Monster Hunter: World trailer shows off feline friends
What if cats are the real monsters
I wish my cat was more like those in Monster Hunter: World, the upcoming dino-pant crafting action-RPG that's making its PC debut next year. Not once has she cooked me a delicious artisanal steak, nor joined me on my monster hunting expeditions riding a tiny lizard monster of her own. Her only skills are plaintive meowing and dog taming, which is admittedly fairly impressive for a real-world feline - though I'll cop to being a little biased.
Sorry, you're probably here to hear about the latest Monster Hunter trailer rather than my pets, aren't you? It's just below the jump, and shows off what you can get up to with your Palico pals.
Those customisation tools look decent, and of course have me wondering how close a facsimile to my own cats I'll be able to create. I'm torn between going for that or trying to push the character creator to its limits - red pandas and raccoons certainly seem feasible, but what lies beyond those?
That trailer also features Meowscular Chef, a Palico who's devoted his life to cooking rather than monster bashing. With food that looks this good, I think he made the right choice.
When Adam played it back in September, he was pleased to find a mix of brutal fights and gruesome crafting with more lighthearted antics:
"Despite the physicality of the combat, it’s often very cute and approachable, with that paddling cat and the merry simplicity of the camping sequences, where you craft new gear from the parts of your fallen foes and make meals to buff you for your next outing. But the actual fights are intimidating in their length, demanding endurance and concentration, and there’s a whole lot to see and do. And let’s not forget that you’re making armour and weapons out of the corpses of the things you hunt. It might be bloodless, but it’s an icky business, this monster hunting."
Dominic Tarason, a veteran monster slayer, was impressed with the 20 minutes of gameplay footage we got to peek at last month.
"This footage sets my last fears over Monster Hunter: World to rest. This is the Monster Hunter I’ve known and loved (in spite of its many flaws) since the PS2 era, now with almost all of those thorny design issues removed. One thing that seems especially improved to me is the verticality of the game. It’s not so much that there are platforms and ledges, but natural variances in height, and very few truly flat pieces of ground. The fact that the monsters navigate so gracefully across this terrain is a testament to Capcom’s animators."
Those animators have done a good job with the smaller stuff, too. Just look at 'em!
Monster Hunter: World is coming to consoles on January 28th, with a PC release to follow at an unknown later date.