In my first few hours with Monster Hunter Wilds, I fought towards a big spider in waters that have been as crimson as blood and dodged the onslaught of a twisting dragon amid a desert storm, full with highly effective strikes of lightning terrorizing the bottom round me. I went up towards sandworms and large apes and a toxic bug that would inflate itself whereas inflicting a cascade of explosions within the floor beneath. Each battle felt monumental — and the dimensions solely elevated the extra I performed.
This concentrate on spectacle is what units Wilds aside. The recreation is the follow-up to Monster Hunter World, which shook up the collection with a bigger, extra open world and catapulted it from Japanese phenomenon to world blockbuster. World went on to grow to be Capcom’s bestselling recreation ever, no small feat for the corporate behind Resident Evil and Street Fighter. Instead of fixing issues up as soon as once more, Wilds ups the ante and makes its monster battles really feel larger than ever.
The MonHun video games are all constructed round a selected gameplay cycle. You put together for a hunt by getting your gear so as, you head out and research your goal, and you then spend a very long time slowly whittling down the well being of an enormous monster earlier than killing it. Once it’s useless, you carve some items off the creature and head again house to forge new armor with it and begin the cycle yet again, solely extra highly effective this time. Also, you will have an enormous speaking cat that serves as your assistant.
Image: Capcom
Wilds follows this identical construction however strikes it to a brand new, largely uninhabited locale often called the Forbidden Lands. There’s a narrative about serving to a younger boy whose village was decimated and following a very harmful creature often called The White Wraith. Mostly, although, the story is simply an excuse to tackle more and more difficult hunts throughout this surprisingly various panorama.
There are a number of new particulars to Wilds. A concentrating on system helps you to actually concentrate on a specific a part of a monster’s physique in battle, so you possibly can open up a wound and hack away at it to trigger a lot of injury. You may retailer a second weapon sort in your mount, opening extra choices in fight, since weapons vastly decide your playstyle. And after all, there are new monsters and objects and places. You begin out in a barren desert, however the Forbidden Lands finally opens as much as embody locales like a lush jungle teeming with wildlife and a volcanic oil subject that appears ripped out of a postapocalyptic future.
What’s actually completely different this time round, although, is how large and cinematic the battles really feel. You’ve all the time fought towards large beasts in MonHun — that’s form of the entire level — however right here, extra care has been put towards the backdrop. The motion set items are ripped proper out of a blockbuster film, they usually all have their very own really feel. That might imply the virtually horror-like sensation of that spider swiping at you whereas your imaginative and prescient is stuffed with crimson or going through off towards a beast throughout a dramatic downpour with the wind creating enormous waves crashing down throughout you. These moments will be terrifying, thrilling, or thrilling — and infrequently all three on the identical time.
Image: Capcom
In a variety of methods, Wilds represents the MonHun crew slowly perfecting its extra trendy components. It by no means represents a dramatic change, which implies it could nonetheless be a bit of inflexible in locations, significantly relating to futzing with menus to make use of all the numerous objects at your disposal. More than as soon as, I by accident whipped out my moveable barbecue in the course of a tense battle as a result of I hit the incorrect button. But for probably the most half, that is probably the most accessible MonHun to this point, and one which builds on the open-world basis laid down by World, together with extra seamless transitions between areas that makes it really feel like one large, cohesive place.
Even in its first actual competitors with 2023’s Wild Hearts, which infused monster looking with Fortnite-like constructing, Wilds exhibits that there’s nonetheless nothing fairly like the joys of a hunt in MonHun. They will be exhausting and difficult and, at instances, irritating; my thumb stays sore from all the rolling and dodging I’ve accomplished over the previous week. But it’s additionally immensely satisfying to truly pull off taking down one among its large beasts, a mixed sense of aid and pleasure that few different experiences can replicate. Wilds doesn’t change any of that — it makes it really feel even larger.
Monster Hunter Wilds launches February twenty eighth on PC, PS5, and Xbox.
