Monster Hunter: World

Capcom’s creature feature finally hits it big 

- Dave Meikleham

 

Despite launching back in 2004, Capcom’s beastie bashing series has never really found a home on Xbox. Sure, spin-offs such as Monster Hunter Frontier G popped up on 360, but for almost 15 years, Team Green has been denied a full-fat mainline entry… until now. Enter the first game in the beloved action-RPG franchise that’s actively looking to lure in Western players with its kickass ways. 

For those who’ve never experienced the series’ campy brand of dinos laying slaughter, let’s run through an average hour in Monster Hunter: World. After creating a hunter with the game’s awesomely exhaustive character creator, you head out into thick, humid jungles, prehistoric deserts, and gloriously gaudy coral-strewn canyons with the goal of killing or capturing critters. Next, you scour the land for telltale clues of your target—a footprint here, a viciously clawed rock there—before letting a bunch of luminous scoutflies lead you to the monster in question. Once you track down the furry/ feathery/scaly culprit, it’s time to enter into quite the sizeable scrap.

Fight forever

Actually, perhaps that should be ‘seismic’ scrap. Make no mistake: Fights in Monster Hunter: World are epic (occasionally exhausting) affairs. Regardless of which of the 14 distinct weapon classes you choose, battling these behemoths is never brisk. Unless you team up with another three hunters using World’s pleasingly streamlined online features—more on that later—the game’s headline scuffles can often take in excess of 40 minutes to finish. Considering story-critical assignments impose a 50-minute time limit on pummeling proceedings, a frantic sense of hurried tension constantly looms large.