Well, the new information about the latest in the long series of Pokemon games is here. Not a lot, but there's supposed to be some more at E3, where the Treehouse will be showing it off, along with whatever the new Zelda is.

News from serebii, and stuff The Pokemon Company dropped.

July 15th. That's when Generations drops. It's a little later than I expected, as I predicted a late June release, though to be honest, the July release wasn't too far off. With Anime Revolution in the first week of August, I think I'll be able to get decent enough to show some moves in multiplayer when the con rolls around. I suspect that Gunner weapons will be a bit of an uncommon sight that early into the game's release, as most people tend to go for the more numerous Blademaster weapons.

Historically, I've played Monster Hunter from new game starting with a weapon want to learn, but end up moving to a weapon I know to make the early game grind easier. For this game, I'm planning to do something I've never done before: start with a Gunner weapon. See, for many Blademasters, we'd play through the game, and it's common to (and recommended to) pick up different weapons to keep things fresh and for tactical advantages. Most of the time, however, we'll pick up a Gunner weapon late in the game, get okay with using it, and really only use it against monsters we know are hard to deal with up close, like Najarala or Chameleos. It's a pocket weapon, one you pull out for specific situaitons.

This time, I'm starting with the Gunner weapon. I can do fine with my Blademaster weapon(s) of choice. I've put so much time into learning the ins and outs of the Charge Blade and Lance that I doubt I'll have much trouble getting back into them. Whatever weapon to choose to stick with from the start is the one you'll (hopefully) learn the best, so I'm hoping to be able to blast my way through the Village quests and be the uncommon gunner in Multiplayer, which I'm hoping to embrace more from the get-go this time around.

I'll run down my thoughts on the weapons and other things about the game closer to the release.

PS It's been a while since I last updated around here. Between preparing for an audition for school, and my laptop breaking down, I haven't had a lot of time. Writing on my iPad is fine, but getting images up is a real pain on that thing, so I just held out until my laptop came back from repairs.

Dark Souls has always fascinated me with it's designs. Everything generally looks and feels coherent and well thought out. Things are grotesque, and yet have an air of majesty to them. The art book goes into more detail about the designs of enemies, armour and locations in the game.

Anywho, what better way to celebrate the beautiful designs of Dark Souls, than to faithfully recreate the intricately etched Greatsword of Artorias, one of the major figures in the lore of Dark Souls.

It's not the first "big blade" they've forged, but it might just be the most detailed with numerous embossed and engraved designs across the blade. The gorgeous contrast between the silver edges, and the dark blade makes the designs pop out more prominently. Massive props to Man At Arms Reforged (Baltimore Knife and Sword) for the amazing work on this beast of a blade.

If you want to dive more into the lore of Dark Souls, I recommend looking up Vaati and EpicNameBro (ENB) up on Youtube for their respective takes on the lore. If you're feeling particular free of things to do, MoonlightButterfly has cut together a masive feature length "movie", following the various characters of the game. It's an impressive feat that helps tie all of the game's stories together into a single (albeit very lengthy) package.

Welcome back to Salty Huntin', a series where I rant about dumb stuff that's in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. It's a great game, but riles me up so much when the game doesn't do things I want it to, or when monsters have advantages against a majority of the weapon types.

Welcome to what's hopefully to become somewhat long running series. Here I'm planning to write some reviews of some games I've enjoyed on the 3DS as the system turns 5 years old. A lot of these games will be pretty old, some from the system's early line up, and some released last month. It's not a comprehensive list of what's good on the 3DS, but rather a list of games I've played, liked and think that people who haven't tried them  really should give these a shot. I'm aiming for a 1 game every other day schedule so hopefully I can keep that up for a good week or two.

Most of the games are games that most 3DS owners probably have. Some of them are a little more niche. First up: Animal Crossing New Leaf.

At the moment, the many monsters of the Monster Hunter are categorized  by their general physical characteristics. Taking a quick look at any of the monsters, you'd be able to generally put them into the right "classes". However, some of those matches don't work out particularly well, while there are some classes that have seemingly been created for a single monster (here's looking at you, Zinogre).

My goal here is to reclassify the monsters, including the enigmatic Elder Dragons, into groups more indicative of the monsters' physiological characteristics.

Looking over the list in the game, there are some oddities, like Akantor and Ukanlos (both are Flying Wyverns), whose wings are, even in an vestigal sense, barely apparent. I hope that new monsters added in future games will fill out some of their more neglected classes, like the Fanged Wyverns, Snake Wyverns and the Temnocerna, as each of those classes are populated by a single large monster. Not much of a class if it's a class named for a single created for a single creature!

Welcome to Salty Hunting 4 Ultimate, henceforth referred to as SH4U. It's a rant corner about Monster Hunter 4U, which has eaten up about 400 hours of my life. Each post covers a different monster or topic that bugs me enough to warrant a longish rant.

I love this game, but as I've pointed out before, there's a lot of dumb shit that can really hamper your enjoyment of it. First up on the roast is the latest monster I've been farming, the mysterious elder dragon, Shagaru Magala.

Each of the elder dragons have a gimmick to their fight. Kushala has an annoying-as-fuck wind barrier. Chameleos has his invisibility, Teostra has the fire barrier and Kirin is basically Kelbidrome. Shagaru Magala's gimmick is the god awful explosions that appear when he's in rage mode.

Title: Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth
Developer: ATLUS
System: 3DS
Release Date (US/NA): 25/11/14

Yet another game in the Etrian Odyssey series, though this time, things get shaken up a whole lot.

Persona Q is a cross over between two of ATLUS titles: the memorable casts and core of Persona 3 and 4, with the frame and structuring of Etrian Odyssey. On previous installments of Backlog Gaming I finished EO4 and EOU1, and following those up with another similar game was sure to be an exercise in burn out. At least, that's what I thought. I was pleasantly surprised to find how different Persona Q feels from the Etrian Odyssey games. While the surface of the game is very similar, the fact that the game still uses core Persona systems in battle is enough to drastically change the feel of the game. I found the battle system to be familiar to the point where the skills characters learn are largely the same as in their original games. It's certainly best to go into this with Persona experience. While it largely is a stand alone title, the characters aren't given introductions, relying on the player's to have prior knowledge of their stories and personalities. It's a great title to sink hours into, Persona veteran or not.