Monster Hunter: The Honor System

Nothing takes the air out of a hunt faster than having that big red "Quest Failed" message pop onto your screen.

From a gameplay perspective, I get it. Having a time limit means more of a challenge. It prevents people from safely whittling down monster health over the course of several hours. In the game world, though, it seems arbitrary and stupid - it baffles me.

A lot of the quest orders mention a monster attacking a city, trade convoy or other important location. Of course, I understand that if your city is being terrorized, you want the monster killed. But why does the monster have to be dead in 50 minutes? What's happening in 51 minutes that's so damned important?

And it's not just the time limit. It's the precise time of 50 minutes. Why not a full hour? Why such an arbitrary amount of time? So...why not 52 minutes, or 46 minutes?

In happier news, as you may have noticed, this is a rare "nerding for the weekend" post. I'm happy to announce the blog has zoomed past 5000 views! And I do mean zoomed. Because in the amount of time between hitting the milestone and posting this, I'm already well over 5500 hits.

As always, I'd like to thank the fans. And it's not just because you read. But I'd also like to thank you all for being so good-looking, intelligent and good at sports.

Also, thanks for letting me suck up to you...

Not a Moment to Spare

Today, midway through a bag of Doritos and a marathon session of daytime Food Network, I realized I have no free time.

My lack of free time isn’t in the traditional sense, of course. It would be one thing to have too many obligations to do things. It’s quite another to be tied down by my own laziness. Between video games, cooking, movies, television, writing, drawing and other things that make me happy, I have very little time to get out much.

Case in point: “Inception.” I’ve been meaning to see this movie for at least a month now. My friends tell me it’s good. The critics say it’s good. But short of someone giving me a ride to the movies – most likely a friend and not a critic – I probably won’t make it.

I could claim there were other reasons, but it’s not true. I’m all for lying, certainly. My lies should at least sound plausible, though.

Granted, I’ve been spending a lot of time online lately. And this does eat up sizable portions of my day. Still, I’m not sure I could portray myself as a victim for talking on random forums about the ending of “Cowboy Bebop” or how bad security must be at Princess Peach’s castle for her to be kidnapped in every single Mario game ever.

And I seem like even less of a victim when my only problem is not having time to go to theaters.

In the meanwhile, I’ll just have to find a way to cope. And don’t worry – at least I still have Redbox. Until I find a better solution, I’m sure all your hopes and prayers are with me.