Monday, December 18, 2017

MH:W Free Beta Access, Amusing Video Game Experiences (Monday Musings 23)

Monster Hunter World Free Beta Access


If you missed the last free Beta access, the Monster Hunter: World demo will be available again world-wide for Playstation 4. Even better, this time around, you do NOT need a PS+ subscription. Because of this, if you don't have a subscription, you won't be able to use multi-player features, only solo. Here are the details:

Friday, December 22: 5 PM UTC (Noon EST) through
Tuesday, December 26: 4:59 PM UTC (11:59 AM EST)

Here's the UTC Time Conversion Calculator.

It's worth it to play the game solo if you don't have PS+ subscription, and in fact easier than playing with a team due to the increase in the monster's health when COOPing as explained here.

Capcom is doing a great job marketing this game, however, if they truly want to capture the Western Audience, they must make this Beta for Xbox users as well.

Amusing (Hopefully) Video Game Experiences

I was thinking of this topic when I restarted Borderlands 2, but kept dying over and over again because I didn't take cover. The issue is, due to my lack of experience with first person perspective, I couldn't tell if I'm in cover or not. Each time you're revived, you have to pay $11, so my $100 quickly went down to $45. I thought that once it goes to 0, it's game over, which I found out later isn't true, but since I didn't realize at the time, I decided to quit and sadly thought that I can't play this game.

The issue of not being able to take cover reminded me of my Uncharted experience. After playing Gears of War, Remastered on easy difficulty level, I enjoyed the game so much that I decided to play Uncharted, restarting yet again. I tried multiple times before, but it didn't click. However, since I got the remastered Uncharted series, the Nathan Drake Collection, I decided to give it a go again.

I decided to play on easy difficulty as per the internet, the enemies are bullet sponges, and because I have minimal experience with shooters, it made sense to me to try on easy, and I can always go to normal if the difficulty level is too easy.

The very first part of the game starts pretty quickly. You're attacked and the game instructs you to take cover. I was too lazy to take cover, and thinking that it's on easy, I can just stand and shoot, tanking my way through the introductory sequence. With my friend watching, I told him that I refuse to take cover, because I'm too tired, explaining that it's okay since this is on easy. However, in less than 1 minute, I died to a rain of bullets. My friend, watching, said "OMG".

Another gaming incident that is very Dark Souls is when I was COOPing with my friend in Bloodborne, and we made it to the Forbidden Woods area. I confidently told my friend since I've completed this area so many times, that I can find the shortcut for him, and he can wait by the lantern (i.e. bonfire). The shortcut that you unlock leads right back to this lantern. Further, it only takes a couple of minutes at most to unlock it, if you run past all the enemies and make a beeline to the shortcut.

Of course, with my sense of direction, I got lost. I saw the invasion screen, which being rare, you tend to forget about, and my thought was "Oh shit". My friend was panicking, "Hurry, Alice, I'm about to be invaded". I then told him that I got lost, but hopefully will find the elevator shortcut "soon", which he clearly was neither comforted nor convinced.

Since he kept telling me to hurry up in increasingly panicked tones, I got more and more anxious and flustered myself, which makes it harder to find my way through. My friend announced that the invader arrived (it takes time between the warning and the invasion). Somehow, I found my way to the elevator, and seeing the intruder about to attack my friend, I flung myself through the elevator shortcut door straight towards him. The invader, seeing me come at him like a bat from hell, then jumped off the cliff to his death. My friend and I had a good laugh about that.

Quite a few of my platforming experiences were disastrous, and there were many examples of this in the Metroid series. There were quite a few areas that I simply couldn't jump flawlessly on the platform to avoid acid, lava and other dangerous liquids, so my strategy is to kill the enemies until I get my full health back, since the enemies can leave behind healing items. With full health, I can then run through the acid, so I tanked a lot of the platforming elements in Metroid in this way. It actually worked, so that was one of my main strats for the series.

If I ever stream, I would cater to a niche audience, those who are beginning at gaming and need help in difficult areas of the game. The strats would involve leveling up, tanking, and so forth, ways that the developers did not intend a gamer to do!

I'm 100% sure that you have equally, if not more, amusing stories, so please share them here!

2 comments:

  1. Happy birthday, Alice, my best friend!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Todd! Merry Christmas too! You're my best friend. and sorry didn't notice your comment until now!

      Delete

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