Bluntly, Monster Hunter Tri is one of the best games I’ve played in a very, very long time.

I’d give it about 7 out of 5 stars, and no, that’s not a typo.

Note: The below video can be seen at a very high resolution. I recommend clicking through and watching it that way, if you like to see all the pretty details. There are LOTS of pretty details to see.

Overview

In Monster Hunter Tri (MH3), you create a character who is a monster hunter. The offline gameplay revolves around a particular village plagued by monsters, and you slowly work your way up the monster food chain to fight bigger and badder monsters.

MH3 has online play as well, where you can hook up with strangers or friends and combine forces in co-operative play to take on the big beasties. That’s right – this is also an MMO.

MH3 features gathering and collecting a variety of resources, which you can combine to make potions, traps, poisons, and ammo.

MH3 allows you to forge and upgrade weapons and armor.

MH3 has multiple, distinct maps brimming with things to kill, collect, and explore.

MH3′s monsters are intelligent, challenging, and incredibly gorgeous to watch. Most of them look (and sound!) like a mishmash of dinosaurs, dragons, and real world animals.

Console

The biggest negative for MH3 that I’ve come across is that it is ONLY available for the wii. No wii, no Monster Hunter. MMO gameplay is strictly limited in this case.

On the other hand, single-player mode is so much fun that I don’t spend too much time bemoaning my lack of co-op play.

The game takes advantage of the wii-mote and nunchuck technology while still being fully compatible with traditional controller play. That’s quite a feat, and I tip my hat to their developers for taking the time to code it that way.

Mr. Moore and I play with the wii-mote. Despite accidentally attacking when I’m just trying to scratch my nose, I’m more than satisfied with the control scheme.

Battle

Fighting is FUN.

Sure, you can press the A button over and over again and still come out okay with some of the smaller monsters, but it won’t take long before you need to learn how to dodge and take advantage of special attacks.

With the wii-mote, every button does something important and every weapon type has its own moveset.

Using sword and shield? Tilt the wii-mote up and press A to do a leaping slash. Tilt to the right and A for a horizontal sword swipe and tilt to the left and A for a skull-clonking shield bash.

Fights are fun, exciting, and challenging as you learn each new boss monster’s strategy. Boss mobs that used to set your heart racing become mild irritations (which is good, since they sometimes tag team you on the map!)

Underwater Battle

A nonzero number of boss encounters happen under water.

This could have been an absolute nightmare for the game, but in implementation, it’s actually quite good. Skilled monster hunting requires a deft hand at simultaneous camera and movement control. MH3 is surprisingly easy to master with regards to camera control, both above and below water.

Monster AI

The monster AI in this game is amazing.

Take the lowest monster on the totem pole – the slow, peaceful herbivore – Aptonoth.

Aptonoth is not a boss mob. Aptonoth is the first monster you kill. Aptonoth are frequently food for other monsters.

If you were going to slack on the AI for any monster in this game, it would be the Aptonoth.

There is no sign of slacking. Aptonoth are beautifully rendered and animated – very smooth, fluid movements. If you see them in the distance and they aren’t alarmed, you might spy them lying down in the sun, relaxing. Attack a baby Aptonoth and the parents may try to charge you, but if you attack an adult, the rest of the herd is more likely to run off than struggle. Adults may be seen standing on their hind legs, looking around for predators.

Get close to sunning Aptonoth and they’ll get nervous, stand up and walk away.

If you see an Aptonoth herd enter the map zone at speed, you can bet they were probably chased by a bigger monster like a Great Jaggi. Expect company soon.

Boss monsters will frequently summon other monsters to their aid while you are fighting them. Even the Great Jaggi (the first boss Monster you encounter) pauses to give a hooting call, summoning smaller Jaggi and Jaggia to fight with them.

Every species moves, sounds, and behaves in a believable, unique manner.

Visually Stunning

This game is beautiful, folks. Standing around, watching the monsters move is incredibly fun (if dangerous, when there are carnivores about!)

As if to show us what they could REALLY do, every once in a while defeating a new boss unlocks a cut scene quality video that can be seen via the Gallery. Even the normal gameplay videos are beautiful, but these cutscenes are movie-quality.

Learning Curve

The game’s learning curve is fairly steady. You start out killing an Aptonoth and transition smoothly to small carnivores and on to boss monsters with relative ease. Weapons and gear upgrade at the same rate, so there’s definitely a feeling of knowing what you’re doing even while the newest boss monster’s tactics are challenging you to learn even more.

Armor

Armor in the game can be forged, purchased, upgraded, and slotted with “decorations”.

All armor comes with bonuses. Getting a high enough bonus gives your character access to new abilities.

Some armor also gives detrimental effects – the Bnahabra armor set is only three pieces. Wearing all three gives you sharpness and increased status damage – but makes you take DOUBLE damage from poisons! Ouch! Time to slot some poison resistance using decorations.

The armor designs are unique, interesting, beautiful, and tailored based on the monster bits they’re made from. Bnahabra armor comes from those annoying bugs – and the armor looks like a something a creepy victorian bug-vampire might wear.

Additionally, you can create either a BLADE or GUNNER version of the set. Those who use Bowgun weapons need to wear GUNNER armor, and the rest of the weapons use the melee BLADE set. They even took the time to make the two versions of the same armor slightly different!

Weapons

How do you like to fight? Quick, low damage slashing with full mobility and flexibility that take full advantage of elemental abilities? You sound like you’d want the Sword and Shield set.

Looking for high defense above all? The lance is your style. Hunker down at just the right moment and you can take a full on boss monster hit with zero damage. You’re not very mobile and you don’t do a ton of damage, but you will by golly OUTLAST that scaled/furry/winged/whatever bugger!

Want high damage and aren’t concerned much about defense? Try the hammer. You won’t be able to chop tails off for extra looting, but you’ll have an easier time breaking frills and crests, and you’re basically hitting the monster with a large chunk of Texas. Better learn how to dodge, though.

There are also longswords (more mobility than the hammer, but still no defense and not quite as much damage), switchaxes (that mechanically SHINK from axe to sword at the press of a button), bowguns (which require a whole new method of hunting), and greatswords (give some ability to block, slows you down, and monsters notice when you hit them).

You can specialize in one weapon or learn them all and tailor your weapon to the boss monster you’re going after.

Remember, though – big, heavy hitting weapons take longer to swing, and you take longer to recover from every attack. That boss may be halfway across the map before you finish that impressive, heavy slice!

As if that weren’t enough, every single one of those weapons has multiple upgrade trees. Multiple GORGEOUS upgrade trees that end up with different weapon damages and different elemental damages. Looking through the MH3 wiki has me absolutely salivating at weapons I don’t have the materials to build yet. Warcraft raiders plotting purple drops got nuthin on me. I have CHARTS of upgrade paths!

** Mr. Moore Note: MMOs! Take note, people would much prefer this approach to the “this item drops from this boss” approach you are using now! Yes I’m looking at you WoW. **

Collection

Collecting in MH3 is a little irritating because your collection tools break. I have lost FIVE mega bugnets on a single gluehopper run!

Then again, I can make mega-bugnets from other items I collect, or I can trade for them using commodities that I collect, or buy new (lesser-quality) nets from the local vendor.

Same thing goes for mining picks.

Ores can be used to make and upgrade armor and weapons. Mushrooms and honey and raw meat and berries and herbs and various skins, teeth, and claws all come in handy for trading or combining into powerful buffs or debuffs.

Farming

That’s right, you can also FARM in MH3. Granted, you don’t do the work yourself, but if you’re not much of a gatherer, there’s a farm of meow-gnefique felyne gardeners happy to grow honey, bugs, or plants for a small fee.

You can also control a fleet (well, three) of ships that disperse at your bidding and return with treasure, fish, or monster bits.

Capture vs Kill

Sometimes you want to CAPTURE a monster rather than killing it.

You finally managed to take down a big boss. Congratulations!

The next quest is to capture that monster. That’s right. You want to wound it (not too much, but just enough) without dying yourself or accidentally killing it. Then you have to get it to limp into your trap. THEN you have to peg it with tranquilizer bombs until it falls asleep.

After all that, killing the beast seems easy!

Rewards are much greater for capturing a monster, though. You might find yourself salivating at a hammer upgrade that takes three King’s Frills and the best way to get them is to trap that dadblasted Great Jaggi a time or three (or five, or seven. *groans at drop rates*).

We Love This Game

Mr. Moore and I are trading off hunting and gathering for our shared character right now (sadly, the two-player-on-the-same-console options are limited).

We love it.

A quick swap of weapons from his choice (currently lances) to mine (currently sword and shield) and we’re ready to trade places.

We’ve been babbling to our friends about it for over a week now, and rewarding ourselves for getting work done by taking on a new challenge.

If the game I described above sounds like something you’d enjoy, I HIGHLY recommend it.

<3

From concept sketch to final design, my favorites of the kitten sketches.

Working on the kitten’s proportions

The final kitten design, pulled out on its own. I ADORE this.

The ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a dragon or serpent swallowing its own tail to form a never-ending circle.

It’s a neat symbol, and a popular one, but to me it also symbolizes futility.

Why is the dragon swallowing its own tail? Wouldn’t that hurt? It can’t eat or drink while it’s doing that, so it’s going to starve to death! What does it hope to accomplish? Does it think the tail is someone ELSE’s tail?

Although the ouroboros is doing something, it seems to me to be the WRONG thing – wasted effort without valuable results.

Authorouroboros

The Authorouroboros is a similar creature.

This is the writer who says “I am going to write a book and it will be fabulous and entertaining and I will be published and happy!”

So they tweet this. And then they blog it (possibly even creating a NEW blog, just for their authorial internet presence). And then they email a few friends and family members to make sure they all know.

And then they find writing groups and join those. And they check out books from the library on how to write. And they find blogs and read a few inspirational blog posts on writing.

Maybe they write a chapter or two.

And they blog about their experiences. Tweet to help support other writers and keep them going.

Time passes.

Neverending

The Authorouroboros writes about writing. It’s a closed loop.

Unless that author is writing a book about writing, they are not actually writing.

Like the ouroboros, they may THINK they’re accomplishing something. And they’re certainly busy! They’re active! Doing things! VERBing!

However, they’re not actually getting anywhere. They’re chasing their tail, staying in the same spot despite a lot of movement and effort.

The Conception

The conception is that authors have twitter accounts and blogs. They work hard on their internet presence and marketing themselves and their books. The internet gladly offers dire warnings against authors without strong social networking skills.

And it is not entirely a misconception, but there is a balancing act that needs to happen.

Writers WRITE. And they don’t just write blog posts or tweets or facebook updates, they write the thing that they want to be known as a writer for. If that is blogging, then when that writer blogs, they are WRITING. If, however, that is writing fantasy novels … well, blogging isn’t writing then, it’s sinking your teeth more firmly into your tail.

Yes, it can be a huge benefit to have a strong internet presence as a writer.

But it’s gilding the lily, folks. Having a pot of liquid gold, ready to paint on something is NICE, but it does you no good whatsoever if you don’t have the lily to paint.

Be a WRITER first, and a self-marketer second.

The Danger

The danger is that social networking is FUN.

You get immediate attention and feedback from your peers with every reply tweet, every comment.

There’s a sense of accomplishment with hitting PUBLISH on a blog post – a sense of accomplishment that can take months or even years with a novel.

It’s incredibly easy to get sucked in to the facebooks, twitters, forums, blogs, books, and shinies of writing. And it’s even HARDER when everyone tells you that having a presence in that shinyshiny world is important to you as a writer.

Cold, Hard, Math

I know, I know. Math isn’t fun. This is simple math, though. Trust me.

You have two things to think about. Writing and Social Networking. (Your life has a great many other pulls on your time, I know. I am simplifying things here).

In an ideal world, what PERCENTAGE of your “writer” time would you spend on writing? What percentage would you spend on Social Networking?

My numbers fall around 75%  for writing, 25% for Social Networking. In an ideal world, I would not spend more than a quarter of my time RIGHT NOW, building an internet presence as a writer. This percentage may change as I make my way through the publishing ladder, I know.

Now comes the hard part. Thinking back over this week – JUST this week. – about how many hours did I spend writing (editing/revising/plotting/planning, etc) and how many hours did I spend on twitter/facebook/blogging/google wave/reader/blogs/chat/email/shiny ?

Ouch.

I don’t even need to tally up the actual hours, although I really should. I REALLY should. Rarely do we realize where we are spending our time (and I mean that quite literally, as if time were dollar bills I was handed at the beginning of the day and I had to hand them over to the thing I was doing). I may think I’m only spending about four hours a day on the shiny, while cold numbers tell me it’s closer to 6. Or maybe even 10. (I’m an obsessive email-checker).

I do know how many hours I spend on writing projects, though, because I have to make an effort to turn my attention to them and focus.

Note that I did not factor in time spent playing video games, watching tv or movies, shopping, getting haircuts, watering the plants, having dinner with friends and family, cooking, etc etc.

I’m ONLY comparing that time that I spend on writer-related things. Things that I tell myself are good for my writing career, and that’s why it’s okay to spend the time on them.

Truth

Math does not lie.

I am not living up to my own, personal expectations about my writing.

I have fallen into the Authorouroboros.

NaNoWriMo2010

I haven’t forgotten my NaNoWriMo2010 posts. Why have there been no new ones lately?

I can give you the same “reasons” I have been giving myself, but the mathematical answer is “I’ve been on twitter”.

I can tell you that I’m trying to do research on structuring a plot, but the mathematical answer is “I’ve read some GREAT blog posts on writing, and I’ve spent time commenting or writing blog posts in response!”

You

Are YOU stuck in the Authorouroboros?

Do you want to get out? What’s your plan? What ACTIONS will you take to change your current circular path?

Me

As for me, I think I’ll pull my tail out of my mouth and close my email tab. I think I’ll actually work to break my internet addiction – that need to get constant feedback.

I think I will continue reading and blogging and tweeting – but there may be more of a delay in my responses and there will be a lot of days when I don’t find time for twitter.

I think I’ll try to spend more time writing than I do writing about writing.

Starting now.

*lovemuffins*

*closes tab*