Monsterhunter World and UFC3

It's been a while. Between my disease, forced community service and returning bouts of WoW I only recently came up for air to see what else is going on with gaming. 2017 was all about lootboxes and absolutely deepthroathing anyone who put out a game that didn't had them, resulting in me spending the lowest amount of money on games in years, compared to the budget that I kept for the last decade to satisfy my gaming habit. At least youtubers were able to cash in on the widely carried hate, so there's that. Personally, I don't mind lootboxes, if people want to spend upwards of 10grand to get Ronaldo in FifaXX, who am I to say that they're wrong doing so. I passed on Shadow of War because I already own Shadow of Mordor, not because I hate lootboxes. Moving on.

Monsterhunter World is a great game. It's also the one game that can get away with straight up copy-pasta and making the game more unapproachable with every iteration. As expected, the western audience is doing the game its biggest disservice by telling everyone it's Soulsborne. As soon as that connection is made, one can't escape visions of being subjected to the absolute worst 'community' that gaming has to offer. An absolutely wretched cesspool of people that would be better off if their mothers had spat before it was too late. Another disservice is committed by the other blight on gaming, lovingly known as weaboos by us asians. Weaboos are non-asian people who think they're asian because they watch anime, eat ramen and fuck their Sailor Moon body-pillows. Advise: AVOID LIKE THE BUBONIC PLAGUE.

The story in MHW is nothing to write home about. There's a new land, there are new monsters, no new weapons, no new ideas in armor-sets and you go there to kill monsters so that you can grind out all the stuff that you had in older Monsterhunter games anew. And that's strangely okay by me. I didn't buy Shadow of War because I already own Shadow of Mordor... But I bought MHW. Deal with it.

I can explain easily why. I'm a born grinder. If there's something that I want in WoW, I'll get it and will go on working to get it long after my guildies have given up in disgust. There's something oddly relaxing in collecting a lot of crap to craft something your toon will wear once for a screenshot and bragging rights. (And of course the reputation for being the most tenacious guy in the guild.) MHW gives me a greatly condensed grinding-experience that's on top of that pick-up and play where I also can shut the 'community' out. Great stuff.

Buy Monsterhunter World. But buy it for the monster-designs, the map-designs, the over the top action and on a secondary consideration that the devs say that the game is awesome when played drunk. It might work for you.

UFC3 is a fighting-game that awards slow and methodical play. There's no button-mashing here, no juggling, no weak attacks that are overpowered because you can keep doing them and no noobish pushing of random buttons that defeat a gamer who has put in the hours. UFC3 is a marked improvement over UFC2 because most of the assinine minigames have been removed in favor of a straight up training simulation. Of course, the game being published under the EA-sports label it has a gamemode where you can throw money at EA. However, you can acknowledge that the mode is there and carry on playing the other 99% of the game that doesn't allow you to throw money at EA beyond what you've already paid. Just putting that out there.

It's a great, but flawed game. It's great in the fact that you can create your own fighter or your own waifu. It's great in the fact that you actually have to put thought in your fighter's growth on the road to becoming a cross-division champion and the absolute freedom that you have in doing so. You can start your career as a brawler and transform into a submission specialist over the span of your career. Stay calm and focused in the octagon and you'll get there.

UFC3 is flawed in the fact that escaping from being thrown is still a dog to accomplish. Escaping from the groundgame isn't supposed to be easy, but in the UFC franchise it's still plain too hard. Noting that a striker has little chance to overcome a submission-specialist, at the same I have to ask why the striker didn't turn that submission specialist into a hamburger-patty in round one. That's the disparity we're working with in the UFC3 franchise. Come up against a submission specialist and you're toast. There are ways around it, but it involves training outside of your build, which a submission specialist doesn't have to do. The latter just trains to become a godtier submission specialist.

Online, submision builds are called cheesers, but at the same time the only way to win against a submission specialist is to be a submission specialist yourself because your reversals will have a ridiculously high success-rate, even against another submission specialist. So yeah, most online matches are groundgames. Watching two gamers that know their stuff fighting a groundgame is nevertheless exciting, but I bought a MMA simulation, not a greeko wrestling sim.

I can't explain my fascination with the UFC franchise. I'm not very good at it, don't watch MMA fights outside of the gaming-sphere and can't name any important fighter turning heads in the MMA right now. I do feel bad for my waifu when she gets the stuffing kicked out of her three seconds into the first round and that in turn motivates me to do better next time. I think that it's a mark of a good fighting-game where if you don't do well, you realise what you should improve to do well in the future. That's what keeps me coming back for more and that more or less means that the game itself could have been set in the Thunderdome from the Mad Max universe for all the difference that makes.