Drive-by monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds spark a wave of low-poly animal fandom

I spent most of today trying to figure out why some of the monsters in the Monster Hunter Wilds beta look like bundles of mating pyramids covered in alligator sauce. Nic had previously tipped me off to this reddit thread talking about anonymous Chinese players allegedly datamining the beta's monster models, and learned that they were extremely large, spanning hundreds of thousands of polygons.

If every monster in Monster Hunter Wilds was always this fancy, your computer would turn into a volcano. That's why the game resorts to optional loading systems to ensure that you only see these amazing details when the monsters are nearby and sitting angrily on you depending on the situation. As they move further afield, decorations are reduced to free up memory and processing power. The popular Redditor explanation for the existence of Henry Moore statue-like monsters is basically that LOD systems are forgetful and neglect to load additional polygons nearby.

Read more

No, you don't think Monster Hunter Wilds' beta combat will go bad — and there's a good reason for that

In Monster Hunter Wilds' hugely popular beta for haute-couture-asaurus action, I couldn't make any more progress than perfecting my cat's exact orange-to-white ratio. Not because I wasn't having fun, but because after ten minutes of playing I immediately started researching GPU prices. Therefore, I didn't spend enough time to get a proper feel for the combat. However, it has once again made me form an uneducated perspective on my cultural transition, and I get the feeling there are some mixed reactions to the quality of bonk. According to a clip shared by user Blue Stigma on X, there's good reason for these concerns. As you can see, it's all about frames.

Read more

Monster Hunter Wilds beta is live with an early look at new camping, wound and weather systems

Girls and boys, march on to Uncle Capcom's garage, because it's time to strangle a cat, ride a fighting peacock, and painstakingly maul a giant, wailing teddy bear. I mean, the Monster Hunter Wilds beta is currently live on Steam until November 4th at 2:59pm ET. It's exactly 2.59 o'clock. If you're in a rush at 3 a.m. on a Monday, absolutely desperate to polish off the aesthetics of a little enslaved cat persona, you can play Dragon Age: The Veilguard instead.

Read more

Can an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D with an NVIDIA RTX 4090 run Monster Hunter Wilds at 60 FPS at 4K/Max settings?

Capcom has just launched the open beta for Monster Hunter Wilds on PC. The game is based on the RE Engine, the same engine used in Dragon's Dogma 2. And in September 2024, Capcom shared some really high PC requirements for this title. So it's time to figure out which PC you need to run … Read more