Monster Hunter 4: Ultimate released in the past week, and I’ve been engrossed by it since, leaving Majora’s Mask by the wayside, to collect dust in its box. Long story short: it was worth every penny. For more, read on.
Monster Hunter has always been pretty inaccessible, in my opinion. My first game in the series was Monster Hunter 2, on the PSP. It was a slow start, and I wasn’t able to the fun parts of the later sections of the game for very long, when I hit a wall fighting a tigrex and getting my butt handed to me over and over again. Fast-forward to Monster Hunter Tri, and I enjoyed it a bit more – the new Switch Axe especially – until its Online mode was shut-down, and I was forced to drop the game.
Thankfully, MH4 eschews my previous issues with the series – namely, the fact that rather than throwing you into the deep end of the pool, the game slowly introduces you to new pieces of information to help you hunt bigger and badder monsters. I actually got an explanation on Skills. Skills! I had no idea what those were the first time I had played a Monster Hunter game. These and other nuanced aspects of the game have been streamlined and explained in clearer detail in terms of preparation, making Monster Hunter 4 the best time to jump into what is historically a complicated series.
Which gives you more time to get to the meat of the game: hunting. This is what makes the grind of any Monster Hunter game worth it. The Monster Hunter series does away with any traditional aspects of “videogame bosses.” There are no healthbars to tell you how much damage you’re doing to one of the many great beasts you do battle with. There are no quicktime events that hold your hand through complicated gaming sequences. Instead, you watch for each monster’s tells: when it flicks its tails, when it limps to its nest to heal, when rears back to deliver the killing blow – these are your healthbars, your quicktime events, and these are what you use, along with skill and knowledge, to take down a beast.
Of the many games I’ve played, very few have as fulfilling of a moment as when you finally take down one of Monster Hunter’s towering hunks of flesh and fang for the first time, after a drawn-out encounter. Some battles can be grueling, going on for half an hour or longer, but the risk begets the reward. If you like story in your games, or a reason beyond better loot, Monster Hunter will probably not be for you. But for those who want to kill a dragon and make a giant sword out of its bones – well, you’ve come to the right place, I’d say.
That being said: if you love Monster Hunter, you’ve probably already picked its fourth iteration up. But for those of you on the fence, you’ve got nothing to lose – nothing to lose, that is, but dozens of hours going toe to toe with some of the coolest enemies in any game. Grab a copy, grab some friends, and join one of the greatest gaming communities I’ve had the pleasure of being introduced to to hunt some giant monsters. Maybe I’ll see you online!
Eight-Bit Samurai 