This preview is based on the 4 hours and 4 minutes I spent playing the early access demo of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.
Players who enjoyed Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on the 3DS will be glad to know that 4 Ultimate makes for a smooth transition. However, it also adds just enough to the familiar formula to spice up the gameplay. The most noticeable of these changes is the sheer mobility of your character. There are two brand-new landscapes to explore in the game’s demo, and they’re both designed with massive walls to climb and numerous smaller ledges to vault off or over. The dynamic terrain poses little problem to your character as he or she deftly jumps into the air and hits the ground running.
One great new addition to 4 Ultimate is the ability to draw and strike with your weapon mid-jump, which brings us to the actual hunting aspect of the game. The demo offers 3 different monsters to hunt: seasoned hunters will, of course, recognize the Great Jaggi. When your hunter encounters this reptilian beast, a rather lengthy cutscene ensues, during which he/she jumps onto the monster’s back. This is when you take control and are able to stab the monster repeatedly with some not-so-subtle mashing of the X button. The Jaggi’ll try to buck you off: this is when you stop stabbing and hold the R button to hang on for dear life. Holding on like this depletes stamina rapidly, so it gives hunters an extra reason to keep the stamina bar at max during a hunt.
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate was my first game in the series, and I consider the core combat experience to be incredibly fun and addicting in and of itself. With the ability to mount enemies or attack from above, 4 Ultimate adds a new layer of strategy to the gameplay that is surprisingly intuitive and fluid, not to mention exhilarating. The second monster featured in the demo is the Tetsucabra. He makes his home in the Sunken Hollow map, and some of the areas here are riddled with jumping points, making mounting the ugly guy fairly easy. On the other hand, the final and most difficult monster in the demo, the Gore Magala, is incredibly hard to mount. I only managed it once, while playing with a friend online.
Yes, the Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate demo is online multiplayer-ready. I can’t say this about the final product, but getting a game going online was not the easiest process in this demo: a 14-digit ID was involved, among other things. Once it worked, however, playing with my friend Mike (who I consider to be my mentor to the series) was as fun as it ever was, except for the lack of voice chat, which I can forgive, personally. Despite the cooperative nature of the game, I actually felt a little bit of competitiveness with Mike as we both tried to mount our target during the 3 or so hunts we went on.
If this demo is any indication, MH4U will be much more accessible to newcomers, proving that Capcom listens to fans. I’ll never forget my first go at the 3 Ultimate demo, which had the complete opposite effect to the one intended, turning me off to the game entirely at first. But I’m glad I eventually made it into the ranks of Monster Hunter fans; the addictive qualities of the series are sure to be intact in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, so I hope everyone is really looking forward to its February 13 release date.
