MONSTER HUNTER STORIES!!!

This post is about a upcoming game not coming in 2015 but 2016!! And the moment I found out about I knew I had to spread the word about it so yeah!

 

I am excited to know we'll be getting yet another Monster Hunter game. I love Monster Hunter. It's one of my favorite franchises! Speaking of which, every time I do a Monster Hunter related post I get an insane amount of support so thanks guys!

This game is called Monster Hunter Stories (in case you can't tell by the title). But a fair warning. This is a spin-off game in case the cutesy art style didn't give it away.

 

This is what the flying wyvern

Tigrex normally looks like.

 

This is what Tigrex looks like in Monster Hunter

Stories.

No major changes to the design, but just more stylish. The colors are a lot brighter now. At least they pulled Tigrex's roar straight out of the main series and kept it intact. If you don't know what Tigrex's roar sounds like, just watch the trailer for Monster Hunter Stories (it's on YouTube).

On another note...

 

The mascot of Monster Hunter (a.k.a. Rathalos)

will play a special role in your hunts...!

BUT, the biggest thing in this game that really caught my eye was this...

 

You can ride a Rathalos into battle!

Now being able to ride a monster into battle is a concept that is not only cool, but it opens up almost limitless possibilities for combat and navigation. Even though the Stories' Rathalos pictured is way to small to be fully grown. Here's hoping that this little guy can grow bigger and maybe that incorporates into his stats or something? Or maybe he can grow up and become a Azure/Silver Rathalos!!! I don't know! I just want to ride a dragon into battle!!! It would be beautiful!!! Seriously, imagine if you can ride a dragon into battle. Think about it... THAT WOULD BE THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER!!!! But there is only one thing that would be more epic than riding a Rathalos into battle....

 

If Alatreon was in Stories, that would be amazing.

Unless he was a boss in Stories, then you get your

booty smacked around like a rag-doll.

Then again if he was a ride-able monster he would probably be a end/post-game monster with insane stats/abilities (Super Fire Tornado + Thunder Explosion + Icicle Rain + Dragon Rush anyone?). Still it would be cool to ride this guy into battle. 

But ignoring the awesomeness that is riding dragons into battle I have a few things to say about the protagonist of Stories.

  

First of all, he looks a lot younger than a real hunter. Maybe it's the art style, but he looks like he's 12-13 years old. Considering that all the playable hunters are legal adults that's a stark age difference. And second, his armor looks like it's designed for Arctic (or at least low temperature) environments, so why is he wearing it in a forest/jungle? Unless that's what Jaggi/Velociprey armor looks like now, then it's completely forgiven. And finally, the Sword and Shield he was fighting with in the trailer is the Soldier's Dagger, the very first weapon hunters get at the very beginning of their careers. So it seems like he hasn't got the materials to make decent weapons yet. 

And finally I just have to point the one thing that I don't necessarily like about Stories (based off the one trailer that's on YouTube) and that is the Felyne helping the hunter at the beginning. In case you don't know the picture below is what Felynes normally look like.

  

This is the normal design of the Felyne.

BUT...

 

For some reason Capcom decided to make 

Felynes look ridiculous. 

The Felyne looks silly to me. Sure it still is kind of cute, but the eyes look too small. The entire head looks a little bit like a dumpling now that I think about it. Seriously it looks like a dumpling.

And something that I do like about the trailer is that it opens up with the hunter and his Felyne doing the most infamous (and frustrating) thing in the entire game. Fighting Alatreon? Nope. Grinding for Sky-Swayers? Nope. It's stealing a monster's egg right from her nest. They put those missions in EVERY Monster Hunter game. In the main games, carrying a monster's egg cuts your running speed in half. But considering the Hunter carries the egg and easily outruns a very angry Tigrex (at full speed no less), it seems that's not the case here.

Monster Hunter Stories will be available in Japan sometime next year (2016) and it is unknown if it will come to North America or Europe. For more info watch the trailer on YouTube because that's literally all the info available at the moment.

All Hail King Julian!!!

This post is about a Netflix original series starring one of my favorite childhood movies: Madagascar!! Speaking of Madagascar, why is the series called that!? Only the first movie took place in Madagascar!!


LOGO!!

Cinnamon Bread is very delicious and nutritious!!!!! I am eating some while I blog. Anyway, for those of you who never seen any of the Madagascar movies, it's about four zoo animals, who can talk and behave like humans because y.o.l.o., escape from their zoo because one of them, a zebra named Marty (that happened to be the name of one of my grandfather's dogs) decides to run away from home, because that's smart. And literally 20 seconds after escaping all four of the animals get tranquilized and are shipped to Africa (their all African animals by the way).

But they wind up in Madagascar because the crates they were in fell overboard. There they meet arguably my personal favorite character in the entire series: A Ring-Tailed Lemur named King Julian.


This guy got his own show!!

King Julian is easily the most popular and iconic character in the entire series. Despite the fact that he is a side character and up until the All Hail King Julian TV show exclusive to Netflix he has never been a major character. But his popularity easily surpasses that of all four of the main animals. Plus the very first thing he did when he made his debut was sing the song "I like to Movie It".

King Julian was originally going to play a much smaller role in the movie during development. But the more they worked on him the more Dreamworks liked him as a character. So he gained much more screen time, and eventually he got his own show! Before you know he'll have a full feature length movie! Make it happen Dreamworks!!!

King Julian is a party-loving, self-obsessed, slightly deranged, crown wearing lemur who claims to be Lord of all the Lemurs. Fun fact: King Julian speaks with a Indian accent.

The show takes place long before the first movie. Do they clear anything up? No. The very first episode explained how King Julian became a king in the first place, but other than that the show just follows Julian's wonky antics (trying to bribe his way to becoming the most popular lemur ever, fighting a mechanical gecko, starting a rebellion against himself, etc)


The show introduces a new character, a
paranoid and surprisingly bloodthirsty
female lemur named Clover (right, orange)

Now I have seen all the episodes available and it's really good. My only gripe with it is the fact that there are SO many scenes where they could play "I like to Move It" yet they only play it once and never use it again. Now I do understand that Dreamworks didn't right the song and they don't own the song but they could just play every now and again.

What I do like about the show is the fact that the show never takes itself seriously. There's never any plot twists or sad moments. All Hail King Julian aims to entertain first, and throw dark and gritty out the window. Which I wish some game developers would do nowadays. Most video games are either "Hyper Violent mega gory with a side of Horror" or "Super Sad story that deals with mature themes". My favorite kinds of games fall into the widely underused category of "Colorful fun good gameplay and memorable characters with a healthy dosage of solid controls and served with a side of a beautiful soundtrack". Now you know what my favorite game types are. And Yooka-Laylee falls perfectly into that list. So yeah! I'm getting Yooka-Laylee when it comes out next year.

But enough about video games! Back to the show. As I was saying, this show is fun. It is funny. King Julian is hilarious in this show. New character Clover delivers plenty of funny moments (she even quoted one of the most iconic Jurassic Park lines in episode 9; "A really big Lie"). Returning character Mort is back to annoy King Julian, only now he is slightly creepy. Scratch that. He is very creepy. Like in episode three, when asked if knows what a secret is he says (and I quote) "Secrets are the things the voices in my head tell me never to tell ANY one until I am certain no one can stop me." L.O.L. what!?!?!


Mort is evil... Don't trust him!

Anyway, this is a really good show. It gets a solid 10 out of 10. And that's not just personal opinion because this show won a Emmy award!

You can watch the first ten episodes on Netflix (they made this show).