of the basic items, or even new items, which makes your tasks a lot easier.  It, too, is pretty deep, deep enough that I can’t explain it all right now.

So, to summarize my first experience of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite for the PSP, we have:

• Large, beautifully crafted environments
• Extensive tutorials to help you get started
• Multiple deep and complex systems for creating and improving items, armor and weapons
• A quest system that offers different objectives relative to their difficulty
• Intense combat that will keep you light on your toes
• Comic humor mixed into the theme
• Nice little distractions that keep the game moving even while not on a mission

As a final note, I’d like to say this game can be very rewarding. It can also be frustrating, both technically and in game-play. I mentioned in the beginning of my post that there was an “online” mode. The Monster Hunter games have done very well in Japan with the use of Ad-Hoc Mode, something akin to online except the connected PSPs have to be within a certain range of each other in order to connect. Due to the density of the population in Japan, this hasn’t been a problem, but when Monster Hunter came to the U.S. they hit a wall. I’m hoping this changes, because without multiplayer I’m stuck with playing by myself in a game meant for many. It makes me sad to know I’m missing out.