Game Activities Log #2 (Monster Hunter: World)
I really wanted to like this game due to friends expressing their enjoyment with it on past devices. Unfortunately, I was greatly disappointed by what I was presented when I began playing. Upon starting up the game I was given a screen that was pop up screen after pop up screen regarding features of the game. What I also noticed was that even though it was a newer game and they had taken time to redesign the game for PC it still had the keybindings for console along side keyboard. I find this display slightly annoying because it tends to clutter the text boxes giving multiple option for confirmation and decline. The overall design qualities of the game seemed very similar to the art style of games like Dark Souls. Essentially, the game appears to have a lack of attention towards the design quality of PC games verse console.
Not only was the overall visual design a problem for me but so was the combat style along side the map design and overall console to PC conversion. The way that conversations, quests, and combat and such were designed without the consideration of a mouse and keyboard combination for the “controller”. Instead the combat system is click based using tab and click combinations for fighting. The combat system really feels as though they spent maybe 1 month converting the keybindings into a PC friendly ones. When I go to look at the map it is very cluttered with icons all over and even sometimes over lapping each other. This created a lot of confusion for me because I really didn’t know what to look for. After completing the tutorial I was prompted to enter an expedition. I went to the area I was told to and then I was asked to find a camp. I had no idea how to get there at all and the only tip it gave me was to use the fireflies. I had completely forgot how get them to pop up and show me the way.
I really didn’t want to have to google the answer because I feel as though a game should for the most part have an answer for those types of questions. I searched though the keybinding settings and found nothing. I even went back to the quest giver and was given no information. As a last hope I left the instance and went back in but the quest was already started so at that point I had decided to give up. I was truly disappointed with this game. I may at some point come back to it but for the most part the only thing the game has been able to do was frustrate me and confuse me.
On the contrary, I did in fact enjoy the amount of detail that was in the character customization. A lot of games recently have been implementing better options for customization. As someone who really enjoys defining themselves with their character the character customization and flexibility on character “class” I am very much thankful for this. The game offers more than a handful of possible weapon types for the player to use. As someone who really enjoys quick combat I enjoyed playing with dual swords even though the combat control was not very well converted for PC.