Recent reviews by H0resT

+

Decent entry to the series. If you have performance problems, buy a better GPU ;)

Ending is pretty terrible. No mandatory boss fight & felt too short. :/

solid

10/10 would recommend

Too many problems

Painfully honest review:
I have been playing Monster Hunter games for the past 12 years, including mainly PSP and Nintendo Wii iterations.


Monster Hunter as a game - explanation
Overall, Monster Hunter is a game in which you hunt creatures of various kinds in boss-like fights. This creates the core gameplay of the entire game. In order to hunt these monsters, you can pick up to three friends (four players in total) to hunt monstrous creatures amongst which you will find similarities to Dinosours, Dragons and lizards, but also huge monsters like a vulcano! To fight these monsters, you pick one out of 14 weapon classes, which you can switch out at any time. There are no classes per say in this game, but only weapon types you choose before starting a hunt at the main hub (Astera, the city). Fights happen in instances with usually 50 minutes time. The hunts take place in astonishingly beautiful maps that are rich of ambient life! However, this game does not feature an open world.
Clearly, the stars of this game are its monsters and the incredibly atmospheric hunts as each hunt plays differently. Killing and carving monsters allows you to gather materials like shells or claws in order to craft both armor and new weapons (within these 14 weapon types). The grind-spiral in this game is a lot more interesting and rewarding in comparison to many other games.

Difficulty
Monster Hunter World is a very accessible game with a lot of depth to it. Overall, your game time will usually range from 100-2000 hours, depending on whether or not you adore the game. At first, the game guides you really well through its world and its mechanics. Even I as a veteran enjoyed getting a reintroduction to the mechanics. While you progress through the story and the game, I never felt like the game is leaving me behind. There are indeed some secrets the game doesn't tell me, but that's really part of the magic behind the game. If you, dear reader, remember the times when one would use a "walkthrough magazine" for games like Pokemon to crack all the secrets, this game is definitely for you! Nevertheless, Monster Hunter turns out to be very challenging the further you get!

I was personally afraid of getting a dumbed down game. Monster Hunter used to be a mainly Japanese IP for the past decade with imports of Nintendo iterations coming to the west. Monster Hunter World, however, has been optimized to target a western player base. My fears derived from the general game developers' assumption that European / American players would prefer a more casual, easy and accessible game, but I was wrong! I can't pinpoint it, but the game does not feel easier to me than Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) for example. Surely, this is my own personal opinion and others have voiced there opinion about this iteration being too easy, which I definitely cannot confirm.

Story
I keep this very short. The game does not feature an immense story like Witcher 3 or Life is Strange or Detroit: Become Human etc.
This game really doesn't have potential for an overly great story. The monsters are the stars in this game and they get highlighted in an appropriat manner, which is why the story focuses around them and does not go into any detail with charcters.

However, if you can live with a story not featuring a lot of human character development, the story overall is very well done in my opinion. Overall, the game does have a bigger story and plays in a universe for itself, in which all the previous Monster Hunter titles also have taken place in. This title intensively focuses on "the migration of monsters to the new world every 10 years", solving the secrets of this phenomenon. I do believe this sounds really intersting and the implementation of this is very well done.
The story in general does pose a supportive role to make the gameplay look and feel more authentic.

Performance
Now this topic is juicy. What is a well-running game and what is an optimized game? To me, optimization in regards to performance means to bring a game up to current hardware standards, which means that a game is runnable on most hardware on current FPS / resolution standards. On August 14, 2018 (the day I am writting this review), what I consider a solid standard would be this: "A singleplayer / COOP game like Monster Hunter World should run with at least 60 FPS on a GeForce GTX 1050ti on acceptable graphics settings that still make the game look alright, while eSports titles should run on 150+ FPS on mentioned hardware, taken the resolution is set to 1080p (1920x1080)." That is my personal opinion on current tech standards.

Does the game comply with these standards? Well I believe it does. Using a 1050ti (and a comparable CPU), the game does run with 60+ FPS on low-medium settings, which still make the game look stunning. Overall, there have been many complains about the game's performance. To be fair to those people complaining, the requirements are potentially higher than expected. However, are the justified? I believe so. During hunts, there are a lot of effects going on due to the very vivid environent.

Now what do I consider well-running? This, to me, means that a game runs smooth given that proper hardware is used. Since I am using an Intel Core i7 8700K@4.7Ghz and an Asus Strix GTX 1080ti (from Nvidia) along with 16GB of 3200DDR4 RAM, I am able to run the game at 80-130FPS on maximum settings. Now according to my definition, does the game run smooth? Hell yes, it does! My FPS never tank and I never have stutters or anything. Given that you have proper hardware for this game and you have optimized your graphics settings, you won't have any issues with the game.
- To those having issues with the game crashing, a potential solution might be a driver update as Nvidia and AMD both released a new driver version optimizing Monster Hunter World's performance


Controls
Let's cut to the chase: Using a controller for this game is just an amazing experience. I am a PC gamer used to mouse & keyboard, but I had an old controller flying around, so I grabbed it and voilá. Controller works so well for this game that it is just a pleasure to sit back in the chair, possibly use my TV as an output device and just sit back and play.

What about mouse & keyboard? I can't neglect the fact that the game is using a technique to this day that makes mouse movement just emulating a controller. However, feedback has been passed on to the developers and I am pretty sure there are plans for direct mouse input in the works. Nonetheless, I was forced to play with mouse & keyboard for the past 48 hours and it is really playable. I don't think anybody should be overly concerned just because he / she doesn't own a controller. The game is very playable with ordinary computer peripherals. I personally can't rely to those who refunded this game and gave negative reviews because of its mouse & keyboard implementation. Monster Hunter World is not a competitive eSports title, neither does it feature any PvP, which is why even mouse smoothing is tolerable I would dare to say (Keep in mind there might be a solution for this sole issue anyways).




Conclusion
Would I consider Monster Hunter World to be a bad console port? Not at all, clearly not at all. Controls are very acceptable! I believe one should not worry about a smoothed mouse movement (although a fix might be in the works). If you have a controller at hand, feel free to make use of it! Fortunately, for me my old USB Controller worked pretty well, even when I plugged it in and out mid-game.

I would rate this game with a 10/10 as there are hardly any other games on the market that really give you the feeling that you just purchased a fully developed game worth every penny / cent. As far as it goes, the developers plan on realeasing regular free content updates over the course of the next months / years.

- The car looks good actually, don´t know what people are complaining about. I think the video is simply a rendertrailer, so more shaders and stuff, but the car itself looks like in the video honestly.
- Indeed, the sound is not like in the video, but who cares?
- It´s a cosmetic, nothing more. Inspect the car on Youtube first and then decide. No advantages, just some nice stuff when you have some extra money. Don´t expect too much
- I can still recommend it because the car looks sick though

10/10