Monster Hunter

Monster Hunter’s Creations50175815Katie Spriggs

Monster Hunter is a series of action RPG games from Japan, each game having the basic outline of hunting and capturing monsters. In the UK there has been 7 releases of the games, one is coming out later in 2016. 4 Ultimate is the most recent release in the series. In Japan the game is very popular, having more merchandise and higher sales than any other country.In Japan the 4G (4 Ultimate) has sold about 1.6 million copies on the first two days, by the end of 2015; 4 Ultimate has sold more than 4 million units worldwide with nearly 3 million of these sold in Japan. In Japan they have festivals based on Monster Hunter, one of the festivals is the Monster Hunter Festa, where there are life-size monster props, games and themed food.

The target audience is for an older audience; the UK age rating is 12+ as it contains fantasy violence and mild gore, the game also contains hints of innuendo. The game can be compared to Pokémon and Dragon’s Dogma, with Dragon’s Dogma it holds the similar fighting gameplay style, it also has a

realistic design style. With Pokémon it has the similar motto of ‘Gotta Catch them all’ with Monster Hunter it’s ‘hunt them all’ Metacritic gave the score of 86/100.

What attracts me to the Monster Hunter games is the artwork for the monsters, The designs of the monsters are based on real life creatures.Zamtrios- Based on sharks, aquatic colours, mix of scales and smooth skin.

The game creators looked at real-life sharks when creating.

When Zamtrios was designed with the mind of shark’s anatomy and details. Zamtrios was originally based on a Basking Shark before his redesign was based more on the Frilled Shark.

Tigrex- Tiger and T-rex, movement of a tiger. The skull is in a shape of a T-Rex, gold/bronze colours with blue tiger like stripes.

One of the older concepts for Tigrex, showing more of an aquatic appearance. Even has difference in the scale texture, the older concept having a more smooth appearance while the newer has more scales.

A variety of colours with mixes of light and dark depending on locations and monsters, some are brightly coloured while others are darker. Has different maps to explore.

The Frozen Seaway has examples of colours, depending on whether it’s day or night, bright white and blues during the day while darker blues and auroras is the skies. Details show cliffs, caves and parts of the frozen sea.

The Volcanic Hollow uses reds and dark browns, showing a fiery scheme. It has the design feel of an actual volcano, lava rivers and many cliffs. Mix of dark tones and brighter colours to help certain things stand out.

Character design:

The game holds a variety of different character design, using different colours and sizes. The characters have a different appearance to the monsters, having a more cartoon/anime look compared to the realistic monster designs.

In-game the characters hold a slightly more realistic appearance compared to the concept art, having more detail in the clothing and armor. The felyne cat characters have a mix of human and cat proportions. Although most of the monsters are based on real animal, this contrasts to the representation of the cat characters; which have taken on the human characteristics. This goes with

the target audience, a common thing in Japan to use humanoid animals in many topics like games.

The design attracts the target audience with variety of character design and colours.

The game represents male and females equally in the game, the main characters have equal appearance; choosing what they look like like skin and hair colour. This makes all races represented equally. With non playable characters, they have a variety of different races and sizes. Non playable means that some of the characters in the game can not be controlled by the person playing the game, the characters can only be talked to or interacted with.

The game compares to Dragon’s Dogma, the similarity is the hunting in both games.

The audience uses the gratification theory and would explain why people would be playing this game, the theory explains why people may choose different types of media to gratify their pleasure, basically they may play a game because they enjoy playing games. People play the games to escape from the real world for a while, as it has a fantasy setting and people are able to take themselves away from everyday real life. Players are able to select and customise their own character, almost taking a different persona and immersing themselves into the game.

When I play this game it gives me a strong sense of achievement, going higher in the ranks and the strong victory after spending ages hunting certain monsters in the game.

I researched into why people play the game, some say it can be played in short bursts; doing one 40-50 minute long quest then put the system down for a while, appealing fighting animations and the appearance of the monsters and armour.

A review of the game on Eurogamer has given many positive points about the game“There is so much depth here, so much complexity, so much insane, impenetrable content.”I looked at a different review of the game, this time at IGN and picked out a negative point from the game.“But since progression in solo campaign and multiplayer are counted separately, you have to repeat some of the most boring quests a second time.”I have my mixed views about it, I agree to this as I have experienced the terrible grinding on quests that have already been done; especially if they are the most frustrating ones. On the other hand this is what adds the flavour to

the game, getting the point across that you can’t get everything in one go, if you get everything from one quest. It would mean an easier game with less gameplay hours.

As an overall, the game is well designed for it’s audience. With the wide variety of character, monster and environment designs. Gamers who enjoy designs in games will find that they may enjoy this game if they haven’t played it before. With the customising added on top too, makes the audience range go much further as there is people out there that enjoy making their own characters.

Refs:http://www.capcom-unity.com/monster_hunter/go/thread/view/7451/30609793/too-time-consuming-why-do-you-play-it?pg=lasthttp://www.capcom-unity.com/dubindoh/blog/2014/08/15/shark-week-special-how-real-sharks-inspired-the-design-of-the-zamtrios