Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate Demos Appear on Both Wii U and the 3DS! If You’re Into That Sort of Thing.

Personally I can’t really make heads or tails of these games. The “cycle through multiple menus to combine a few herbs and tape them to your shield to deflect a magic beam into your opponent’s forehead” genre has traditionally not been my thing. Still like most owners of the Wii U or 3DS, I’m getting pretty desperate for something, anything new to play. Which of course means I downloaded this for both systems in a heartbeat and ran through them for a bit today. I’d planned on writing up impressions for each but Capcom threw me a solid and made the demos identical. And how is it? Well, kind of cool I guess. Like I mentioned I don’t really have much patience for these titles that require muscling through a bunch of options before anything substantial happens. This means that plenty of the game’s built in appeal is totally lost on me. I accept that and plan on talking to someone about it soon, I promise. But I’d be lying if I said there’s nothing compelling happening here. I guess the concept of HUNTING MONSTERS is one that really speaks to me and it’s just plain nice to have a fantasy world to play in on the Wii U. Visually, Nintendo’s new home console obviously benefits from a higher resolution but outside of that, it’s kind of surprising how well the graphics match up on both systems. I’m not sure if that’s a compliment to the 3DS or an insult to the U. The polygon count could be a little higher but in general, the colors are nice and bright with some impressive art direction. As far as the gameplay goes…well, this is where I’m ashamed to admit that I have no clue what I’m doing. I spent a good solid hour soaking up the scenery and beating the occasional animal to death but I turned the system off without knowing if I’d actually accomplished anything. On a visceral level there’s certainly some fun to be had here but the deeper mechanics are a complete mystery to me. Still, I’d say it’s worth looking into if you feel like it maybe:

*Unfortunately the much touted Wii U/3DS connectivity feature is absent at the moment but just pretend you had no idea that such a function was even in the works and you’ll be ok.*