Wi-Philes

I don't know if you know this, but the life dream of all human beings is to hunt and kill gigantic dinosaurs.

This is me everyday irl

Fortunately for us, Capcom has taken up the mantle of providing aspiring hunters around the world with the means to satisfy their monster-killing itch. Monster Hunter 3 for the Nintendo Wii essentially boils down to killing giant dinosaurs then wearing their skin as armor. If that descriptor alone doesn't pique your interest then I just don't know what to do with you.

Monster Hunter 3 goes on sale April 20th, and is the first console Monster Hunter game released outside Japan since 2004. The series has a huge following in Japan, but is comparatively obscure in the west. It's clear Capcom wants to change this trend starting with MH3. In addition to sponsoring a huge advertising campaign, Capcom has made a free demo available for the Wii either from Gamestop or by ordering one online from Capcom Unity. I've had the chance to toy around with the demo for a little while now.

One of your victims in the demo.

One first point - the classic controller is far superior to the Wiimote as a control scheme. The original Monster Hunter games were designed with a regular controller in mind, and the reduced number of buttons on the Wiimote/Nunchuk has forced Capcom to make some awkward button mappings. Controlling the player character is a much smoother experience with the CC than the Wiimote.

First-time players will find the controls in general to be extremely stiff. I've seen some message board posters claim this is because of the "realistic" weight put on the weapons, but I don't buy it. Whatever the reason, I had a lot of trouble with diagonal movements and attacking where I wanted to at first. I'm a little better at it now that I've played the game somewhat, but it's something that could use improvement in future titles.

Each weapon type has its own unique control scheme and attack combos as well as a general winning strategy. Lance users, for example, must learn to switch between turtling down with their shields during enemy attacks while advancing and striking during safe periods. Longsword users, on the other hand, must find ways to continously deal blows to enemies to keep their combo meter filled. The wide variety of weapon types and their related tactics should keep people busy for a long time.

You would hope that a game titled Monster Hunter provides a large variety of monsters to fight, and the game delivers. Each of the eighteen monsters looks and acts distinctive, and each monster has its own attack patterns. You'll need to learn these patterns to avoid getting killed. Sense a pattern here? Monsters also have different armored and weak points, and some body parts can be cut off or destroyed for your benefit. They may also call allies to their cause or run away from you to heal up. The key to winning, then, is to minimize damage to yourself while preventing monsters from escaping your attacks. Your armor is upgradeable to help with the first task, but overall they have little effect on your survivability. The best players win by learning how to dodge monster attacks and when are safe times to strike.

The demo is nearly identical to the one the Japanese got a couple of months ago. Aside from the whole not-moonspeak aspect, the American version also includes a few weapon types not available in the eastern one. It contains two quests, both of which are "kill this boss" type missions. There's no story or tutorial involved at all - the menu has you select a control type (Wiimote or Classic Controller), a quest, and a weapon type before dumping you onto a deserted island without any fanfare whatsoever. The pamphlet included with the disc isn't much help either - it contains a brief overview of the game and a chart of Wiimote control schemes for each weapon type. CC users must hunt down their controls as a PDF buried somewhere on Capcom's site.

It's obvious the demo was originally intended to help veteran Monster Hunters get used to the Wii control schemes and weapons type than to be a sales pitch for newcomers to the series. The barebones presentation of the demo and the high initial difficulty of the game itself is a huge turnoff for potential customers, and Capcom has done nothing to help this. The twenty-minute time limit for each quest as opposed to the full fifty you get in the retail version also makes the missions extremely difficult to clear, if not full-on impossible for some weapon types. Not exactly the wisest decision, Capcom.

Some of the monsters you fight are kind of big.

The full game is available in two main SKUs: one includes the game itself, while the other bundles a black Classic Controller Pro for a little more money. Europeans can also purchase an "Ultimate Hunter Pack" that includes a few more goodies. The retail game also includes (or so most would hope) its main draw, online play. While Japanese players had to endure a P2P subscription model to play online, western fans can play the game online entirely free of charge. And since Capcom is running the servers for the game, there's no need for friend codes. Just load up a lobby, find three other players, and get hunting.

Eighteen monsters are available for your hunting pleasure, some only found online. Additionally, the aquatic nature of some of these monsters adds the additional dimension of underwater battles. More quest types are also available, although the main draw is still boss fights. Split-screen co-op is also available, although only in the offline coliseum mode.

Similarl to Phantasy Star Online, the game revolves heavily around rare items. After downing a boss, players have one minute to carve up the remains of the monster you just fought, and the best weapons and armor can only be forged from rare carves.

Overall, the emphasis the game places on boss fights and the reliance on dodging and pattern learning may turn some people off from the game, as will the high initial difficulty curve. I suppose the actual game may ease you into it better, but other than these issues the game has me interested.

Bonus video: advertisement

Let me cut right to the chase: Pokemon Platinum is the best Pokemon game of its time. Gold and Silver have kind of settled down to second place over time.

That being said, I should probably backpedal and explain where this is all coming from. A few weeks ago, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver were released, remakes of what most consider the best Pokemon game of all time. In addition to giving the games a large graphical and sound upgrade, HGSS also folds in the modern Pokemon gameplay system, including the addition of Natures, the physical/special movetype split, and double battles. It also adds features not found in any previous Pokemon game, such as the ability to fully navigate the game using only the D-Pad and touchscreen as well as a few minigame shenanigans in the form of the Pokeathlon and Pokewalker (which just so happens resemble the Pokemon Pikachu tamagotchi-like from last decade).

Normally, one would think that piling all these new features onto nostalgic gold would create the best Pokemon game to exist, but herein the problem lies. The underlying games, Pokemon Gold and Silver, are not that good, and the remakes suffer for this reason.

The most glaring issue relates to the pacing of the game, particularly how the game becomes open-ended after clearing the third Gym and after arriving in Kanto. In the first case, you immediately gain access to three different Gyms, while in the second, the entire continent opens up to you (barring a certain large sleeping Snorlax). Due to this nonlinearity, the developers saw fit to set the trainers you can battle at a universally low skill level. The result? By the time your progression converges again and you have to fight Clair or Red, your party is horribly underleveled, but you've already beaten every trainer close to your skill level. The only thing left for you to do is to order your murderbeasts to headbutt everything that moves in the vain hopes that you can get enough experience to level up a bit.

These two bottlenecks seem to line up well anecdotally with problems other trainers have had on the internet. The amount of time wasted on pointless and boring grinding is stupid and adds artificial difficulty to the game. Was it this bad in the GBC games? Maybe my twelve-year-old self was able to handle this back in the day, but no longer. On the other hand, I was able to get my mons in Platinum up to around LV70 without dying from boredom since there were always a large handful of trainers around my skill level wanting to battle, and there was no shortage of compelling things to do in Sinnoh to take my mind off the grind I was in the midst of completing.

Also noteworthy is the lack of diverse Pokemon types and movepools before opening up Kanto. You can get completely wrecked by a Gym Leader or Elite Four member due to a glaring weakness in your party, or because you have very few moves supereffective against that trainer's specialty type. It's not your fault - the wild Pokemon you encounter are relatively homogenous from area to area, so your team will tend to end up that way, too. Wild Pokemon swarms have barely changed since Generation II, so again, poor game design on behalf of Gold and Silver. The new Safari Zone and Pokewalker goodies offer wild Pokemon that were previously difficult or impossible to find in Johto, which helps alleviate this problem to some extent. But again, these things take the place of advancing futher in the game, whereas you'd run into Pokemon with relevant typing or moves on the way to your next objective in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum.

My final beef with Gen II, and the one most subjective, is that the routes in Johto are just boring. Nearly every route can essentially be boiled down to:

• A short, straight grassy path


• A short, straight watery path


• A cave

Whereas Sinnoh's environments have much more variety and design. Swampy terrain, deserts, northern reaches covered in deep snow; heck, even Kanto has more interesting geology than Johto. When I went to the first remake-exclusive Johto route, I was completely blown away by the differences in level design. The sheer cliffs and tiered pathways are just completely different from the rest of Johto. I guess this issue has to do with the limitations involved with including two continents on one Game Boy cart back in 2000, which is just unfortunate.

Long story short, playing HeartGold and SoulSilver has made me appreciate where the series has gone on to since the second generation of Pokemon. HGSS has made some indispensable additions to gameplay (full touchscreen navigation makes traversing menus so much snappier), but the original content in Gold and Silver being not nearly as good as I remember them being really drags down the game. So until Generation V gets officially revealed sometime next week, Platinum takes the crown from G/S/C.

For those of you who have yet to hear, kombo.com has leaked a pitch document from Factor 5 to Nintendo describing their vision for a new Kid Icarus game for the Nintendo Wii. The pitch document and art assests suggest an older, darker Pit cursed for millenia due to some henious crime.

Naturally, the blogosphere is all up in arms about this dramatic shift despite not even knowing if the pitch was successful or not. But really, should anyone even be surprised? This isn't be the first time that Nintendo has pooped all over the faces of its biggest and most devoted fans. In fact, they've been doing this for a while. Some of their most recent escapades include:

• Announcing that the Metroid series would be returning, only to turn it into an FPS (although that one did work out pretty well)

• Returning to the mature Link in Twilight Princess, only to release a game that fell flat in certain critical ways (ironically, some Zelda fans also threw down their controllers in disgust when they learned that Link grew up in Ocarina of Time)

• Mother 3

• Refusing to give Wii owners an option for extra storage for all those VC and WiiWare games they've been paying for

• Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and Brain Age

• Giving the community Super Smash Bros. Brawl, arguably the greatest fan service in videogame history, only to implement a roster with characters from nobody's dream list

I could go on. I guess my point is, don't whine if the Big N's next announcement ends up kicking your cherished childhood fantasies in their proverbial balls and laughing while they writhe on the ground in sheer agony. It's Nintendo. They've done this before, and they'll keep doing it until Microsoft or Sony wrenches Nintendo's last foothold in the gaming industry from its cold, clammy fingers.