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Wii-sperimenting Time!
Some of you who paid attention may have noticed that I met the kind people of TenFox Productions over a Wii game called Monster Hunter Tri. I’ve always had a soft spot for the series over its iterations, but I’ve never been fantastically good at it, so when I finally managed to convince another friend of mine to play it, the two of us jumped in full-force.
I’ll preface this by pointing out that, by saying I’m not “fantastically good,” I really mean that I never got the hang of the invincibility frames during dodges, or capitalizing on a monster’s specific attack pattern. I basically suck at the “don’t get hit” part of the “hit it till it dies” mantra. So I never go online unless I have someone to go online with, because not only am I a social, cooperative online gamer, but it’s always nice having a meat shield that fights back.
Between work and Monster Hunter, I haven’t had a whole lot of time for other things (not that I do other things), and this past week has not been kind in that regard. I’ve known about Wii-modding for quite a while, but I’ve never been interested in trying it until I saw a nifty post on the GameFAQs message boards with a very interesting link. Using the MH3QuestCreator, created by Lee Langan, he managed a full Riivolution patch containing custom weapons created from the existing upgrade paths, texture mods, varying difficulty modes, and custom online quests! I experimented with the Tiny difficulty mode offline (a fascination brought on by the official Event Quest “Phantom Uragaan“) and was delighted to see a swath of changes. New weapon textures work seamlessly, monster coloration is spectacular, even the resizing of monsters makes the game new and interesting!
I played two missions before calling it a night, one bagging a Rathian and the other a dual Barioth quest. Before going into it, I didn’t realize that the texture pack meant monster textures, so imagine my surprise when a miniature pink Rathian floated from the sky to land at my feet, barely coming to my hunter’s waist. Overcome with fond memories of the PSP Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, I proceeded to remove the wyvern’s tail and claws before sending her to an early grave with my Anata Boneblade+. Next up came the dual Barioth in the Frozen Tundra, regular sized but with vibrant orange tints to their normally-white fur. Reminded faintly of the terrifying Tigrex, my blade again sent the two beasts into the oblivion of the Quest Rewards screen.
As of this post, I’ve yet to experiment with the online quests, as they’re clearly marketed toward the more hardcore audience, but the whole ordeal opened me up to the wide world of console modding. I’d stayed my ground thus far at the rooting and jailbreaking of mobile devices, but due to the nature of online connectivity I’d refrained from expanding into messing with my game consoles. Upon further inspection of the Wii, however, I’ve come to note that Nintendo is extremely lax on any real form of security, making modding a thing of ease. The process of softmodding my Wii took a grand total of four and a half minutes, including preparation and installation time. It was literally easier than jailbreaking an iPhone, and that’s saying something.
Thus far I’ve only dipped my toe into the vast ocean, but I’ve spent the majority of the past three days involved in Gecko OS, which for those of you who didn’t click the link eleven words ago is basically this gen’s version of a GameShark/Action Replay. Compiling working HEX codes from a database that is largely unrelegated and haphazardly strewn together is not a lot of fun, but it is a learning experience. Not a whole lot of experience, mind you, but some; I still have no idea how to read HEX coding or customize it myself, but I now have a basic understanding that is rather helpful (I still cannot figure out how the hell to get button activators to work though!).
My walk into the garden has only extended into the realm of infinity meters (HP, Stamina, statuses, items, etc), but it so far has helped me become a better hunter. I’m using the loss of fear of death to focus on and study my opponent so that I can realize exactly which moments can be utilized for attacking, and which for dodging. Once I’m satisfied, I’ll negate the cheats and go through the same process again to cement it into my reflexes. Of course, I’m also using some for fun, like the aforementioned size mod. To my disappointment, the only working code I’ve found either makes the boss monster absurdly tiny (to the point where they cannot be seen), or slightly larger but impossible to hit accurately. Oh, let’s not forget FUGGIN’ MASSIVE. There are four options, and I’ve yet to find an in-between HEX that works with Gecko. So it’s not quite as good as the Riivolution patch, but it’s a work-in-progress!
So that’s how my weekend was. How about yours?
Day 8 – @Lights – The Geeky Musical Artist
If you haven’t heard of this amazing girl then you need to check her out on her website.
Lights is a 24 year old Canadian artist who currently has two of her own album’s out after originally writing music for others. She creates a sort of electropop music that sounds much like a combination of modern pop with a great synth sound to it. Not only does she sing and play her music but she also creates these great music videos that, most of the time, have a cool magic element to them.
Her music is fantastic, but it’s her personality that really gets me. You can find out more about that in the interview below, but also in her video blogs that she does every once in a while. She will sing acoustically her songs after she has talked about something that she just wanted to say, and it’s always fun to just listen to people like that.
I just love how she looks at things in such a great way.
Edit/Add-On that I forgot about because I was in a hurry:
LIGHTS has an interesting collection idea that I think is amazing. Every time that she goes through what she believes to be a big part of her life she buys a knife/sword for herself. It’s an awesome idea that I am kind of jealous I didn’t think of.
Example:
I really don’t have much to actually say about her other than that you should know about her and should definitely check her out.
She also has a unique manager, seen here:
TenFox Productions 