It's the streamlined, simplified, casualised Monster Hunter, and I still look at 99% of it like a dog looking at a sum. Endless menus that mean nothing to me, an item box full to the brim with icons I will never understand. I take on quests to unlock stickers that are immediately lost within the labyrinthine options. I will never see them. Where would I equip them? One of my several "shortcut" wheels? Who knows? During the final battle, I found myself asking "Which button do I use to attack with again?" by which I meant "Which combination of buttons do I use to ready my weapon to attack with again?" Sometimes I send the Argosy out. Why? I don't know.

But here's the thing. Name a game. Any game.
Monster Hunter Rise is better than that game.

Johoho!

I play turf war, I have fun.
I play the single player, I have fun.
I play salmon run, I have fun.
It simply delivers every way you turn.
There is certainly a push and pull between "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and "have I paid 60 clams to skip Deep Cut reading the news instead of skipping Off the Hook reading the news?" but hell, it's all good, it's all solid, and I'm still delighted whenever the Squid Sisters show up and do or say absolutely anything.

Fingers crossed the DLC (no I'm not wild about the fact that paid DLC was announced before the game released) can escape the trappings of a glorified weapons tutorial. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed single player very much, and I fully understand why it's the way it is, but I'm ready for levels that deliver the true potential of the platforming, rather than re-re-reintroducing me to the splat roller. We've met!

Very glad I took a chance on this. Really loved it. I don't get to replay games as much as I'd like, especially when they're big new AAAA releases - but I realised right near the end of this that since I'd replayed every mission before completing it (sometimes multiple times) I'd essentially played this twice already. Just goes to show, you should always make your repetitive tedium optional, folks!

So yeah, it got its hooks in me completely. I even got into the customizing. And I'm eager to see how the alternate story branches go. A great game! I played a whole new game on my Playstation 5 and I loved it! How often do you get to say THAT?

I've had a lot of fun in VR - with friends. But that's cheating, isn't it? Is Rec Room a good videogame? Absolutely not. But I have had a lot of fun in it. Hell, I had fun "playing" Werewolves Within in VR even though I never left the lobby. If not for Resi 7, VR would probably stay in my mind as nothing more than an elaborate and costly way to have zoom calls that aren't boring as fuck. Resi 7 came free with my PSVR years ago and I put it off because all I knew about 7 was it was -so- scary. And if the mere concept of playing it in VR was raised, it would earn an automatic "fuck THAT" from whoever heard it. And yeah, there were frights, jumps, shudders aplenty, but I did not expect this to be so fun. This is an absolute blast in VR. A theme park ride. I laughed with delight many, many times. As much as I resent the thought of having to ever pay for a new headset again, I feel 100% on board with Resi VR. Make me walk through the most disgusting environments you can cough up, Capcom!

I'm glad Namco had enough sense to bundle the hi spec demo with R4 instead of trying to sell it. It's very cool as a "look what we've done!" but there's no getting away from the fact that there's less than 20 minutes of entertainment to be had here. They even put a football game on the disc too. Did they ever put a demo of Ridge Racer out on a free disc? In doing so they'd have made buying the full game pointless.

The only reason I'm logging this is because I want to talk about R4 more. I got a physical copy to play on my little CRT and I love it.