@Jon I thought she did great in the Resident Evil movies and that's how I know her best. That first RE movie was a favorite of mine, and a lot of that had to do with the awesome soundtrack. Now I've seen that they're making a RE reboot. Honestly, I don't care, zombies really aren't my "thing." I don't really like them, they're everywhere in too much of everything IMHO. Yet I own many of the RE games on the GameCube.

LOL @Will_Ball is that bad or good? I liked the Transformers movies I saw, but I missed at least one of them, particularly Bumblebee. I like the dinosaur ones I didn't really know about as a kid. I didn't follow Transformers too much. I think I was more into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, He-Man, and X-Men.

Oh! I had a neat theory, what if the people were transported to the Monster Hunter world by Kirin, since he's the elder dragon associated w/ thunder and thunder is how they're transported to the world. maybe he brings them to that world to fight another elder dragon or just to be general monster hunters, perhaps the monsters are taking over and need culling. I think it should really piss off some characters and make them break stuff, cuz damn I hated fighting Kirin at first! I broke a controller or two fighting it. Yeah, I love MH:W but it is a game that has really pissed me off. LOL I haven't played in a while though, although this trailer really makes me want to play it more. I haven't finished the Iceborne content. After watching this trailer, I felt pretty excited and am looking forward to seeing the movie. Ron Perlman is playing the Admiral, BTW.

@Will_Ball well I think I saw two or three and I think I liked them. I think have the first on Blu-Ray, if so it was probably one of the first Blu-Ray discs I bought. I haven't seen it in forever though. I don't know if I've watched any of them in the last decade or five years.

Release date: 12/30/20 (via Google search)

It seems I missed it. The Internet told me yesterday that the movie was actually released ahead of time on 12/18/20. The Blu-Ray is expected to be released in March, so I'm going to have to wait. I found at least one source that contained some things worth noting. I saw that it was released much earlier in China. Apparently the reviews aren't great, kind of mixed. I (briefly) read criticism of underdeveloped characters. Also, China found some dialogue that they found offensive and halted it's circulation. Although I also read that the CG was good. I still intend to watch it when I can.

I don't know if it's still going on, but Monster Hunter: World had an event going on w/ the movie, in which you play two quests as the main female character in the movie. She uses dual blades by default and I never tried that weapon type, so I was surprised that I was actually able to complete the event quests.

Cool! Well, maybe I'll have to write something about it. Thanks for the encouragement!

2/16! https://www.gamespot.com/articles/monster-hunter-movie-releases-on-home-video-february-16/1100-6487046/

So, I just watched Monster Hunter and thought I’d share my thoughts (most especially since Jon expressed interest in the movie). I haven’t recently read reviews, but I remember bits of what I read previously. Apparently, the movie wasn’t received well and China, specifically, took issue with it. One thing I read that I remember was that there a line in which China deemed to be offensive. From the quote of it I read, I could definitely see it that way. Fortunately, however, I didn’t ever hear the line spoken, so I can only assume that it was (gratefully) removed.

Reviews don’t really matter to me. I find myself appreciating and enjoying movies much more than the majority of others. That noted, I didn’t think it was a bad movie, but I was disappointed with the ending. In my opinion, the movie ended too abruptly. I was not expecting the end when it happened. I even said something aloud expressing my surprise and disappointment. It ended on a bit of a cliff hanger, which seems to pretty much suggest that there’s going to be a follow up. Although, I’m afraid that might not happen seeing as how it wasn’t received well from what I recall seeing months ago.

Still, I enjoyed it and I think the fact that I was disappointed in its abrupt ending perhaps shows that I was enjoying it. There were things I enjoyed and things I didn’t. I really loved seeing and hearing familiar monsters like Diablos and Rathalos, monsters I’m familiar with from my game play of Monster Hunter: World. Diablos was slightly confusing, because it looked like both the regular Diablos and Black Diablos. The latter is the female and the two do not get along (who knows how they mate). However, there were two smaller creatures that I didn’t recognize, which makes me wonder if they were from other Monster Hunter games. There was a third monster that I didn’t recognize.

I decided to watch the trailer again after the movie to test an idea I had, which was wrong. I’m disappointed to say that the entire movie is pretty much within that trailer. I think if you watch the movie, you’ll perhaps see some things coming as I did, but probably more so after watching the trailer.

There are some other minor bits that I enjoyed, because they came straight out of the game series. Yes, there is a Palico. In case you’re not aware, a Palico is a human sized cat. The only one you see is the chef that you see in the games, but is a bit more skinny and scruffier. I did like how it pretty much performed the same actions you see the chef Palico perform in Monster Hunter: World. I also liked the inclusion of the Slinger, which is a weapon which attaches to your arm and allows you to shoot a projectile with an attachment. This allows you to shoot at something and pull yourself closer to it. This is a handy tool in the games as it often helps you get around. You can also shoot projectiles with it. Even though the weapons that appeared in the movie were limited, I still enjoyed that there was a bit of a variety in use. The Dual Blades looked awesome and bigger than I expected.

It looks like the movie is available on a few different streaming platforms at the moment, so you can catch it before it’s release on Blu-Ray. If you like the game series, then you might want to check this out. I’m not really sure how people who haven’t played any of the games would think about it.

Alas, for those of you who own a Nintendo Switch, you should probably check out the free demo available for Monster Hunter Rise, which will be released on 3/26/21. I believe the Switch is actually getting two Monster Hunter games soon (sorry, not MH: World).

Monster Hunter Rise demo and release info: https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/2020/try-out-monster-hunter-rise-with-a-free-limited-time-demo/

P.S. Wow, I keep hitting that character limit for posts and comments!

Yeah, I think my main issue with it was that I wanted more. I wanted to see more monsters, and more of the wide variety of weapon types. The movie did make me think more about the armor monsters have. If bullets seem to do nothing, then how do blades work so well? It doesn't quite make sense. Heck, the beginning of the movie battled me, too, as we see a ship sailing through a desert. I'm sure in MH:W, you start the game out in an air ship.

What is your interest in Monster Hunter? Have you played any of the games yet? MH:W was my first and I found it enjoyable, although also quite frustrating while I tried to take on tough monsters alone. Vinny now has a PS4 and the game, but sadly it's not a cross-platform game.

There's a new Monster Hunter animated series coming to Netflix. I like it mostly because of the Monsters I saw that I'm familiar with. For instance, the Elder Dragon they're talking about is a beautiful blue lion and of course I love her! Check out the trailer: https://youtu.be/PqFjjs_qNn4

I may have forgotten about WarCraft III. I don't have it, yet. It'd be cool if they remastered the first two. These games (WarCraft and C&C) came out about the same time.

Oh wow I didn't know about the WarCrafts on GOG. As for Dune 2, man I enjoyed that game! I tried to play Dune 2000 recently and ended up doing a "rage quit." I actually finally did the same thing to Tiberian Sun, because I felt like if I have to watch a video to see how to do every mission, then I'm not really enjoying the game. I only watched videos for a few missions in the Remastered Collection. I admit my strategy was simple and usually effective, though repetitive. I still had fun though! Now I don't know how I played these games w/out YouTube. Shoot, I barely had Internet service in the Dune2/C&C/Warcraft days, though I had friends playing them, too.

After a small break, I returned to Tiberian Sun. It was odd that the mission I stopped on never came back up, since I restarted. I just finished the Firestorm Nod campaign, so I'm done w/ the all the campaigns. It's good that it's playable, once you figure out how to get it to work properly, which isn't too difficult. It could use a "fresh coat of paint" or remaster like C&C and RA, but after about 20 years it's still not bad, or that's what I think anyway.

I've now moved on to Red Alert 2 and found out that my version that came w/ C&C: The First Decade works just fine w/out any tinkering. My native and max resolution for my monitor is 1920X1200 and that's what I'm used to. However, I've decided to keep the game at the minimal resolution of 640X480 (16 bit only available). This is because the game play itself looks a bit better when increasing the resolution, but I don't want to be zoomed out too much where my units look too tiny. Also, if I use 800X600, the main menu looks fine and normal full screen, but movies or cutscenes get a black border around them, which I don't like. Increasing the resolution beyond this point puts a border around the menu and increases the one around the movies. You can get "hi-res" to work and it's not hard, but nothing I found made the movies stretch. There are settings for that, but they don't work. I tried the Origin version and while it appears to be the same version number, it doesn't behave the same way. If you change the resolution on that one then colors get inverted and the menu gets put into a smaller box in the upper left hand corner. There are compatibility fixes for this game and you can enable some compatibility options by selecting them in the properties of the .exe files, especially "run in compatibility mode for Windows 7" or XP or 95, run it in 16 bit color, since it doesn't go above that, and "run as administrator." To me, it was just a quick simple search on the web of how to run RA2 on Windows 10 and instructions weren't very complicated. Still, I don't think it looks too bad and I think I've forgotten over the last two decades just how fun this game is.