Monster Hunter Rise Review – Runt Of The Litter

Publisher: Capcom

Developer: Capcom

Reviewed on: Switch

Monster Hunter: World was an important paradigm shift for Capcom’s beloved franchise. The well-paced difficulty ramp made progression enjoyable for newcomers, while countless endgame challenges kept expert hunters coming back for more. Monster Hunter Rise’s gameplay often attempts to copy World’s success, which isn’t always a bad thing. Battles continue to be an exhilarating dance with death, gear customization is satisfying, and coordinating hunts with friends makes for awesome fun and unexpected outcomes. Even with the introduction of new mechanics that help amplify these features, Monster Hunter Rise struggles to establish a creative identity of its own.

Encounters with huge and impressive beasts is the centerpiece of the experience, putting your skills with the myriad weapon types to the test. Once victorious, you spend your downtime sprinting around the main hub, upgrading or forging better equipment, nabbing a bunch of pending quests from NPCs, and meticulously preparing for the next hunt. This captures the fundamentals of the fantasy-action series, but Monster Hunter Rise doesn’t venture far beyond that comfort zone.

During the opening hours, the people of Kamura Village are busy preparing for the “calamity,” an army of wild monsters hell-bent on laying waste to everything in their path. As the village’s newly registered hunter, you must slay or capture numerous creatures in the biomes beyond your hometown’s steel gates. As soon as you’re done marveling at the blooming cherry blossom trees and humming along to the gorgeous score, be sure to grab key consumables from your ever-expanding item box, eat a delicious meal at the local eatery for exclusive bonuses, and venture forth into the unknown. This routine has a comfortable monotony that Monster Hunter fans will likely appreciate, but the addition of the “Buddy Plaza” adds a new feature to your return trips.

Click here to watch embedded media

The Buddy Plaza is a base of operations for your palicoes and palamutes (cat and dog warriors, respectively). You can send your trusty pets on missions of their own to procure miscellaneous crafting materials, spend currency to train them so that they’ll be more effective in future engagements, swap out their equipment, or hire even more of them by talking to the handler. Buddies are extremely versatile, and Monster Hunter: Rise constantly rewards you for using the plaza’s various facilities. Still grinding for that rare beak or tail? Your palico “meowcenaries” might surprise you with one from a recent expedition. This kind of positive feedback gives the lulls between combat/exploration some much-needed flavor.

The environments are visually arresting, and house entire ecosystems filled to the brim with endemic life as well as hard-to-find secrets. My two favorite locales – Shrine Ruins and Flooded Forest – are littered with the remnants of ancient civilizations; they have huts wrapped in thick vines and sky-piercing pyramids that loom in the distance. While roaming, I often thought about the histories of these forsaken settlements and the people that once called them home. However, my imagination was often all I had to go on, since the lack of meaningful story beats makes the plot fall flat.

A generic tower defense mode serves a lackluster reminder of the larger narrative; these jarring “rampage quests” involve constructing an array of automated turrets and mountable ballistae around the village’s gates. Waves of monsters clutter the screen and work together to pummel you while also breaking through your defenses. All the enemies are damage sponges, and clearing the arena hardly requires much thought; I often just held the fire button until I was the last one standing. Thankfully, you aren’t required to complete a ton of rampage quests to gain access to Monster Hunter Rise’s main missions.

Click image thumbnails to view larger version

 

                                                                                                            

You spend most of your playthrough experiencing the classic loop: Battle gigantic adversaries like the feral Arzuros and Lagombi, collect mundane items, and deliver heavy objects to camp. Be sure to explore the nooks and crannies of every map as floating, colorful birds called “Spiribirds” can be absorbed to increase your health, stamina, attack, or defense. These buffs make completing the above-mentioned missions much easier. Don’t want to do all of that on foot? Ride your palamute to expedite navigation or whip out your wirebug to scale cliffsides and mountain ranges in seconds.

Wirebug attacks, called Silkbinds, add a new layer of intensity to the action. When used repeatedly, Silkbinds force monsters into a mountable state. These short combat sequences are all about using a monster’s power against them by ramming into nearby structures for stagger damage or sprinting towards other unsuspecting adversaries to dish out the pain. Wyvern-riding is my favorite mechanic because it adds an exciting burst of strategy to the franchise’s age-old combat system.

Beyond mounting monsters and using the wirebug to wall-run in spectacular fashion, not much else distinguishes Monster Hunter Rise from the installments that came before. It has enough endgame content to keep you occupied long after the credits roll (if you don’t mind copious amounts of grinding) and multiplayer is still the optimal way to play, but the excitement of my early hunts waned before long. Monster Hunter Rise is far from being the next definitive chapter in the series. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for a polished-but-conventional adventure with a few small-scale nuances, then you’ll be right at home in Kamura Village.

Score: 7.75

Summary: Monster Hunter Rise showcases its commitment to engaging combat with interesting new mechanics, but these changes aren't enough to differentiate it from previous titles.

Concept: Defend your village from angry monster hordes while spending quality time with your growing roster of lovable palicoes and palamutes

Graphics: Character textures don’t always look great, but the world itself is vivid

Sound: From gentle vocal harmonies to blood-pumping battle themes, Monster Hunter Rise boasts the best soundtrack in the franchise to date

Playability: Zipping through each backdrop with the wirebug makes you feel like a nimble acrobat, and controlling mounted monsters feels satisfying

Entertainment: Fighting different beasts is always a blast. However, the time you spend outside of combat pales in comparison to your epic encounters

Replay: Moderately High

Click to Purchase

Read More

Curse Of The Dead Gods: A Roguelite Lesson In Greed And Corruption

Publisher: Focus Home Interactive

Developer: Passtech Games

Rating: Teen

Reviewed on: PC

Also on: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch

Who doesn’t want to seek out riches beyond their wildest imagination in a quest for immortality and unparalleled power? That’s exactly what Curse of the Dead Gods allows you to do in traditional action/RPG style with some roguelike flair – as long as you don’t mind some pesky curses along the way. 

You are Caradog McCallister, a character thrust into a living nightmare plagued with curses, death, and an endless array of traps meant to torture and maim. Be prepared to die a lot, though persistent progression takes the sting out of your demise. As you fight to survive, you find a plethora of weapons and gear to unlock and rank up, including both primary and secondary weapons, as well as ranged and two-handed. You can also combo different weapon types as well, which makes wading into a dark dungeon filled with terrors a little easier to face head-on. 

The true power of weaponry comes through in the hammers and pistols, but the shields and bows are a close second when gearing up for the next wave of battle. The pistols offer a solid range with an impressive amount of damage, which you can further improve with upgrades. The hammer is my favorite option; it just feels like a beast, even though it’s a little slower when delivering that final blow, the impact it has on foes far outweighs its lack of speed.

 

To unlock each weapon, you travel certain paths that indicate the reward waiting for you at the end, so you can plan your own progression to a degree. You also accrue green rings and blue skulls through each run, which are used to unlock new weapons and add new buffs. Leveling up preferred weapons is also pretty straightforward, both with approaching paths with upgrade options available as well as paying tribute to the gods through blood, purity, or gold. This mechanical structure was something that I loved because it made it easier to strategize how I wanted to approach upgrades and what I was willing to give up for better stats.

Tailoring the combat experience to your own liking is easy. For me, I love to combo my attacks, bringing with me a weapon that has range capabilities (like a bow or a pistol), or a heavy-hitter like the aforementioned hammer or a spear. Chain attacks create a more powerful way to approach danger, but it’s important to play to your strengths. If you like taking a more strategic approach, ranged attacks and shields are going to be your best bet. Paired with the right buffs, navigating dangerous curses can be just a little bit easier to do for those that play their cards right. 

With each run, you encounter different curses that hinder your capabilities in different ways. A meter beside your health bar tracks how much corruption you gain. If that bar reached 100, congrats! You’re now cursed. Every time you walk into a room, your corruption meter rises. It’s an unavoidable part of your adventure, but that doesn’t mean you can’t work around it. 

The curse system makes each playthrough exciting because it alters the variables. Curses can change how you take damage, how your own damage is received. It changes the nature of the temple itself, and it impacts your status. It’s a central part of the gameplay mechanics, making navigation of curses and corruption an interesting aspect of the journey itself. 

Unless removed, curses will remain active the entire run, but the bright side is that you can remove them. At the end of each area map, there is a boss. Take down the boss and the curse is removed. Of course, these are gods we’re talking about, so there is always a catch: You can only remove one curse, so strategy once more plays a key role. 

You can’t control what type of curse you get (they’re randomized), which adds some spice to the repetition of your runs. The only exception to this is the final curse, which always activates when your corruption meter hits the last stage. Since I tend to just go ham when I enter high-danger areas, I had to really brace, because this curse ensures survival is as difficult as possible. Death is inevitable, but this ramped-up danger serves as another way to break up the monotony.

Roguelites feature repetition by design, but the loop in Curse of the Dead Gods gets old pretty quickly. The traps become predictable, the enemies all start to bleed together, and it eventually starts to lose that “shiny new adventure” appeal. Where roguelites like Hades put an inventive spin on the format and take it to new heights, this one takes a more familiar approach. That’s not a bad thing, but it requires a high tolerance for repetition and dedicated love for established conventions.

Click here to watch embedded media

One drawback is the lack of voice acting beyond general grunts, which presents a unique juxtaposition when diving into this world. At first, the quiet makes it easy to feel the desolation of this character; I felt his solitude and his despair. The longer I played, however, the more that silence felt disconnected rather than nuanced. Even a few voice lines peppered in would have helped build this character and world immensely. 

Overall, Curse of the Dead Gods is a solid roguelite, though it doesn’t attempt anything revolutionary or ambitious. Its familiar approach to genre-specific structure makes it easy to dive right into without fearing a loss of the challenge. The different strategic approaches available with the upgrades system also makes progression feel rewarding. The art, the variety of curses, and the overall formula that Curse of the Dead Gods follows make it a tale worth exploring, even if the moral of the story is that greed equals painful and agonizing death.

Score: 7.25

Summary: If you're looking for a more traditional roguelite experience, Curse of the Dead Gods is a solid adventure to jump right into.

Concept: Make your way through an accursed temple seeking endless wealth, immortality, and divinity

Graphics: Vivid paint stylization with cel-shaded flair adds drama to each temple area

Sound: The absence of voice acting juxtaposes feeling disconnected to the character and feeling his desolation

Playability: The mechanics of the Curse of the Dead Gods feel smooth and straightforward, making each run into a new temple an enjoyable feat.

Entertainment: Curse of the Dead Gods is tried-and-true roguelite experience that balances challenge and exploration, but has trouble keeping the action engaging amid its repetition.

Replay: Moderately High

Click to Purchase

Read More

Mundaun Review – A Sketchy And Unsettling Neighborhood

Publisher: MWM Interactive

Developer: Hidden Fields

Rating: Mature

Reviewed on: PC

Also on: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch

Mundaun observes some of the best, well-worn elements of the horror genre – a creepy setting, an emphasis on inventory management, and plenty of puzzle-solving – and sketches them onto a living notebook for players to both admire and grimace at. Because of this, the game doesn’t do too much to differentiate it from its horror contemporaries nor does it entirely replicate the fun of those mechanics. But like admiring the rough sketch of a still image, I find myself enjoying the finished product despite its rough edges. Mundaun serves as a respectable descent into madness that provides its fair share of disturbing moments. 

The narrative takes players on an unsettling journey through a cursed version of the real-life Swiss village of the same name. As the grandson of a retired soldier, you return to the small mountain town to learn the cause of your grandfather’s mysterious demise and get more than you bargained for thanks to the presence of a malevolent entity.

Click here to watch embedded media

Much the adventure is spent finding keys to unlock doors and solving generally solid environmental puzzles. None of the obstacles present any real challenge, and the game walks you through some objectives, but they at least come in many different shapes and sizes. One puzzle tasks the player with creating the right symbols on a series of wheels to open a gate while another has players hitting hanging meat slabs to form the correct sequence of musical notes (somehow). Most problems simply involve finding the right tool for the right job but navigating the clunky inventory menu is a pain. Saving progress also requires a degree of babysitting. The game doesn’t auto-save as regularly as you’d expect, so, unless you’re manually saving regularly, you can easily lose 15 to 20 minutes of progress when you die, which can put a damper on things. 

Mundaun's setting serves as a semi-open hub where players gradually make their way up the summit of a mountain, either by foot or by driving a somewhat unwieldy hay-collecting truck. I enjoyed exploring the charcoal tinted world and uncovering lore-building notes and clues. Mundaun also rewards thorough exploration with upgrades to its three character branches: health, gun-handling, and fear resistance. Things are generally fine during the day, but exploring at night brings out a limited selection of enemies that players can avoid or (eventually) confront. I recommend sticking to stealth as gunplay isn’t great and warding away spirits using a special lantern feels less effective than it should. Thankfully, confrontation is completely optional; you can complete Mundaun without hurting a soul.

Mundaun’s pencil-drawn art style gives the game a unique and effective visual identity. The experience is best described as a creepy sketchbook come to life, with rough charcoal strokes and scratches that look cool and lend Mundaun an eerie atmosphere. Everything just looks “off,” and I regularly found my hairs rising when I stared at a weird-looking face or creepy photo for too long. The visuals are enhanced by the stilted animations, which actually work in the game’s favor. These rough-drawn characters don’t look like they were designed with fluidity in mind, so the choppy animation adds to their “living artwork” quality.

Click image thumbnails to view larger version

 

                                                                                                            

The forboding atmosphere succeeded in keeping me on edge; I only encountered a couple of big jump scares, but they work because they aren’t overused. I found the mystery engaging enough to pull me forward, and the story is more straightforward than I expected. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing; sometimes it’s easier to appreciate the creepy moments when you aren’t trying to unravel a convoluted mystery. Players can steer the narrative to some degree with a small handful of choice-driven dialogue options during the game’s second half. They don’t hurt the narrative, but the choices are boilerplate and feel tacked on.

With a creepy vibe, solid gameplay, and intriguing narrative, Mundaun is a good time even if it won’t blow away horror veterans. It’s worth checking out if you’re looking to experience a few good scares and to see its wicked art direction in motion. Much like its aesthetic, Mundaun winds up being a rough but respectable depiction of some of the best horror games in the genre. 

Score: 7.75

Summary: Mundaun has some rough edges, but solid frights wrapped around an intriguing mystery and an effective art style make for a respectable horror experience.

Concept: Uncover the cause of your grandfather’s demise in small Swiss village overtaken by a decades-old curse.

Graphics: The hand-drawn art makes it resemble a living charcoal sketchbook. It looks great, and the creepy character designs contribute to its eerie atmosphere.

Sound: A foreboding soundtrack gets the job done and a European radio station further immerses players in the setting.

Playability: Combat, driving, and inventory management feel clunky. Exploring the mountain for clues and engaging in decent puzzle solving balances out the fun.

Entertainment: Mundaun has some rough edges, but solid frights wrapped around an intriguing mystery make for a respectable horror experience.

Replay: Moderate

Click to Purchase

Read More