Stars: 4/5
With the burden of midterms weighing heavily on all of us, finding new ways to relieve stress is an important part of any college student’s life. Recently, slaying giant monsters in Capcom’s newest edition to its “Monster Hunter” game series: “Monster Hunter: World.”
The player is a young, fresh-faced hunter traveling to the New World via the Research Commission, a group dedicated to the study of the various wildlife that live in this mysterious new land.
Like all of my favorite games, “Monster Hunter: World” allows for character customization to make your player experience more personal. This aspect has an added bonus in the form of the player’s constant companion. Players have Palicoes – small cat-like creatures — that they are able to customize and name who follow them on their treks across the New World.
Your character, from the start, is given a partner simply called The Handler, who guides you through the tutorial, and later informs you of quests assigned by the Commander – the man in charge of the operations of the Research Commission in their bustling settlement of Astera.
At my point of progress in the game, I interact the most with the Handler, the Commander and a man called the Field Team Leader. These three — along with my Palico, whom I named Spoons — are the major components guiding my character through the game’s story mode.
As much as I have enjoyed the game so far, getting used to the different control style has been a bit of a challenge. The button I’m used to using as an attack key instead switches my weapon of choice between its two forms: an enormous axe or a semi-magical sword. After “fainting” — only once, I’m proud to admit – I started to more-or-less get the hang of my lack of attack options and began slashing through big lizard-like monsters left and right.
The weapons options themselves are relatively varied even for lower level players, and they don’t force you to choose one fighting specialization for the whole game. Astera hosts a smithy where your player can turn in their findings to upgrade their current equipment or build new, more powerful items.
The landscape and creatures of the New World resemble a colorful, lizard-filled combination of “Jurassic Park” and James Cameron’s “Avatar.” With such a recent release, the game’s graphics are high-quality and add an even more magical quality to the variety of plants and monsters strewn throughout the landscape.
What has the internet in love with this title, however, is its focus on online play and cooperation. Without an Xbox Live Gold subscription, unfortunately, this part of the game was closed off to me.
But, for the YouTube streamers, casual gamers and everyone in between, the online multiplayer boss-battle aspect of “Monster Hunter: World” is key in what has made the game so popular.
While I still have miles to go in terms of leveling up my character, I’m looking forward to spending an hour hunting monsters for every hour I spend studying for my midterms.
