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| Release: January 26, 2018 Platforms:PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC(eventually) |
Story: You are a hunter being sent to investigate an island that attracts elder dragons to it. You goal is to figure out why they are attracted to it. This is the plan until one of the dragons your hunting wrecks your ship and you need to go put it down. This leads to you going on a quest to kill whats essentially Godzilla before he can kill himself. You also don't actually kill this monster either you just bully him until he gets sad and leaves, that's what he gets for messing with your boat.
Gameplay: Going into detail about every possible play style would take quite some doing and I will go into a few below. The basic break down is you take a quest or bounty to kill a monster or 3. Each monster has various strengths and weakness' and movesets. Each is essentially a boss fight with differing moves or environmental factors to take into account.
Graphics: This game is very pretty especially given its predecessors being locked to lower hardware or handhelds for so long. I was really impressed when I switched from framerate mode to graphics mode to run it in 4k. As a side note not honestly to much difference in performance between the modes I would recommend running in graphics setting with that being the case.
What they did well:
Monster variety: They did a good job creating a really varied cast of monsters with vastly different fight styles. Some are smaller more nimble others are large and tanky, yet others still turn into B-52 bombers. There isn't any monsters that really don't fall under tough but fair. There are a couple exceptions but honestly with time most can be learned.
Weapon variety: There are 15 different weapon types each with multiple play styles and dozens of builds. Most of my experience falls into the Insect glaive. The glaive is a very aerial based weapon that also features a ranged attack in the form of a command-able insect which can power you up. Minus the insect its like playing Titanfall and Dark souls simultaneously.
Meowscular Chef: Just look a the one real monster in the game
Open maps: While MHW is my first venture into the series a series staple I did know of is the segmented maps with loading screens between each area. Thankfully this is something the series left behind with its newest iteration.
Gear design: I really appreciate just how varied the gear designs are my only wish is that you could change the perks on the gear by default or use them as cosmetic only over your real gear.
Cats and Cat Puns: I like how the game compensates solo or duo players by giving them a cat companion who fights by their side and can provide things like healing items or another source of damage. The best thing though is litterally all the dialogue the cats have includes at least one ameowsing pun
What could have been better:
Endgame content: While there are a lot of monsters the endgame comes down to hunting the same few elder dragons or possibly the slightly upgraded "tempered" enemies. Once you have your desired gear or weapons you don't have much incentive to keep moving forward. Unless you get real into Great Jagras speedruns/genocide.
Nergigante and the mysterious hitbox: The monster and its fight aren't necessarily hard but he does have one move that is immensely hard to dodge mainly due to it hitting many places that his body doesn't even come near.
Bazelgeuse: If theres one enemy to complain about its B-52 bomber himself. While not necessarily overpowered, its certainly one of the most obnoxious enemies that will consistently interfere with fights. When fighting higher tier versions it pretty much stays in its powered up state making fights incredibly tedious. Fuck you Bagel juice.
Overall : 8.8
