Tweet
Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate makes me feel like a kid again - and sometimes, being a kid can be a real pain. Every school day you're overloaded with a flurry of information that you find yourself only half paying attention to, monetary income is sparse, and time always moves just a little too slow as you await the next exciting life change. But then you get to fight dinosaurs in a video game.I'm not sure what it is about dinosaurs that makes them the best of all monsters to tackle. Comparatively, Nazis are boring, robots too conceptual, and magic-casting demons too far-fetched. Even though little is known about our planet's prior residents, they feel real to us. We occupy a world full of grizzly bears, crocodiles, hippos and lions, so encountering toothy, leathery variations of these beasts isn't that hard to imagine. They're fun to fight not because they're evil, but because trying to eat one another seems natural. They have teeth and tails and venom, while we have swords and hammers and bows. It's a fair fight that's fraught with desperation, but lacking in malice.
That's how Capcom can make a game about slaughtering wildlife and have it feel shockingly non-violent. Set in an array of plucky, colourful tribal villages, Capcom's Monster Hunter is perhaps the most jovial game series ever made about survival. There is a plot, but it's of a threadbare sort and focuses on defeating some particularly nasty threats impeding various townsfolk. By and large, you're not hunting to stop an ancient evil, or for sport. You're just going out there to hunt because you and your brethren need food and clothing made from the neighbouring predators - creatures that are portrayed with a surprising reverence.
Read more…
More...