OK, so I haven’t been a gamer for years, and I’m not familiar with the video limitations or strengths of today’s consoles, but out of curiosity I watched a trailer for the game Monster Hunter:World this afternoon, and I was astonished by how terrible it looked, visually. I thought that the video had downshifted to a lower resolution, but no - this was 1080p. Weird texture effects, motion blurs, halos around stuff, everything looking overexposed, parts of the image seeming to pop in and out of focus, no sense of scale or distance — am I going blind or does this look really ugly? Is this taxing the capabilities of the PS4, or is it a stylistic choice, or what? Am I just officially an Old, who doesn’t get it?
It looks like every Korean MMO ever.
The game looks great to me. This is the game I’m most looking forward to in 2018.
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The “overexposed” thing and the halos are both caused by a video adjustment: it’s easier to see details like that. Very common for people who make good game guides to record some of that at those gammas in order to show things that would be barely visible under normal gaming conditions. It’s not a condition of the game but a trick to pop up the details.
Other things are a matter of video choice and edition. You’re not seeing a direct recording of a walkthrough, you’re seeing a bunch of fragments stuck together.
It looks exactly like something Capcom would make. I suppose that’s a for better/for worse thing.
Here are some videos of probably the prettiest PS4 gameplay available if you want to see what the console is capable of.
I think the art direction is a bit hideous. It’s all the worst weapon designs from Dark Souls.
Monster Hunter’s designs predate Dark Souls by a decade or more.
Definitely overuse of shaky-cam effects. Still very much looking forward to it.
Here’s the sort of thing I’m thinking about:
0:21 arm wrestlers with foreground glare, highlights blown way out, background hazy/out of focus
0:31 desert scape with more haze and weird effects like JPEG compression artifacts
0:40 flyby with some stuff sharp, some blurry, some muddy, overexposed sky
0:57 river monster where the highlights off the water falling off the creature are sharp, but the creature itself is blurred, especially the mouth. Foreground character is blurred but foreground grass is sharp.
1:07 This is just an angry mash of textures randomly in and out of focus. Ugly.
My impression is that they are going for an effect with shallow focus, but they don’t seem to understand how the eye works. You don’t get shallow focus like that for objects that are not close to you; everything out beyond say 30 feet or so is effectively at infinity.
Anyway, like I asked above, is this par for the course for console games or is it an example of bad design in this game? Or am I too critical?
Some of that appears to intentionally be dust/fog/debris…
But, yes, it’s a style thing. The human eye doesn’t get lensflare, either, but you’ll never convince JJ Abrams.
It looks to me like they couldn’t make up their mind whether to go with a “realistic” style or a cartoonish one, and had low framerates in places to boot.
But at least they’re showing gameplay footage, instead of just making a trailer for the cutscenes, as is all too common for video game trailers.
LOL, a typical game trailer will show a slick CGI video, with action and explosions and dramatic zooming in on a protagonist grinning as bullets fly by, then the last 2 seconds you see the game is a Candy Crush clone…
Well, at least it’s not my monitor or mystanky ol’ wizard eyes.
Monster Hunter World runs on the very dated MT Framework engine, which dates back to 2006. It’s the same engine that powered the original Dead Rising. Capcom has a newer graphics engine - the RE Engine - which they used for Resident Evil 7. When the game debuted, Capcom said the engine would be used for multiple upcoming games. However, a later announcement by Capcom stated they will revert back to MT Framework for MHW.
With that said, the game doesn’t look bad to me. But I’m still tempted to wait until it’s released on PC since I don’t own a PS4 Pro.
Anyone try this out yet? I’ve always wanted to take a stab at one of the games in the series but never have. What I’ve heard sounds positive but I’d like some real person hands on feedback if possible.
I picked it up.
They definitely simplified a few systems - you’re not going to end up *having *to re-create a weapon from scratch because you went up the wrong upgrade path. On the downside, there’s significantly fewer total options.
Armor is much more mix-and-match, since each piece can have it’s own full skill, rather than 1/10 of one. There’s an otherwise-weak pair of gloves that’s good for the egg-fetching quests, for instance.
A lot of items you pick up go straight into your stash rather than clogging up your limited inventory (it still fills up quickly, though.)
The “research” is rather simple, but it’s an ok way to get what used to be wiki information right into the game.
The lack of zone borders is a huge improvement. Changing some of the items to environmental hazards is an interesting change. And there are always multiple big monsters running around. They finally don’t automatically concentrate on you, too.
It’s a nice change being on systems that are actually ergonomic. Played for hours and don’t feel arthritic.
There’s a bit more than an excuse plot this time. It’s a bit railroady, but you can just ignore it for a while and do optional stuff to gear up. Though, you can’t overgear too much, because everything is gated. You won’t find dragonite ore until the Coral Highlands, for instance.
The multiplayer is a blast. You’ll see people doing thing you’d never have thought of. Sometimes its even a good idea. Just don’t bogart the supply box items. (In single player, ALWAYS pick up everything in the item box.)
Definitely watch some Twitch streams to see if it looks fun to you.
Hopefully they’re going to patch in more weapon branches, armor types and monsters.
I picked it up (or, more accurately, downloaded it) on Xbox. God damn is there a lot of shit going on - none of which is really explained a whole lot. This definitely seems like a game I should like I just need to try and keep my head above water with the copious amount of stuff and information. Been reading through some beginner guides but I still feel like I’m missing a whole lot.
The one thing I’m glad I came across, because before I did I was ready to write this off in the loss column: the differences across the various weapons. I started with some long, spear-type weapon and just couldn’t quite figure out the combat. Came across an article that basically outlined my issues and I switched to dual blades. Made the game much more enjoyable. Now I just need to figure the entire rest of the game out…
Sounds like you were using the lance or gunlance. Not my favorite weapons. Good reach, but way too dependent on positioning, IME. Like any of the weapons though - watching an expert is amazing.
If you’ve got any questions, ask away.