The Thrill of the Hunt

Monster Hunter 4: Ultimate released in the past week, and I’ve been engrossed by it since, leaving Majora’s Mask by the wayside, to collect dust in its box. Long story short: it was worth every penny. For more, read on.

Monster Hunter has always been pretty inaccessible, in my opinion. My first game in the series was Monster Hunter 2, on the PSP. It was a slow start, and I wasn’t able to the fun parts of the later sections of the game for very long, when I hit a wall fighting a tigrex and getting my butt handed to me over and over again. Fast-forward to Monster Hunter Tri, and I enjoyed it a bit more – the new Switch Axe especially – until its Online mode was shut-down, and I was forced to drop the game.

Thankfully, MH4 eschews my previous issues with the series – namely, the fact that rather than throwing you into the deep end of the pool, the game slowly introduces you to new pieces of information to help you hunt bigger and badder monsters. I actually got an explanation on Skills. Skills! I had no idea what those were the first time I had played a Monster Hunter game. These and other nuanced aspects of the game have been streamlined and explained in clearer detail in terms of preparation, making Monster Hunter 4 the best time to jump into what is historically a complicated series.

Which gives you more time to get to the meat of the game: hunting. This is what makes the grind of any Monster Hunter game worth it. The Monster Hunter series does away with any traditional aspects of “videogame bosses.” There are no healthbars to tell you how much damage you’re doing to one of the many great beasts you do battle with. There are no quicktime events that hold your hand through complicated gaming sequences. Instead, you watch for each monster’s tells: when it flicks its tails, when it limps to its nest to heal, when rears back to deliver the killing blow – these are your healthbars, your quicktime events, and these are what you use, along with skill and knowledge, to take down a beast.

Of the many games I’ve played, very few have as fulfilling of a moment as when you finally take down one of Monster Hunter’s towering hunks of flesh and fang for the first time, after a drawn-out encounter. Some battles can be grueling, going on for half an hour or longer, but the risk begets the reward. If you like story in your games, or a reason beyond better loot, Monster Hunter will probably not be for you. But for those who want to kill a dragon and make a giant sword out of its bones – well, you’ve come to the right place, I’d say.

That being said: if you love Monster Hunter, you’ve probably already picked its fourth iteration up. But for those of you on the fence, you’ve got nothing to lose – nothing to lose, that is, but dozens of hours going toe to toe with some of the coolest enemies in any game. Grab a copy, grab some friends, and join one of the greatest gaming communities I’ve had the pleasure of being introduced to to hunt some giant monsters. Maybe I’ll see you online!

How I Organize My Gaming Backlog

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say many of my followers here have a pretty large backlog of games that they’ve yet to complete. Tonight I’m doing a quick post of how I organize my battle against that never-ending pile of games.

Before we start, the software I use to organize my gaming backlog (and the rest of my life, really) is called Trello. It’s a to-do list manager that creates a board and card-style system for you to handle your tasks. Each card can have a due date attached to it, as well as images, descriptions, and more. It’s a simple but powerful system, and you’ll see its full use by the end of this post.

First up – don’t try and start from the very beginning of your backlog! It’s just not gonna happen. All that does is make you feel even worse about all the games you’ve yet to complete, or even start. I tried doing this before, so trust me on this one – just trying to catelogue every game I’ve yet to play made me exhausted.

Instead, take a handful of games that you consider the MOST interesting that you’d want to beat at that moment. That’s how I started this year. Then I made a board called “Backlog.” This will most likely be your most filled board, haha…

After that, I made a card for each game I was interested in playing. I also created labels – one for each console I had, as well as for the PC. I attached a label to each game. This isn’t necessary, but it helps me catalogue in terms of where I may be spending my time the most. I also made labels based on rating, from “Awful” to “Fantastic”.

After this was done, I created four more boards: “Want to Play”, “Currently Playing”, “Finished”, and “Quick and Endless”. “Want to Play” houses my wishlist of games I don’t actually own, but plan on owning. “Currently Playing” is self-explanatory – I try to stick to one PC game, one Console game, and one Handheld game. It lets me cover the most amount of ground. “Finished” is my pride and joy, the stuff I’ve completed.

I put checklists for games that are bundles, like the Kingdom Hearts and Metroid Prime collections.

I also comment on each card when I have a particular thought about a game that I don’t want to forget. This is useful for games I plan on reviewing, or writing about.

The last category, “Quick and Endless”, includes games that I’ll go back to now and then that don’t have an indefinite conclusion, or things I’ve beaten before. Multiplayer games, endless simulators, etc. These are low-priority.

With all that done, I have a left-to-right flow for my games. With Trello I can easily drag a game’s card when I’m ready to move it to another section, letting me stay organized and steadily chip away at my backlog!…Whiiiich will have two games added to it tomorrow, when Majora’s Mask and Monster Hunter 4 come out.

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So! How do you keep your backlog organized? Pen and paper? Mental checklist? Do you even have a backlog you think about? Lemme know in the comments below!