Capcom shows a new trailer, I have a minor stroke.

It's no secret for anyone that knows me that I'm a big fan of Monster Hunter. Like, a big fan. As big as I bought a PSP basically just to play Monster Hunter, and occasionally the odd JRPG I find interesting, but mostly MonHun. Just today, a good friend of mine, Mr. NP, tipped my attention towards a little something the Capcom Channel put on YouTube:

...This is a bit too much for me. I need an inhaler for sitting through this. It's a trailer for an upcoming game (THIS YEAR, WHAT) called Monster Hunter Cross. Let's quickly break it down.

First of all, we are shown the new town, called Beruna Village, which by itself is already pretty cool, has all a MonHun town needs to have (shop, guild girls, smithy, felyne kitchen) and seems to have a felyne town attached to it, with one of those big cat-shaped totems they like to build.

So next we spice it up a bit, we get shown these two new monsters, the first one seem to be brachiosaurus-like herbivores, rather large compared to your regular Aptonoth, and small, feathery green and red bird wyverns, more on those later.

...now this looks different. It's the tonfa weapons from MonHun Frontier! They finally made it into a main series game! With the insect glaive and the switch axe, MonHun Cross will be the most complete game weapon-wise, only missing the modular bowguns from MonHun Tri (which weren't that cool to begin with to be honest). At this point the trailer really got my interest.

A bunch of really cool things happen in quick succession now, so for the untrained eye it would be a bit hard to get them all. First, most weapons seem to have gained interesting abilities (The insect glaive is seen unleashing a big explosion and stunning an Agnaktor, the hunter with the bow is seen buffing himself by shooting sparkling powder with an arrow, and the heavy bowgun one just f***s a khezu with some sort of large explosion that doesn't seem to be a crag shot). We also see that the ability to use the monster's own body as a trampoline to jump on them and ride had been added, and we are show the -drome version of those small bird wyverns from before, which seems to fight like kangaroos do, standing on it's tail and kicking with strong, muscular legs.

...this just made me loose my shit. Following the theme of travel introduced in MonHun 4, in this game hunters will be allowed to visit Kokoto Village, Pokke Village and Yukumo Village, the hub towns of MonHun 1, 2, and Portable 3rd respectively. This is just amazing. This is just what the franchise needed, and all the memories I have of those places make me almost tear up at Capcom's move of putting them all together in a new game. Considering how Capcom has been treating their other franchises, the attention they're giving to MonHun is just outstanding.

Lastly, we are shown some more new faces for our brave hunters to prey on, including a sleek looking green flying wyvern, a brutally armored mammoth pelagus, a small, pink bubble-vomiting leviathan, and a STRAIGHT UP ARMORED T-REX OH GAWD CAPCOM!!!

*ahem*

As a finishing touch, we are shown our new pet, a tremendously cute alpaca that we can pet and give kisses to, followed by an announcement of the release date for the game in Japan, which is later this year. Considering Capcom's track record, I'll be very upset but definitely not surprised if this game doesn't make it to the west, but the fanbase has grown exponentially since the coming of MonHun to the 3DS, so my hopes are pretty high.

Well, I seem to have gotten a bit overboard with today's post, so I'll be wrapping it up here and wishing you all a nice monday tomorrow, it's always hard to start the week, so every bit of support helps. As always, feel free to drop by the comments section and leave your thoughts on the trailer or any funny or interesting story on MonHun you have to share! See you all next time!

No Man's Land

Probably a lot of you know of the classic game of Mafia, where the players are handed slips of paper with their "secret identities" on them and are separated in 2 groups, the mafia and the townsfolk, each with the objective of eliminating the other. Some 7 years ago I came across this concept in the form of The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow, by the french game makers Lui-même. I saw it sitting innocently on a shelf of the comic book store I used to visit and asked the owner, Dan, about it. He told me a lot of pretty cool things, how the game was all about bluffing and manipulating the other players to turn them on each other or make them commit a mistake and reveal their identity, so I bought it and tried it out with my friends.

This little guy started it all.

It was a blast, the game has become a staple of meetings with my friends and I've been basically obsessed with it ever since. It has been my goal since then to make a more personal version of it, snooping around for more characters and rules and expanding the concept much in the way the Ultimate Werewolf version by Bézier Games did. I've made a couple versions to date, but they weren't much in term of innovation, without any deviation in the original "werewolves" theme and using MTG card templates, making it all look rather bland and lazy. But some 5 months ago I started feverishly working on a new version, with a whole new background story and theme, called No Man's Land.

Examples of a character card for No Man's Land.

It's progressing slowly, like wading through molasses, but it's eventually going to get done. I will post details about the game world and gameplay in future posts, but I've ranted enough about how much I love this kind of games in this one that I should probably put a ring on them and shut up. So, if you've ever played any similar game, feel free to write about your experiences in the comments and give any suggestions or, hopefully, words of encouragement, heavens know I need them.

See you next time, have a nice day!

First, introductions.

I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog for some time now, someplace where I can speak my mind about things I've seen and done, and about some of my personal projects. I've felt it necessary, people always say that ideas and memories are remembered better if they are written down, and things are more clear after you set them on a medium other than thoughts or sound, it sort of puts things to perspective in an impersonal fashion.

So, now that the why is out of the way, let's get  to the who and what.
The name I go by in most social circles is Tsunamori Nanashi, an alias that for most people has taken over my real name, but most people call me Nana, as in the number 7 in Japanese. At the time of writing this I am 22 years old and I work for a certain coffee store franchise that shall go unnamed (for the sake of everyone involved).
As for the what, it'll be mostly talking about anime, videogames, and manga, don't expect them to be full fledged "reviews", just extended comments of my thoughts on them. Also, I'll be speaking extensively of my personal projects that I take on as a hobby, which are mostly writing, drawing, and the programming and designing of videogames. I won't really be scheduling my posts, but I plan on writing at least 2 every week.

I hope you enjoy my content and hope to see you soon in the comments section. Feel free to say hi if I know you or introduce yourself if you don't, and see you next time.