Monster Hunter 3 (tri) (Hands-On) (Wii) Preview

Loud, garish, manly and a bit like walking straight into Conan the Barbarian complete with rampaging Ar-nold Schwarzenegger, Monster Hunter 3 (tri) pulls no punches. Straight off the bat everything is epic, epic menus, epic weapons, epic characters, epic loading screens and, of course, the obligatory hugely epic massively terrifying monsters that somehow, mystifyingly, you’re able to kill. You, with your sword and gummy flesh, against some twenty-feet of scales, teeth and evil.

Zing. And the whole thing is rather good fun. After you’ve picked your character (some have huge swords that are rather cumbersome and difficult to move with, some have nifty bowguns and ammo, some have smaller swords, some have medium sized swords, etc.) and the level you plan to take on (the Cubed3 team picked the easiest one, this was a wise decision) you are shoved straight into the action. Levels are split up into a number of areas called ‘fun-zones’ (lies), each one contains items to pick up (health, ammo, hunks of meat to broil over a fire) and some contain rather large monsters. Cubed3 happily set about tracking down said monsters in a large killing team (at times I did admittedly run away mildly terrified and half dead) that consisted of Adam wielding a large hammer and hitting everyone, me pinging arrows at the thing from a distance and Mike actually being sort of good at it.

Of course, we had no need to use Wii Speak since we were all sat near each other...but then again, we hardly communicated at all, other than when Mike and James screamed at me for hitting them more than I hacked at the main enemy, or derided me for getting slaughtered yet again and having the annoying lengthy trek back to the action. Actually, this ‘long walk of shame’ is something that really bugged me. Rather than being re-spawned at least nearby, when your player ‘faints’ (Nintendo must be happy that there is no ‘death’), he or she is carted all the way back to the main village and rejuvenated before being allowed back into the fray. In reality to you and I, though, what this means is that you will be sat there unable to play for a few seconds before then having the long jog back to the action. The characters are not fast either, so even after two or three encounters with the throes of death, this whole process becomes highly frustrating. If only there had been the inclusion of an item that when collected during battle allowed for instant transportation back into the fray should death become you. At least that would have lessened the impact, anyway.

Sticking on a mildly negative slant, I have now played this with the standard Wii Remote and Nunchuk set-up, as well as the Classic Controller PRO, and in my opinion the former combination works far better. I understand that there are still those people that refuse to move with the times and try Wii merely because it ’isn’t like the old days’, but seriously, the control system works far better when not played with the CC PRO. As James touched upon, the default button configuration was ridiculously confusing, with the layout not feeling totally natural and certain buttons being mapped into a context-sensitive scenario that first of all did not seem necessary, and secondly proved to be far too fiddly for in an intense action environment.

This may come as a surprise to some, since all other articles seem to be singing the praises of Monster Hunter 3 (tri) from the hills and mountaintops, yet here I am pointing out nothing but drawbacks that more than slightly irritated me. That is most definitely not to say I hated the experience and would not ever sink a considerable amount of time into it upon release. What I merely aim to achieve is to make people aware that whilst Capcom’s flagship Wii release is a joy to look at (out-doing Nintendo on its own format in the visual stakes is becoming a habit for Capcom in recent years, it seems, as could be seen with Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube as well) and has lots of enjoyable The Legend of Zelda-esque adventuring, it is far from the perfect game that the magical 40/40 score from Famitsu and over-the-top articles full of hyperbole from other media sources would have you believe.

As with any game, there are always going to be some points of contention. At least with the controller issue, it is something that can be rectified by trying one of the alternative set-ups, and presumably there is the option to re-map the button layout for when using a CC PRO (we were simply thrown into the heat of battle, rather than being allowed to tinker with any options). Capcom and Nintendo are clearly pushing the online and local multiplayer side of Monster Hunter 3 (tri) as much as possible to build up hype, yet personally I would have much preferred to give the solo experience more of a test run. Thankfully there is not too long to wait before the final game is released in Europe, so at long last the full adventure will begin!
- Adam Riley, Senior Editor.