Get ready western civilization! Japan's most recent craze is coming to our hemisphere and it promises to add us to the party. I'm sure most of you guys have heard of Monster Hunter in some way, shape or form and if you have not please go jump off a bridge (don't jump!). On April 20th the Nintendo Wii will be getting an exclusive Monster Hunter game in the form of Monster Hunter Tri. I recently had a chance to pick up the demo that Capcom has available for free at your local Gamestop (which Gamestop charged me for) and give the game a whirl.

 

      The demo consists of 2 missions of varying difficulty that have a 20 minute time limit. I chose the easiest of the two missions and was brought to the character select screen. There are a lot of classes to choose from -- Sword and Shield, Hammer, Bowguns, Lancer, Great Sword, Switch Axe etc -- and they all have their pros and cons. Sword and Shield being one of the more agile class, but it is significantly weaker than the Great Sword class and the Hammer class. I picked the Long Sword class and after a 5 second load I was dropped into the world of Munster Hunter. The demo area is not extremely expansive, but it does have enough space to explore, the map was divided into twelve sections that were all separated by a loading screen. After figuring out the controls for the classic controller (unlike the wiimote+nunchuck combo, the CC doesn't have a leaflet with information), I went off to hunt The Great Jaggi.

  

      The location of my prey was indicated on the map so finding the monster your hunting is not too much of a hassle, although monsters do have the tendency to change their locations. While making my way towards my mark I noticed the ecolife of this virtual world. Herbivores grazing and drinking water, Carnivores being carnivorous, a pack of Ram like creatures duking it out and weird little cats with staffs picking up bombs and chasing me, blowing themselves up in the process(hilarious stuff). The World of Monster Hunter is definetly a beauty; one of the best looking games created for Nintendo's little white box. Enviroments are nicely varied and detailed and monsters are surprisingly detailed sporting some of the best textures I have seen on the Wii. Character and monster animations are top notch as well. Everything moves with a certain air of realism. The only thing that bugs me is that the game is a tiny bit blurry as if Capcom used a gaussian blur to

make up for the Wii's lack of decent anti-aliasing.

 

 This beautiful vista is actually in the demo.

   

      After I picked my jaw up from the floor I continued looking for The Great Jaggi. I had found him standing in some water all by his lonesome, so I snuck up on him and got a cheap hit in (hey I'm a dirty fighter). With that the battle was on! The Great Jaggi is a moderately sized, bipedal, carnivore that looks like a T-rex/Raptor

hybrid, and this guy does not like to stand still. This creature will ram you, smack you with its tail, and let out large screeches that call attract his minions who will then begin to ram and smack you around. The lack of targeting makes hitting monsters --especially ones that are constantly on the move-- kind of hard. You have to line up the camera just right so you won't miss any attacks and it gets kind of tedious when you first start out, but I warmed up to it after a little while. These monsters can take quite a beating, so be prepared for long fights. Timing your attacks, dodging enemy attacks and smart usage of items is the real key to victory in Monster Hunter Tri.

  

      Once Jaggi was weakened it decided to retreat to a safer area. Giving chase to my limping foe I stumbled upon its cavernous hideout which of course was occupied by a nice number of his minions. My target was resting while his minions stood watch over him. I quickly made scrap meat out of them and proceeded to wake up The Great Jaggi with a nice big sword slash to the face. It jumped up and tried to defend itself by ramming me, but I had learned all his moves. In no time my foe was down and my the quest complete. One of the main draws of the Monster Hunter Franchise is harvesting items from fallen foes and creating new weapons, armors, etc from them, but this demo lacks that function, it also lacks the co-op that makes these games so popular in Japan.

  

 

      The second mission of the demo is a lot more epic than the first-- The Qurupeco can call on the Great Jaggi and some gigantic dragon type monster about 5 times its size to assist it--, but I have not written about it because I can not seem to beat it before the times runs out. Other than that, the full version of this game comes with free online co-op (no friend codes) with 3 other players supports both Wiispeak and USB keyboards. It smells like Capcom might just have another winner on their hands, and with Nintendo aiding Capcom in their advertising campaign Monster Hunter Tri is bound to be a hit. Check back here for our full review when the game ships on April 20th.