How is the difficulty level, Al? Are you finding you need to make specific armour sets for each monster, or are you just blasting through with one set?
One of the reasons I bounced off base Rise was that it was just too easy - I went through the whole thing on autopilot more or less. Sunbreak was much better in that regard. But I do really miss the days of MH3U where even the early monsters felt quite intimidating, I get that they need to broaden the series' appeal but it does feel like each instalment gets progressively easier.
I wonder if MS will jump the gun on the next gen early. Game Pass finally seems to be starting to deliver the steady stream of new releases they promised all those years ago, but it's happened too late in the gen for them to make the ground up. A new console might put them back in the spotlight again, especially if it's more reasonably priced than Sony's ridiculous PS5 Pro.
I'm still happy with my Xbox, and have never really been tempted to jump ship to PS5 - 90% of what I play is available on both platforms anyway. But I'd like to see them pick a strategy and stick to it, and I hope that involves selling consoles and making games.
Haven't sales been mediocre/disastrous?
Aren't sales for Xbox exclusives that are day 1 on Game Pass always going to be mediocre at best? The benefit of games like this is how many people they attract to the service - and it's not going to be Avowed alone that does that but Avowed plus all the other stuff - so I don't know how you measure its success but it's not going to be through full price copies sold.
Play
Like a Dragon: Yakuza Pirates in Hawaii - crazy name, crazy game. This spin-off has a deeply stupid concept - feared Yakuza boss Majima Goro has a bout of amnesia and washes up on the shores of Honolulu, where he decides to become a pirate captain - but in practice is a glorious riot of fun and colour and action, that distills all the best bits of Infinite Wealth and combines it with a Black Flag-style sailing epic to result in something quite unique. Majima himself is the best he's been since Zero, the combat system's had a definite upgrade, and it's hard to dislike a game that opens with a full-on musical number.
Balatro - this lives up to its fearsome reputation as some form of digital crack. It's excellent. And I'm spending far too much time playing it.
Want
I'd like to get Monster Hunter: Wilds but at the moment it's firmly in "when it gets a discount" territory and may even slip to "when the inevitable expansion comes out". Rise in particular didn't really get good until Sunbreak, and I always felt I missed out with World by never going back for Iceborne.
I'm still intending to check out Avowed but there are a lot of good games out at the moment and something's got to give.
Bin
I'm running out of words to describe how appalled I am by Trump, who appears to be running the US like some kind of Russian mob boss. Come on, cholesterol, do your job.
The only real issue I have with it so far is the story which has gone down a God of War direction in that it's by far more 'cinematic' than before and there are a lot of basically Walking Sections where you ride on your Seikret while following someone, you don't even need to press anything.
Ah, that sounds concerning. The plot in Monster Hunter games is always nonsense and they've been steadily ramping up the amount the games contain since World. I like the old MH3/MH4 style where the story is basically there to introduce you to where everything is in the village and then it leaves you the fuck alone.
I kind of want to play this but then part of me knows it's going to be pretty much exactly the same game I've played half a dozen times already. (He says, booting up Yakuza Pirates).
Garwoofoo