Episode 76: Monster Hunter

should do a lot to do it. But if we do it, you all have to show up. It's like me like when I first moved to l A, I didn't have a birthday party for a couple of years because I was like nervous that no one would come. And then on my thirtieth birthday party, I was like, I'm doing so much cool stuff, like I know everybody will come, and like everybody did, so it's really cool. So but that's always been you know, as a little kid, that's always like your worst nightmare that you have something

and like no one's going to come. That happened. It was when it was the same thing. I just moved. I was the new Kidden for some reason, I not only tried to have a birthday party, but I decided to have it in a completely different city. Like I went to school in Downey and it was in Long Beach, so literally no one came because it was just inconvenient and barely anyone knew me except for one person, Everett Minor.

I will never forget his name because he was the only person who was the one person who still talked to him. No, I mean we we went separate ways. He still I mean, I check with you know, we're free to get an Emmy. You need to be like an Everett mind. I have like my one person that I'm like. I will be like, I don't care if I think anybody. I have to think this one person for I'll shout out Everett Minor. If I get Emmy, do it? Do it? Yes? What are you speaking out about? This?

What I'm sinking out about is the Casta Grandes, which is on Nickelodeon in's premiering I believe in October. Super Dope. It is a spinoff from the Loudhouse, which was super successful all and it follows the Latin Next Family and it's really cool. I'm so excited that it exists and that there's more space for us to play, especially in animation. I can't wait to show my niece and nephew and for me to watch it. Frankly, Um, but I'm really

really excited. I mean, that was something that I thought, even though even though I was working with an animation studio, I'm like, we are the only ones that don't have an animated like, you know, we need an animated show and with a family. And then and then they did it and Lolo did it, and I was like, dang it, now i gotta rework my pitch, which is but I'm pitching something else. But um, I'm just really excited that it exists, and it's just it warms my heart. Yeah,

and you gotta. Naomi has to watch it, yeah, I mean she will. She's working on her Spanish. She's a bilingual. Yeah, yeah, she she. I mean, she pretty much understands and speaks both languages. Any well, her English sentences are finally coming together because she, you know, uh, spoke a lot of Spanish. First. What I'm goofing on what I'm goofing, what I was about, I'm goofing about what I'm goofing out about him this week. Oh my gosh, twenty years older. Yeah, I'm like, oh

my god, what I'm goofing about. Uh, you know, we're I just got my hands on Gears five and so I'm getting ready to launch into that. I'm a big fan of the Gears war franchise. But there's just been We're in that wonderful period of video games because you have the Summer drought, were not that many games come out, and now we're hitting fall and we're just we had Gears five, Borderland's three is out, and then we have the Call of Duty Modern Warfare Bay to Dry. There's

just so many good video games. And then Ice Born has already been released, which is the new DLC for Monster Hunter World has been released for the consoles and now we're patiently waiting for it to roll out on PC. And the reason I mentioned that is because this week we're talking about my favorite game franchise ever, Monster Hunter. Monster Hunter. Uh. It was funny because you know Danny when and when she said, I was like, I don't

know about this game. I'm like, no one does. It's it's like like truly, like honestly, it was a fringe title up until Monster Hunter World, and people kind of got excited about it, and then more games came out and it kind of just went back to like a dedicated fan base. I've been playing this game, it has to be like over a decade now, but I started playing it on the PSP even though it originally started

on the PlayStation. Uh, but this is just gonna be the episode where I am going to yell about Monster Hunter and get Danny's thoughts and opinions on it. And then when I come over and watch some James Bonds and I was going to say, is this your equivalent of like when we did Wonder Woman, which I'm obsessed with, except for people actually watch Wonder Woman. You know what, you know, there's gonna be some Monster Hunter fans. Monster Hunter isn't the same as Wonder Woman. No, you're right,

it isn't. I think one woman laps at times over So you didn't play it on PS two knows when it came out on PS two. So the cool thing about Monster Hunter that made it interesting to me back then was it was just the simple hunting game where four players can team up to hunt giant monsters, but it used the PS two's kind of at the time fairly new technology of online play, the PlayStation online system. This was that early PlayStation online system, PlayStation network when

it was free. Uh uh so, But like my this is also when like Final Fantasy eleven was coming out and using it, my dad was you know, he was already I was already barely able to use the PS two, so adding like another factor to it was just possible. So I never got to play it. Wait, so you owned a PS two, but you had limited like your did your dad put time limits on you? Essentially, so we had a PlayStation and then we had it taken away from us because we were playing it too much.

And then one Christmas, I like, I wrote a long like letter and contract to my dad begging him to allow me to get a play I was like, I am willing to um to give up my Christmas gift to get a PS two and that you know, I will share it with my siblings and it will be a gift for all of us. But I am wasting my gift for it and how and I like did all these rules. I made a contract of of all the things that I will make sure I do before I play it. So like all the chores and then

my homework will be done. And that if I if he feels that I'm not, oh, you know, honoring the contract, that he can show it to me and I will immediately do whatever he had just the long plea and it actually worked, and uh we got a PS two and like Cooper that year. But because of that, it was always kind of on that we were only able to play it on the weekends, and it was it was kind of like, you know, my parents weren't spending

that much money on a lot of the games. Uh, So I was always playing PlayStation Underground demos, which if you if you don't remember PlayStation Underground, it was like a service you can sign up for where they would send you a game disc with multiple demos on it and you would and that's that's pretty much how how I played new games was I would just play these demos because I just couldn't get the money yet to buy new games until I started, uh going to high school,

being able to like save up my lunch money to like get stuff at games. Stop treating a minute, you know. I did that not with a video game, but with a cat I wanted. I used to be a cat person I wanted to catch Little Danny wanted to catch so badly that I did a whole power point like on why I should have a cat, Like did a report on like why I deserve to have a cat, and my parents got me like this little tabby cat. I was gonna say, when you think of PS two,

what is the game that pops in your head? Oh? See, it's funny because the fun of Fantasy seven, I've said it many times, is my favorite game of all time, and I want to think of that, but that definitely that's a that's a PS one game that I remember when I think of PlayStation to the game that kind of sticks out to me the most is the game I probably put more the most time in, which was Kingdom Hearts, because that was the game I played a lot of. But you're going to be like a Grand

Theft Auto. Oh yeah, Grand Theft Auto essentially ruined, Uh, my little brother's attempts to play video games because he was just you know, when you're young, you're just dumb. You're just that's that's the only way to describe it. And we had g t A and we we would play and everyone you know, this was when kids when you're a teenager, so you didn't really play the story mode. You just took turns, getting as many stars as you

can and seeing how long you can survive. And my little brother would join in, and I remember he, uh, We're driving one time and someone was walking across the street, and to try and be funny, he was like, you run that person over and get like, get some points. And they're like, you can't play g t A anymore. And I was so scared when he said because the time I thought, I thought like we were all going to get into trouble, but it was just him and I was like, oh, and it was perfect because any

anytime you'd be like can I play him? Like, no, you got banned from playing it, so you gotta sit there. What about a Saga genesis? Oh, Saga Genesis always gonna be Sonic and yes, Sonic, That's what I was thinking too, because especially Sonic and Knuckles. You had the cartridge where you can stick Sonic too up in the top and you would be able to use Knuckles in that. It was it was dope and I never had a genesis.

This was before my dad married my step mom and they were dating and I would go over their house, and I remember I said, I wanted them to get married just so I can play that saga genesis. Yeah, mine was Sonic uh a Laddin and I think Earthworm Gym, Earthworm Gym's That's that's a true classic, right, Yeah, yeah, I'm surprised that hasn't gotten a remake yet, but it's probably the way. Probably, Yes, let's go through the nitty gritty.

The Monster Hunder franchise as a series of fantasy themed action role playing video games that started with the game Monster Hunter for PlayStation two, was released in two thousand four, and titles have been a release across a variety of platforms including PC, home console, portable consoles, mobile devices, and the series has been developed and published by Capcom. I wanna even hit that harder because I don't think it really drives home just the struggle that is being a

Monster Hunter fan. So it started off on PS two Monster Hunter, and then the series primarily took place on PSP PlayStation portable, which was this the was which was the kind of opponent to the DS. So for the longest I was playing Monster Hunter, uh, you know, it's been long. I don't know. The statue of Limitation, but for free, because you used to be able to hack the PSP and you would just be able to download the games like emulators and put them on a flash

drive and play. So that's how I got into it. We'll get into the mechanics of the game of how I was playing it wrong for so long, like all my PSP career, I can't even see how I was having fun with it, because it's actually the reason it has such a small fan base. So there are a lot of games that are made in Japan, uh that don't really make it to the mainstream American market, and a lot of times these games are just kind of

canna have this hardness to it. I think that this this kind of trend grew with games like Dark Souls and Souls type games where it's known to be hard, and that's fine, but I find that early odds like the two thousand four round Monster Hunter, the games like these, they never had a chance. And I don't want to say it's because we never gravitated towards them. I think it also was just kind of the publishers looking at it as like the American art audience would never kind

of gravitate towards these games. Okay, so the series took off in explosively in Japan with Monster Hunter Freedom on PSP, but like you were saying, it wasn't as popular in Western markets, and they equate that to the fact that Western markets favored home consoles and computers during the mid two thousands. Yeah, and that's that's actually also a very important point about that. So one of the things about you remember how I mentioned that this was a multiplayer game.

So the PSP versions were multiplayer, but they're only multiplayer locally. And the reason and that's a that's a very good thing you pointed out. Uh. So in Japan there was already a culture of people meeting up and playing their PSPs in public places, so they didn't have a trouble with trouble with that. But out in America, the PSP also wasn't a high selling handheld game. Uh, you know,

we were more into the D s out here. The DS was crushing the ps B, so you already have that issue there also with that the DS, uh you know, and I think it was specifically the D sides when it really started taking off. The DS introduced like the Nintendo Network where you can play online, and we were out here in America, we already were adapting to online multiplayer games, especially in the around here. You have the PlayStation Network, and then Xbox three six, you know they're

they kicked off Xbox Live. And then you had like Halo two, one and two. So we were very into online multiplayer and not necessarily that into meeting up that that's where the problem persists. So now you have Monster Hunter sitting on a console that is not widely except used out here and using a multiplayer format that isn't very popular out here, and that actually was kind of

a problem. So the way that a lot of people got around it out here, uh, and the old head Monster Hunter people will remember this is there was a service I forget the aim of it, but you would use this app and you would locally connect your PSP to this app on your computer that would locally connected online to other people. So you were had like so you would have to go to a forum, find people and then agree to use this app to do it because there was no type of online multiplayer yet. It

was all local on PSP. And this was for the run of the PSP version, like all of the ps and that was the thing, so it jumped from ps to to PSP, and then it was pretty much PSP versions until we had to swap over to when it started coming out for the three d S and the d S system So then the d S systems kind of got I think the first one still was local, and then the one after that is when we started getting online multiplayer, and in sometime around that time, we

also had a version come out for the Wii when it came to the d S and then that's when it started picking up a little more because you were able.

And then Moss Round Generations was the last one that kind of released before World, which was a first the first time since um since the first um Mon will not the first one the first time since the WE version that it was released on consoles because and there was a big deal for Monster Hunter fans because we are now leaving the handheld universe to get a full graphic overhaul and kind of a lot of quality of

life improvements in Monster Hunter. But that's all nitty gritty stuff within the game that I'm gonna say for when we're breaking down that part. This is just Monster Hunter in general. But now we're at Monster Hunter World. I will mention because as a Monster Hunter old head, I will have to mention some of the things we lost

in it going to the major consoles. Uh. And by major consoles, I mean it was released on the Xbox One and the PS four, and then the switch version got Monster Hunter Generation Ultimate, not the World one, which is jarring if people got into World for the first time. And then you will talk to me about so the original did you ever play the original Monster Hunter? And I never played the original monster so your first Monster Hunter was So Monster Hunter came out for the PlayStation two.

The Monster Hunter two was released on the PlayStation two as well. But then the UM, the an enhanced version UM came out for the PSP called Monster Hunter Freedom Too. So I came in during that time Monster Hunter Freedom to see. And the way they have these these listed is the most chunkiest way on the wiki because the way, the the fact of the matter is the way Monster Hunter has kind of been released. And if you listen to our Street Fighter episode, I mentioned how capcom loves

re releasing games. Uh, this that's the story of Monster Hunter. A lot of times Monster Hunter will instead of having a DLC, will just be rereleased with new monsters and

new weapons. So you had Monster Monster Hunter which was on PlayStation two, and then an enhanced version was released for PS two called Monster Hunter G and initially it was only released in Japan, but was later released in North America for the PSP, and that was Monster onund of Freedom and then a WE version was later released

but only in Japan. So that's Monster Under Freedom. So that was the first PSP one I I dabbled in that I that was the first one I played technically, but I the time I first played it on PSP, there was also the Monster Hunter of Freedom too that was available, which was Monster Hunter Too that came out um on. It was the Monster Under two came out on February sixte UH in Japan, and then UH it only came out on the PSP in two thousand seven August.

So that's the first one I like actually played over and over and over and over, and that was Monster under Freedom too. Then they later dropped another UH like expansion called Master Hunter Freedom Unite, which is yet another

re release. And then you had Monster Hunters Try which came out for the Wii, and that one was that one was the one that was talking about that came out on the Wii, and then eventually they came out with a PSP version and a PS three but only in Japan called Monster Hunter Portable the third and then the Enhanced version, and this is when we made the big jump to the three D S. Monster Hunters three Ultimate is what came out for the three D S. But like I said, it wasn't um. This was still

like poor local. I've never heard someone monster Hunters so many times. The funny thing is like, looking back, I was like, oh yeah, I was just kind of playing the same game for and over again with just the bunch of But yeah, so that's pretty much. So my first one was Monster Hunter Freedom and if I love you, I cannot wait to hear out the characters and what

these monsters look like. We're going to take a really quick break and then you are going to you are going to paint a picture of the Monster Hunter world for people that have never played it, like me. We'll be right back and we're back. So little Iffy, how old were you? Oh? This was oh man, if we

so we got to go into major storytime. So I was I was an adult technically I was eighteen but the way I the way I got into this was I wanted to hack my PSP and I was this was when I was still going to community college, as when I was like, yeah, I just found some dude on Craigslist. So I looked. So I looked up on Craig's list somebody who was hacking PSPs. And then I went and it was this like like this like Latino cat my age and we were like in his garage

and he was like, man, you're so cool. I'm gonna show you how to do it. He was like, He's like, and then you can do it from money if you want. And I was like, no, I'm not gonna like meet up with strangers, but I'll do it for my friends, you know. So he like told me how to do it, and so so I was probably like um young eighteen college's and so I was playing primarily by myself because

I tried to do that Internet thing. I tried to explain to you, it was just too hard because I think I needed one more like peripheral, because I needed a like wireless dongle that would uh basically wirelessly connected to my PSP, and that just was too You have to use eBay to find it. I just it was too much effort, so I let it go. And then when it came to the Three DS, my good friend and cousin Brian had a play group and we they

all met together and played. So I started meeting up with them and we would go to the house and this was actually the group we we got real into. Um we were real in the Hero Escape and we we had these huge Hero Escape battles that spiraled into kind of we'll have to do an episode on that, but it spiraled into where we started creating our own pieces and figures, and literally it became a mad dash where it's like, if we can find a figure, a toy that was the size of a Hero Escape figure,

would make a card for it. So we as soon we had Spider Man, Goku, you know, any g I, Joe's, anything we can find, and we just blew this game off the roof, which is funny because the way it goes all the way, it's kind of come full circle as I now have the Magic the Gathering tabletop Battle of the Planes Walkers tabletop game, which is what Hero

Escape it turned into. So Hero Escape kind of uh got bought by Hasbro and then they kind of took that property and made the Magic of the Gathering tabletop game. When I found that out, it was like a mind freak. Okay, so you you are playing this game, what a track like? Why did is it? Why did it become like a game that you were hooked on about? It made be hooked on it. It's the perfect weed game. So the way the game primarily works is you don't you're you

customize the hero character. It is a nameless character that you can change. Uh. They can turn into every skin color and you can be a male or female, and you can get many different hairstyles. You can get Goku hair, high Samurai hair, and an afro. And the story generally are all the same. You are this like lowly hunter and in this world, uh, everyone wants to be the

greatest hunter. It's a it's a typical anime shown in Start and you have to work your way up in using the hunter boards and so you you have a list of hunts that the village needs for various reasons, and as you get do better hunts, you can have a chance to upgrade as a hunter and raise your hunter rank until you're strong enough to fight like an elder dragon. Uh. And instead of having like stats and classes and all that, there are stats will get into

that in the tricking us with it. But really, if you choose your weapon and you can play however you want so uh, you know you can use like in the most most of them. You can use like a long sword, which is a wildly long sword like looks like Sefros blade. You can use a great sword, which looks like a buster sword from Cloud. Uh. You have bows, you have a gun bow, you have a lance, you have a gun lance, and these are all weapons you can use. There are no restrictions. No one weapon is

better than the other. It's really just based on play style, like however you want to play, and the way you acquire new weapons is you hunt monsters. You farm the monsters, so you hunt them multiple times and use their parts

to the monster parts to make armor and weapons. So it's that's pretty much the game is the cycle of hunting monsters, and it's a very similar style to a lot of your Dark Soul Souls type game in the sense that, like some you will be able to, like once your armor is strong, you'll be able to like bust through them easy, but lots of times you're kind of following the patterns of the monsters, Like they have

different attack patterns, they have different moves. If they get enraged, they'll you know, they'll change up their attack patterns, and it's kind of learning that and finessing that and they there's always a randomness to it. It's it's kind of has that rogue like element in the sense that the monsters are all different sizes. They tend to be around the same health point, but there's different things that can happen.

Sometimes you're on a map um and there's multiple monsters, so you can be trying to hunt one monsters, but it gets uh, you get another monster who joins in on the fight, and now you're fighting two monsters. So that's why even though you're fighting the same monster over and over again, it doesn't get boring. It's it's fun because you're like, okay, uh, you never know what's going to happen. Who is Polico? Okay, So the policos are the little tiny cats that that help you on your hunt.

Very cute. Yeah, they're they're the cutest ones and like as the game progressed in the series, Yeah, you they stand like people. They talk to you, they call you mouster. Uh yeah, and they and as the game progress, you can make armor for them and so like you can. I'm a Meosis, Yeah, meaosis and mister okay, I always play a male character. They say anything, I mean, do they talk like? Yeah? Words other than that. Okay, it's

not like a group situation. Yeah, yeah, no, they they it's not they were they saying that they're trying to help you. Uh. You know some games you hire them and you would train them separately. Uh. One of the cool things that you know the newer Monster Hunter world has implemented is they level up with you as you hunt instead of like having to do separate training regimens. And uh. Typically the flow of most Monster Hunter games

is you get a quest. Then there's a setup portion so you can go and you can get different items you may need for the quest. If it's in a particularly cold area, you'll need a hot drink. If it's in a hot area, and you'll need a cold drink to keep your character from being too cold or hot. You'll if you want to capture instead of killing the monster, you'll need to get trapped and trapped parts. If you are using a bow, then you'll need like, you know,

your arrows. If you're using like a gun lance, you have different weapons you load for that. And you also can choose your meal and the meals uh they have some pre made ones or you can like choose every part of the meal. But the meal will give you some type of stat boost, whether it be like extra health or extra stamina or both and damage up in

different things like that. And it does a really cute eating animation, and then you start your quest and now it's pretty it's pretty simple, and the fact that you just eat and you do well. Back in the day, there were some combinations that would make you sick and debuff you like if you made a bad food combination, you would set off in a quest and just have worse stats because you didn't do a good combo. Uh.

And and then you set off to your quest. And the quest uh in monster own are usually sets you in different types of maps. So typically uh, there's a frost a snowy map, a desert map, a jungle map. It's just like yeah, and just like a regular kind of planes map and every and that's kind of part of the challenges the monster and you never know what part of the maps, so the maps are usually sectored off into different sections. There's usually anywhere from ten to

twelve sections of a map. Do you always have a polico assigned to you in the later games? Yeah, in the later games you do, I believe in the world if I remember correctly, you can have to too, yes, uh, or that might be generations. I'm mixing it up with you can when it's you and another person. When there's just two of you, you still get to have your polico. If you do any more than two, then you can't have your policos with you. Then it's only uh, it's

only player characters. But the policos can you can set up how they operate. They can either be attackers, you can have them do healing things to you. I typically do that way because I use great sword, and with great sword it's a very it does a lot of damage, but it's very slow, so you're leaving yourself open a lot of times because if you miss, you're doing a slow, long attack, and so I get hit a lot. So

I'm looking at apparently you can have MegaMan. Oh yeah, so that was one of the big cool things about Monster Hunter is They did a lot of cross crossover events, so they they just did one with Final Fantasy where you can fight a behemoth from Final Fantasy and then you can get a big ragon called Rathelos in Final Fantasy fourteen. Um and they always had this, It was

so funny. They always have this big um U s a j uh collab that they always did and I was like, what is this and it always was super cool blue and they always had world details and it was U s a j U s a j And one day I finally looked it up and it was for Universal Studios of Japan. Like they would always do a collab with them so that you can get like this Universal Studios of Japan Monster Hunter gear. But they've

done you know, Mega Man. I'm going to imagine, so it's essentially literally MegaMan, you know, in like block form that is like fighting like it looks like that style next to Monster Hunter, like three D style. I'm just gonna imagine that under his suit is a little cat. Oh yeah, that's exactly what's under Yeah, it's the armor that you put on the cat. So there's a time cat uh. You can. They did a crossover with fairy Tail so you're able to make it look like a fairytale.

I want to show you somebody on Reddit did a tutorial they made their Polico into beers from driving that one. Oh yeah, coloring, and there's tons of tutorials too. So here's the thing that they changed in the world, which I'm glad they did. So remember how I said Japanese games can be like so hard. This is something they never explained in the game and something that you literally

found out through going to wikis. But the way stats worked in the earlier Monster Hunter games is you would have to get so you you would get armor, and they'd have a stat so it might say damage plus two, damage plus three, or defense plus two, defense plus three, et cetera. Right now, a normal video game player would think, oh, if I put this on, then I'll get damage plus two and damage plus three. Not in Monster Hunter and

Monster Hunter the earlier games you had to get. So the way it worked was you had a stat boost of small, medium, are large. And the way you get those stat boosts is whether you can get the statu I think it was ten, fifteen or twenty, and so that means that if you put a strength plus two then you didn't have strength plus two. That means you

have to find strength plus three. And when you have a strength uh, and then you get two more pieces or no, I think it was five ten fifty strength plus three, then you have a strength attack up small. So that so that's why I said I wasn't really playing it until later when my play group explained that to me. So that also kind of made it difficult for players because then it made it kind of hard to mix and match your armor because you know, you know, nerds,

we like to stylize our characters. You couldn't really mix and match your armor because you needed like certain a certain amount of the armor to work well. Now in monster a world, what you see is what you get. If it's like plus two attack, then you get plus two attack. And so now people are getting really creative with their looks and all the different things you can do with it. We have to take another really quick break. We're going to hop back into Monster Hunter right after this.

So if he wanted to say, did you ever play Monster Hunter Stories? No, I skipped it because it was just a little too cartoony and not in shade, because, um, it looks a lot like Pokemon. Um, it looks really cute though it's straight up. Yeah, it actually kind of looks like Digimon to be honest. Yeah, no it was. It was kind of you know, hit or miss for different people in the Monster Hunter community. Uh, it's just for me. I was like, it's just not monster like

I fall. I go to Monster Hunter to hunt monsters, not really do this like whole lower base thing. But a few people like it, I wanted to say. Also, there was a Monster Hunter the Reel, which was a ride that opened in Universal Studios Japan for about half a year in you could have gone on it. Yeah, I know. I wasn't able to make it out there. It was a big deal, like all that was a

big thing. And now there's gonna be a Monster Round movie coming out, which at first everyone was like, I don't know, but then like leaked footage of the trailer came out. Now everyone's kind of on board with it, so we'll see what it's supposed to drop in. Feel like we would have seen more of it if it was But um, did you check any of the leaked footage? Like, did you look at any of it? No? I really don't like looking at like trailers. I like to just go in blind. So I'm pretty much of what what

you are? You don't watch any trailers, you know? Uh? Really funny Mark was that way about my friend Mark Ellis was that way about anything Star Wars because he's like, I'm already going to see it. I don't need to watch I was in percent already seeing it. Don't need anything to be spoiled. I feel like trailers are cut really badly now. They give too much away. They do, so that's why. So my my theory about that is because they're trying to get the people that are not

in that fandom. Us that are in the fandom, we're like, oh, we're already going to see it, We're already down. But they need to kind of get the other part of the audience here in America to be on board with it, you know, like the people that don't actually follow this in the news all the time. So sometimes they'll drop some of the whoa cool, Oh she's in it, and it's like, why did you give that away? Why did you show us that the villain or this part? You know,

why did you? But it's for them to also be in it. Yeah, you're right, it looks like Mila Djovivic is going to be Oh, It's a September has a drop date of September four, directed by Paul ws Anderson. Uh, and it looks like the synopsis says, behind our world, there's another, a world of dangerous and powerful monsters that rule their domain with dead Lee for well, you know what, I love her for doing this, and Resident Evil and

any other video game franchises that she has capitalized on. Uh. When Lieutenant Artemis and her loyal soldiers are transported from our world to the New World, the unflappable Lieutenant receives a shock of her life in her desperate battle for survival against enormous enemies with incredible powers and unstoppable terrifying attack I love whoever did this just had a thesaurus. Artemists will team up with a mysterious man, Tony Jaw,

who has found a way to fight back. Yeah. I think that's the thing people really don't like is the combining world's premise, where it's like, no, you just have the like world has a pretty good story. World has the more the most cohesive story out of all the monster hunters. And that's saying a lot because World really doesn't have much of a story. It's generally the same thing.

You're a young plucky hunter coming to a new town, but now it's being attacked by an elder a dragon and they don't know why, you know, and I feel like you could just do that. Are you excited at all that more people will be exposed to this franchise? Yeah, but World actually did such a good job with that. World is actually one of Capcom's highest selling games. They sold over I think it was fifty million units in total. More than seventy percent of world sales were outside of Japan,

which was a major milestone for Capcom. It looks like we will also have Ron Perlman. Yeah, T I T I is dropping in Megan Good who was just in shazamne.

Here's my thing. It's it's never a good sign when people stuff like too many slebs in a like video game film, because like when you really think of like all major kind of I guess you want to say, like fantasy or sci fi franchise, how like you really don't have that many like name names, like you'll have a few, but you typically try and save the budget for v effects. You know, if you're dropping all that

money with t I ron PERLM and all that. It makes me afraid how much money you're gonna have left to make the giant dragons that take place in this game, which you know, I guess we can run down a lot of the monsters. Uh So, typically every monster in a game starts off with your level one being like tiny raptor esque monsters and ending in gigantic, larger than

life monsters. One of the bigger kind of well known monsters in the game has been the Rathian and the Raphaelos, which are two wyverns that are the worst to fight. Uh they were the worst to fight until we learned about basil geese, which we'll talk a little bit more later. But like so, the Rathian and Raphalos are the two dragons,

and they have poison tail. So you'll be fighting them and they'll shoot fire and you'll dodge all that, and then in the in they will poke you with their poison tail, and now you have to run away from the fight and let your pelico get all beat up while you try and heal from poison. Because the poison is pretty brutal in Monster Hunter, mostly because it takes away your health a lot. But those are kind of like the the big wyverns you have. I enjoy this

praying mantis looking thing. What was what's the name of that one? It looks like a taruk maybe Egyptian mantis. Monster Hunter xx oh this was Japan only. Oh no, but that that Monster Hunter x X. That that's the one that came out as Monster Hunters generations alter um because I but I do own Monster Hunter xx because that's how much I love Monster Hunter. And this nibble snarf these words is great. Zeno gray is great. It's like a little electric fox. That's pretty cool. The nibble

snarf is a sand swimmer. It looks like a giant what I'm looking at looks kind of like a worm ish thing. And then a zam trios. A zam trios straight up looks like street sharks. And oh yeah, that's that's the puffy one. Um yeah, oh yeah, nibble snarf is great. The great sword for that using its parts is really cool. Nibble snarf is nasty though, because nibble snarf goes under the sand and it's also a desert level, so you have to drink uh so much water to

stay cool. Um. But but like the nibble snarf will just pop up from underground and just try and swallow you. So it looks like monstros Fromocio. Try and find zam Trios. Remember when we did our Street Street Sharks episode and I was like playing around on d V and art and saw things that I shouldn't have seen. But it was essentially street sharks in human form, like in what they would look like in a in a live action

and it was like buff and erotic. Um, that's what zam Trios looks like in some of these iterations of him. Las see this is zam Trios gets real puffy like that. Oh yeah, looks like a street shark that's been stung by bees. This is the one that I saw, Iffy, I mean, doesn't that look like art? Yeah, zam zam Trios is rough. That puffy thing he does when he like sucks up all the air is like he kind of it's harder to hit him, and he can like roll uh, he can roll over and it's not a

bad it's not a good time. Um. And you know, so these are like kind of like your bigger monsters that you're hunting. There's a lot of life in Monster Hunter. Uh, if you go to a map, it's not just going to be that one monster. There's you know a lot of herbivores that you can kind of bully, uh, usually for their meat so you can like raise your stamina. But then you also have these weird bugs that are

there from time to time, like vest Boyd's. They're the worst because the way they work is they like slowly inched towards you, and you think, oh, there's no way this thing is gonna get me. But if you're fighting like a giant monster and you're not paying attention, it can thing you and then it will paralyze you, and then you're just stuck on the ground for about five seconds. And that's when Zantrios just, you know, just lays all

on you. I really like is Barroth. It's a giant almost looks like a t Rex with a hammer head. And that one he's real tricky because that the hammer point of his um his head is extremely hard. So if you try and hit him with a blade, if you're if it's not sharp enough, it'll bounce off. Now, if you're someone like me who's a great sword user, you're charging up for like six seconds to like bring the blade down and do a big hit if they

like shift and then put their head there. You just wasted all that time and it's a it's a bad time. It's gonna you're gonna hear a lot of me complaining about charging up. Um. I love these names. It kind

of just like there's one called tigx. Oh. Yeah, tig Rex was the that dude back in the UH and that was like your first like why vern that you went against in the earlier monster hunters and tires would move super fast around the map, which made which kind of taught you to learn to understand the timing because you're not gonna be able to chase it around, so your move is either going to be knowing where it's gonna land and hitting it or baiting it to try

to attack, you defend against it and punishing punishing it it. UH. But this is also where the fun of having teammates can help, because if you have someone with the bow that can keep harassing it till like it tries to go after the teammate and you defend it with a blade. There's all. Like I said, there's no one way to play monster Hunter. Like even when you go to just straight up hunt quests. You can kill the monster or you can, uh, you can capture it, and there's so

you can use a trap. There's like three different traps. You can use the pitfall trap and the electric trap, um and I think there's one more trap I'm missing. And when they're trapped, then you can throw a tranquilizer at it and if the monster is weak enough then it falls us leap. Yeah, which means I also didn't

go into the stages of the fight. So when you're on a hunt, you usually have to hunt a monster, and there are stages to the fight because after you, you know, do enough damage to each monster, it's gonna leave the area that it's in, you know how I said. It's the map is broken up in the quadrants. It'll leave an area and uh, sometimes it will need to feed. It will leave an area to feed and say it feeds,

and then you chase it down some more. You chase it down some more until it gets really tired and then I don't want to take a nap. And then when it takes a nap, that's usually the last phase before you can kill it or capture it. And that's pretty much it it's like rents repeat those things. Now. The tricky things once again to look back to the hardness of the games is there's actually a like clear

path that you need to take for these games. Like most people, if you didn't know this, you just did all the hunts and then eventually you get an urgent quest. But there actually are specific hunts you you do for urgent quests, so if you know those hunts, you can

kind of streamline your kind of rank ups. So like like usually it's like these two monsters at this level, then you'll get your urgent quests, and then at the next level it will be like three or four monsters and then you just hit those instead of doing all of it, and then once you get to the last one,

you'll get a credit role. And then eventually they added a level called G Rank, which were super hard versions of monsters and it and it was cool because it kept the stats of like the how many hunts you did with which weapon, what's the biggest version of a monsque you fought the smallest version, etcetera. And gonna have to come over and maybe play it. Mainly just because

I like the cat a lot. The Polticos are great, see and then and then, and that isn't even talking about the I think it's called the mill and the minks and the Milnx. There's the evil version of Policos that are on maps that will attack you and steal your items. Uh so you and the only way you can get your item back as if you hit kill them first, and you don't really get to kill them, they just kind of get knocked out and disappear. Honestly, I want somebody to come up with a tutorial on

how to make your Polico a dog. I mean that would be crazy. Oh also, since you love Polico so much, I forgot to tell you. In Generations there was a whole new mode they created to where you can play as the Polico. So you so so you would get to do hunts as a Polico. And what was cool about it is you had unlimited gathering stuff. So you know, not only do you need monster parts for different armors and weapons, but sometimes you'll need resources like different ores

from mining stuff. Sometimes you might need a bug or two. Sometimes you might need different vines or plants or bones, and these are all things you just find from gathering on the level, so it's not just about hunting monsters, is also about going around gathering resources from the map. And that new mode was cool because you were just able to kind of just be a kitty and just run around and gather the resources semi stress free because monsters still were live and active on these maps and

they did hunt you down. Hello mioster e st Um. This has been enlightening on a subject that I have never played. Yeah, yeah, that's this has been me talking too much about Monster Hunter. But you know, if you're interested in the game, the best place to start right now, honestly is Monster in the World. They streamlined a lot

of the stuff. There's so many quality of life updates, but you know, if you do only have a switch, there is uh that either one available is Generations Ultimate and I just would say go on the monster on a wiki and everything I just mentioned it'll have for you, which is the key quest that you need to do in order to upgrade. And just like general stat combos that you can do, and now that it's going to be dropping in, you can have a leg up on

your friends who have ever watched it played it. Yeah, exactly, when everyone's asking you all these monster Hunter facts. When this movie that is for sure not going to be a flop comes out in twenty day, you don't know. The photos look cool. I mean everything about it looks cool, but it just feels like the recipe. It's like when you're looking at a recipe, We're like, man, this this gumbo looks good, but I saw what you put in it. How could you talk about Lee lu Dallas that way?

Oh look, Mila knows how I feel about She can do no wrong, Multi pass t I however, I am at Ms Danny Fernandez friends on all the things. Please catch me at New York Comic Con. I have a bunch of panels that I announced I updated it. I'm actually gonna be there Thursday through Sunday, so I have panels glore. I'm also rejoining sci Fi Wire to do the Great Debate that's Friday night there. I'm also on a Latin XT panel on Thursday and on Sunday I

have a panel with the Disney Princesses. All super cool. Check it out. I would love to meet you at New York Comic Con, and you know me if you away on Twitter and Instagram, if D's on Twitch, I will not be a New York Comic Con. And if you're sad in Texas that you're not at New York Comic Con, white women will be performing at the Troll Comedy Fest in Houston, So pull up see us do some some canedy. And uh yeah, besides that, you know, I'll be goofing around town, uh doing stuff, just stuff.

Follow me on Twitter and you'll know where I'll be at. But, like we always say, stay neardy.