Recent reviews by Wingus Dingus

I'm splitting this into 2 sections, 1 for the game itself and 1 for the quality of the port. This is a review from a first time Monster Hunter. Long time fans should look elsewhere for a review.

tl;dr Love the game, port has issues, if your PC meets requirements get it anyway, it's too fun

Edit 1: Locked the game at 60, used Radeon settings to override game settings and it's much more stable. (60 frames nearly all the time) Enabled some filters, not very high but you can notice less jaggedness, with no performance loss and far less stuttering.

1) The Game

Monster Hunter World is incredibly fun. The monsters themselves are interesting visually and the environments are beautiful in their own right. There are a multitude of weapons to choose from and they all have a unique play style. If you prefer faster weapons there are dual swords, or sword and shield and if you prefer a big hammer or great sword they've got you covered as well. Try them all out and see which one clicks for you. This game is deliberately slow and methodical. You can't just spam the attack button over and over again until you win. You need to recognize what attack the monster is doing and either sprint or dodge roll out of the way. The game isn't "clunky" like some people might say, it just doesn't reward mindless mashing at least not later into the game. The main thing that might completely turn you off about Monster Hunter is that it is a VERY grindy game. You will be hunting monsters over and over again for parts to craft armor and weapons. That's the foundation of the game. If you don't like grinding, regardless of whether or not the fight is fun, then you won't enjoy Monster Hunter. I can enjoy a bit of a grind, especially when there's so many big monsters to fight.

2) The Port

OK, so here's a touchy subject. The port is NOT great. It's absolutely not the worst and I wouldn't even say it's bad, it's just not above average. The development team clearly needed/needs more time to fine tune things. This is their first attempt at a PC version and it shows. Some features are missing, like control over motion blur and depth of field. The game's looks don't reflect how it runs. I'm only playing at 1080p, with a mix of med/high settings (mostly medium) with some things just turned off completely like filters and volume rendering (obviously) and I get drops to mid 40s (once into the 30s) in some situations. There is such a wide swing in performance. One minute I'll be running through Ancient forest framerate anywhere from 60s to 80s (smooth) and the next an Anjanath will be charging in to fight, attack my palico and the game jolts down to 45 instantly before recovering.

I get that this is Monster Hunter's first proper appearance on PC, as well as home consoles in a long time, and that it's still better than it's ever been, performance-wise, but that doesn't excuse how unpolished parts of this port are. I really hope the dev team (and Nvidia and AMD with future drivers) can continue to improve things because this game is ridiculously fun, I think I may even love Monster Hunter, but this isn't the port this game deserves. It deserves better and it's a disservice to this game to just be "fine" with how it is. The thing is, even with how wonky the port is I still recommend it. It's just too fun not to recommend. If you have a PC that can run it (I have a Ryzen 1700x and RX 480) then give it a shot if it appeals to you.

Absolutely better than Prepare to Die with dsfix minus the new "washed out" color. That game always ran terribly and the remaster runs at 60 for me, though there are places where I get a stutter from hitting a loading spot. The networking is better but invaders and their lovely lagstabs still exist. The co-op experience is fantastic though. Yes, this IS how the game should have been originally but it wasn't and this is the situation we are in now. Either deal with the fact that you need to upgrade or just stick with PTDE. If you don't own Dark Souls 1 in any form, now is the time to get it. Back up your saves incase you get invaded by a hacker or just play hollow.

They built this game into something far better than launch. Good on you, Hello Games, for not dropping it like a sack of bricks.

Exactly what I was expecting based on footage of the game. Fun combat that can be easy to get into and offers varying ways to perform combos on enemies. The story so far is a nice change of pace from the typical copy paste that's usually offered in a DBZ game. The character roster is first and foremost built around the story, there are some popular ones missing but the created character should be your focus anyway. The customization is done pretty well, much better than Ultimate Tenkaichi's. It's a good game, nothing mind blowing but it is executed well and deserves the praise it's receiving from users.

I haven't played the console version, so this is my first experience with Ground Zeroes. I didn't have any issues getting the game to start. Some have reported crashing upon launching of the game. I turned all the settings to "Extra High" and was running between 45-60fps, mostly in the mid to upper 50s (FX-8350, GTX 680 2GB Model). You don't need 4GB of vram, at least not for 1080p. The most demanding shot of the game, for me, was where you first gain control of Big Boss. Looking at the whole compound, I noticed a drop to 45. That's as low as it went for me. The game looks great. The main mission took an hour and 20 minutes for me. It would have been slightly longer but I messed up towards the end and had to forget about stealth tactics. I can't comment on KB/M controls, I used a gamepad. After finishing the main mission I've only got an 8% completion so I have a fair bit more to go. If you only want to do the main mission then this probably isn't worth the price tag for you. If you have been dying for some MGS it will definitely be worth it, especially at the current sale price of $13.39 USD.

Kojima kept us waiting. I think it was worth it.

Disclaimer: I'm not well versed on the lore from Tolkien. I've read the 3 Lord of the Rings books and the Hobbit but that's about it, so I can't speak on the lore that is represented by the game.

Performance: Game ran well on my rig (FX-8350, GTX 680). I played with the settings on high(for textures)/ultra and was at 60 and the 50s most of the time. There was a stange bug where the fps capped at 30 at weird places, alt/tab out and then back in would fix it but still that's a bit weird. Game is very nice looking.

The length of the game gets discussed a lot. Some people get quite a few hours from it per playthrough, others have reported it being short. I didn't blaze through the story missions, I took my time playing with the different missions available, played around with the branding system and finished the collectibles (there aren't that many and they are shown on the map screen). I'm at 75% completion with the main story missions done, it took me 24 hours. I've still got a few hours I think until I hit 100%. That's a good amount of time, especially with today's games.

The gameplay definitely feels like it's born from the Arkham Batman games. It has very similar systems, the biggest difference to me was the counter mechanic which is a little less lenient. You have to hit the counter earlier than you could get away with in the Batman games. Other than that the game is rather simple to understand and it's pretty easy if you have experience with the systems. The parkour system feels like Assassin's Creed, it's got some improvements like the speed boost from hopping over things and dropping off small ledges but also has the same little annoyances, if you've played AC then you probably know what I mean.

Overall, I recommend it. It was quite a bit of fun, the story was interesting but I like fantasy and such so if you don't you might not be interested. The nemesis system was fine but because foes rarely got away from me, I didn't have a lot of returning enemies, just 1 I believe. I didn't die much, once while failing to mount a Graug and once in an actual battle. Anyway, I'm sure there will be another game because this one is doing far to well for WB to not want to cash in on a sequel and with this one as good as it is I'll be willing to get the next. This is definitely one of the year's best.

The game is great. Platinum Games definitely landed a major hit with MGR. There is one slight issue. If you have a less than optimal internet connection or use wireless be wary. If you lose connection the game closes. This is a bug apparently. I've been dropped 4 times so far. An almost flawless release, though. I'm running it at max settings, including filters, and maintaining 60fps with an FX-8350 and GTX 680. It looks gorgeous, plays fantastic (you need to learn to use the Parry feature!) and is most definitely worth a look if you like character action games. If there was no constant online connection needed this would be the best game available on Steam, in my opinion of course.

EDIT: They patched the steamworks/online bug. It works offline just fine now.