Though this only occurred within the past couple years, I am a big fan of the Monster Hunter games - specifically starting with 4 Ultimate, and recently with Generations. I tried once to get into 3 Ultimate, but I really didn't understand the game, and I didn't enjoy it in the slightest. In fact, I hated the experience, and swore off the games. When 4 came out, I saw how much fun some of my favorite youtubers were having playing the game, and seeing as there was a demo available, I reluctantly decided to give it a second shot. And I hated it. I told myself I would swear it off again, but I kept seeing how much fun people were having with it. So I tried it again.
This occurred a total of five times. Five times I tried Monster Hunter, and four times I despised it. I hated everything about it. I hated how long hunts took. I hated how slow I moved. I hated how long animations lasted. I hated how throwing out an attack locked me into position for so long, and left me open and vulnerable. But I kept trying different weapons, because unlike so many other games I have played, the different weapons in Monster Hunter all play vastly different. And on the fifth try, I found a weapon that clicked with me. Finally the game made sense to me. And having finished a single hunt with a weapon I actually enjoyed, I decided to buy the game.
I sunk over a couple hundred hours into Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, and I didn't regret a second of it. I loved the constant sense of progress as I made new weapons and armors from the monsters I utterly decimated. And the longer I played the game, the better I got, and the more I understood.
Eventually I went back and tried some of the weapons that I had passed over before. Where they had once been aggravating and useless in my hands, they had become fun and varied and deadly. Some of them I still did not enjoy, sure, but my eyes had been opened from so many. When I switched over to Generations, I had gone from having only a single weapon I had any interest in to wanting to use roughly half of the ones available. And that's a lot of time, money, and resources you have to sink in order to play like that. But it is so worthwhile to me I hardly give it a second thought as I trudge onwards.
I realized recently that this is the progress that I need to make in my real life. It sounds weird to say that, that I learned a valuable life lesson from a video game, but I really feel like I did. As many of the fans of the game say, I need to "git gud." I need to not expect to have my hand held along the way. I need to take each failure as a learning experience, and push on, ever fighting the good fight to move forward until I am a paragon of my craft. I need to be willing to try new things, and things that I once hated. To give them a second try with an honest mind and open eyes. I need to be ok with the possibility that I was wrong about them before. And perhaps a third, fourth, or fifth try. To be determined to accomplish what I set out to do, and let nothing stand in my way of doing so. To see the new obstacles that appear suddenly and without warning in my life as new challenges to which I should throw myself and overcome, rather than running away in fear.
In short, I need to be a hunter.
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