Hardest.Game.Ever.

I was on the fence about doing a blog about a video game, most of the people I know who read this are very recreational gamers if the even play at all. But since I'm doing one of these every day I feel less bad about throwing in ones that only a few people will want to read every once in a while; so, here is the disclaimer, if you don't want to read one about a video game tune in tomorrow. But for those still here, the one I'd like to talk about is Monster Hunter Freedom 2/Unite. A few Christmases ago one of my coworkers got a game fore me called Monster Hunter Freedom 2. Initially it was hard but I liked the design elements; sort of a Northwestern Native-American feel. Unfortunately it was too hard and I packed it away after logging about a dozen hours. I loaned my PSP to a different coworker for a long business trip he was taking but forgot to ask for it back and since have lost the job and lost touch with the coworker. But I had the itch to try it again and so I asked Santa for another PSP and I haven't regretted that decision. I read a few pieces of info on the web and found out it wasn't just me; this was a hard-ass game. But I buckled down, used ninja focus to slow my heart rate; and eventually I was downing bosses and really enjoying the game. So if you want a game for under $20 that you can log 500+ hours I recommend Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (it's sort of like an expansion of MHF2 but it has everything that MHF2 has plus more monsters and some very helpful creature comforts that 2 lacked). There is also Monster Hunter Freedom Tri for the Wii; I haven't played it but I'm sort of guessing just because it's on the Wii it might have the difficulty toned down as is the case with many of it's titles.
So what is this game? Well you are transported into a world much like ours except there are talking cats (felynes) and more importantly, man is not at the top of the food chain. As I said it has a Northwestern feel to it; which is a lovely and very unique style for a video game. Basically you hunt monsters; there are small monsters that inhabit each area, but mainly you are going for the big game as far as this game goes. The large monsters are no pushover, in fact there are ones that have taken me nearly 50 minutes to kill all the while you are usually 2-3 hits from being killed when fighting appropriate leveled monsters. So when you see a typical action game like God of War or Dante's Inferno; the bosses take maybe 5-10 minutes, but here many-a-time I have been 35 minutes into a fight and then died due to circumstances beyond my control... that is heartbreaking! The mechanics are this you kill monsters and loot/carve parts from their body to make better equipment (armor and weapons). There are, I think, 8 different classes of weapons (somewhere around there, I'm not going to bother counting them) each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Some allow you to block, while others confine you to doing a dodge roll instead. Some weapons make you run slowly while others have very low damage outputs which require you to use their speed to your advantage. There are even ranged weapons but you must sacrifice safe distance with being able to equip the good armor.
In true Capcom (the game's publisher) fashion this game is effing hard! Capcom is known for butt-poundingly hard games, such as Super Ghouls and Ghosts; and even their mainstream games have very difficult boss fights like Onslought from Marvel vs. Capcom, and Dr. Wiley from Megaman. Unlike typical RPG's you can't level up, so there isn't any level grinding to one-shot any bosses (one-shot is a kill in one hit). You can get better armor but Capcom knows how to keep you from getting too great of armor at the stage of the game you are at. The armor is very rarely a gamesaver. Each armor has 2 or 3 different skills you can activate by wearing such as AttackUp; and others like Earplugs to help you against monsters that "roar" causing you to cover your ears leaving you vulnerable to attacks. There is also an inherent Defense attribute to protect you, but know this... If you fuck around even the low-level bosses can kill you no matter what armor you are wearing PERIOD. MHF2 (and by extension MHFU would have the same once since it's got the same quests more or less) also has "walls" set up throughout the game; for me there were 2 huge ones here is a video of the first one; the Tigrex.


So here is a video to kind of illustrate the gameplay elements and show just how hard this game (particularly the Tigrex) is. I know it's in German (this game is very popular in Europe, Japan, and South America) and the screen is kind of small but this is one of the few videos to illustrate my point. YouTube is filled with people showing videos with cheat codes (hax) and people just beating up on low level monsters with end-game weapons; but I finally found one that shows just how painful a small mistake can be. You just have to take my word for it, those guys have amazing armor and weapons and were trying to kill a much lower level monster, actually kill it in one hit. In an instant the tables are turned and both guys are dead. Now if you were fighting this guy for the first time you can expect to have to fight this guy for at least 25-30 minutes all the while being able to be killed even quicker than these guys in this video. I am going ballpark it as about 60 hours of gameplay in preparation for this guy. Compare this to World of Warcraft; I'm going to say maybe 20 hours in preparation for the pre-nerf Magister's Terrace (nerf is a term for lowering the difficulty or power of something) and as far as I can remember that was the longest time for preparation for any dungeons on that game. And I'm going to say I watched about 6 or 7 Tigrex strategy videos compared to the most on WoW of 3 for the Four Horsemen. So the strategy element is beyond comparison to any game I've played including top-end raiding on Wrath of the Lich King when it was first released.
There are some specific elements to the difficulty; first and foremost you can't see the monster's HP no matter what you do. You would be surprised at how challenging that makes a game; did I barely scratch the surface, or did I almost kill him? You won't know until you try again. You need to memorize monster "tells" such as if a monster reels back he's about to shoot a fireball. This requires very split second timing in some cases; but you won't be able to go anywhere unless you figure these out, as I said armor and defense only go so far. Another kind of annoying thing is that you need to wait for animations for nearly everything you do. Sheathing and unsheathing your weapon takes time, even using potions to heal yourself you do this flex thing afterwards sometimes allowing you to get hit and take even more damage than the potion healed. Speaking of which the shops only carry the very beginning low end things, like potions for instance, and then they get very obsolete very quick. You need to make good potions with ingredients you gather so you are constantly needing to supply yourself with raw materials. The hitboxes and collision detection also leave much to be desired so it's about 30% "wheew he didn't hit me" 30% "what the hell, I didn't hit him?" and 40% "HOW THE FUCK DID HE HIT ME FROM ALL THE WAY OVER THERE?!?" But if you ask most people the greatest pain in the ass is the adds (additional enemies, in this case the small monsters) there are mosquitoes that stun you, warthogs that charge at you, and even pink apes that fart on you. In a game where you can die almost instantly, whether or not you're paying attention, these guys can really piss you off. So here is another video I found of a person showing just how hard the game is; sadly some of these fights could have gone on for 30 minutes and then ended this quickly. So why even play this game? It's such a challenge it's really hard to put down. And trust me once you finally kill the Tigrex you are going to do a fist pump in the air to that song that goes, "you're the best a-round, nothing gonna ever keep you down, you're the best a-round, nothing gonna ever keep ya doooowwwnnn." There really is no other way.