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Last month I took the plunge and bought Monster Hunter Freedom 4, after the traditional probationary period of looking on resentfully while people rhapsodise about it on Twitter. Amongst other things, this has meant wrestling once again with my launch model 3DS's lack of a second analog stick. Can you recall console gaming before the advent of analog stick controllers? I genuinely can't imagine how we pulled it off. Strafing around corners must have felt like feeding your hand through a vending machine in search of a reluctant Snickers. Moving the cursor in an RTS must have felt like steering an F1 car with your feet. As I suggested in last week's Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor retrospective, however, limitations of this sort can be opportunities to discover something about features or mechanics we take for granted. In MHF4's case, I've developed a new appreciation for how important even the most basic surround sound effects can be in a game with long recovery animations, roving packs of velociraptors, and a camera system that often feels like it's sitting back to eat popcorn. And besides, it could be worse. I could be playing the original Armored Core.
Armored Core was "ahead of its time" in the sense that it felt like a game from the future that had elected, out of some howling, trans-dimensional spite, to become magically playable on old hardware that isn't quite up to the task. Worshippers had to contend with a couple of seemingly irreconcilable truths: (1) that Armored Core is a nippy 3D mech combat game with aerial fighting in which you must keep a target on-screen and in range to acquire a lock, and (2) that Armored Core is a game in which you look up and down by tapping the shoulder buttons. Did I mention that it's a From Software title? Because you've probably guessed.
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