On the List - Monster Hunter World

My first attempt to take down the mighty Anjanath did not end in success. After managing to stay on my feet for a few solid minutes—thanks to some nimble rolls and dodges, punctuated by a handful of rapid-fire volleys from my bow and arrow—it took little more than a few untimely movements to mess it all up. Having placed myself in front of the giant beast with little stamina left to evade its next attack, the creature lunged forward with its massive hindquarters (crossing a considerable horizontal distance in the process) and crushed me. It only went downhill from there.

For the uninitiated, Anjanath is but one in a long succession of increasingly fearsome wyvern creatures Monster Hunter World places along your journey towards the end credits scene and beyond. The goal, as always, is to track down each monster and subdue it—either by slaughter or capture. This particular creature, made to resemble a fire-breathing Tyrannosaurus Rex with splotches of pinkish fur and a pair of stunted wings that unfurl when enraged, serves as an early challenge spike and a gateway to the game's next environment. It's a test of mettle and readiness. Whereas players might have skated by against previous monsters, the Anjanath is less forgiving of your bad habits and sloppy mistakes.

The next day, after consulting with a coworker who was a Monster Hunter veteran, I returned to the mission with a plan of attack. First, I saw to upgrading my gear, starting with a full set of furry, luminous armor courtesy of a few slayed Tobi-Kadachi (a silvery lightning-charged beast that glides through the environment like a gigantic flying squirrel) that I quickly dispatched with the help of some fellow online hunters. Satisfied with my new duds, I packed my inventory with a checklist of special crafted items and set off.

The strategy paid off. After inducing the beast into a drowsy slumber with some fully-charged shots of my sleep-coated arrows, I set up two gunpowder-filled barrels on either side of Anjanath's enormous jaws. I stepped back, charged up my powerful "Dragon Piercer" special attack, and woke the bastard up in the most violent way possible. It worked so well the first time I tried it again. Through caution and focus, I defeated the monster without a single feint (Monster Hunter fights are typically a three-strikes-and-you're-out affair). While the entire hunt lasted over 40 minutes, hardly an impressive accomplishment, for me it was a validation that my skills were improving.

It was this and hundreds of victories to follow that made me fall in love with Monster Hunter World, a game that never fails to entice me with some new goal or challenge—a new armor set to craft, a new weapon type to master, a new monster to topple just to prove to myself, once again, I've got what it takes.

While the core loop remains the same—fight tougher monsters, use their remains to craft better gear, repeat—it's hard to overstate the endless variety of nuanced expression the game affords. Playing solo is like a throwback to action games of yore, an endless string of boss fights in which each encounter becomes a thrilling display of mano a mano combat. Playing with others, in teams of two to four, is something different but equally rewarding. At worst, it's a clash of uncoordinated attacks and untrained players causing unintentional grief. At best, it's a magical synergy resulting from asymmetrical play styles and strategies coming together in spectacular harmony and efficiency. The hammer wielder stuns the monster with a well-timed blow to the side of the head, the long swordsman severs the downed monster's tail with a vaulting vertical slash, and the gunlance hunter steps up to deliver a killing blast of energy to the face.

None of this even gets to the matter of singing the praises of what makes Monster Hunter World in particular such a modern masterpiece. We're talking major quality-of-life improvements for the long-running series that now lets you access your inventory in the field, gather plants and mushrooms on the fly, and track your targets without hassle. And the visuals—my God! You've never traversed such gorgeous fantasy environments—forests filled to the brim with lush flora and scampering fauna, festering natural graveyards, and so much more. This is brilliant design from every angle.

---

"On the List" is a series where I talk about games that could conceivably appear on a best-games-of-all-time list.

On the List - Fallout 4

Let me tell you about my trek through the Glowing Sea. It's bad enough wandering around the post-apocalyptic ruins of the Commonwealth—formerly known as the greater metropolitan area of Boston, Massachusetts—what with the roving bandits, braindead ghoul packs, and other mutated nightmares stalking about. The Glowing Sea gives true meaning to the word "wasteland," a place where nothing grows and you don't need a Geiger counter to tell you the radiation levels are off the charts. And yet it's deep inside this no-man's land, beyond the square boundaries of the mapped territory shown on your Pip-Boy 3000 portable computer, where you—the protagonist of Fallout 4—must venture at least once in order to find a genius scientist who can help you locate your kidnapped son.

It wasn't so much the journey there that proved nigh impossible, notwithstanding my close encounter with some automobile-sized radscorpions hiding out near an abandoned Red Rocket gas station. The real trouble was the journey back. I had crouched about almost the entire way, sniping or avoiding what creatures I happened to see and trying not to be noticed. I'll never forget the moment when, finally close to a save point, I crested a small hilltop. In my attempt to steer clear of the roaming monsters I'd spotted off in the distance, I inadvertently stumbled upon a legendary deathclaw. I heard the creature's snarling scream before I even saw its towering form lurch toward me. One swipe from the bipedal mutant would have ended me, exposed as I was without any armor, dressed only in a hazmat suit so as to protect me from the aforementioned radiation. I had just enough time to switch on my Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) and blast the bastard with two explosive rounds from my pipe pistol—hitting it not quite at point-blank range but close enough to suffer near-fatal blowback as its corpse toppled right to my feet. I'd survived.

When discussing Fallout 4, it's important to distinguish which version of the game we're talking about, because there's Fallout 4 and then there's Fallout 4 on survival mode, a hardcore difficulty setting that was added to the game shortly after launch. I've only played the latter version of the game, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Fallout 4's survival mode introduces much more than just tougher and hardier enemies, although it certainly does that. It also switches on a number of game-changing features that enhance the simulative aspects of the game and heighten the tension throughout. Fast travel is disabled, turning large stretches of the game into a high-stakes walking simulator. The player's carrying capacity is severely reduced, and the game adds weight volume to all forms of ammunition. It becomes essential both to eat and drink regularly as a means to stave off stat-altering thirst and hunger statuses. Not only that, most food and water will increase your radiation level and susceptibility to disease. Most challenging of all, the player can only save their game by sleeping, and the only way to sleep is to find a bed, mattress, or sleeping bag—hence the epic challenge of surviving the Glowing Sea, where no such save points exist.

As a huge fan of the pre-Bethesda Fallout games of the late 1990s, there's simply no getting around the fact that the series is not what it used to be. While it retains many of the classic Fallout trappings we know and love—the Nuka Cola bottles, the underground vaults, the power armor, the whole 1950s retro-future aesthetic, and so much more—it lacks the wit, imagination, and basic writing chops of the original games, which owe a huge debt to the ideas set forth by the likes of Harlan Ellison and Richard Matheson.

And yet that still takes almost nothing away from the incredible world Bethesda has crafted in Fallout 4. It's a game to which I've lost hundreds of hours trekking back and forth, exploring and scavenging its beautifully decrepit cities and buildings, cleansing the ruined wastes of the creatures and marauders who inhabit them, and slowly working to remake the world into a more habitable place by way of the game's clunky but robust settlement system—a new mode for the series that lets you craft and manage your own shantytown villages. It might be Bethesda's finest offering yet.

---

"On the List" is a series where I talk about games that could conceivably appear on a best-games-of-all-time list.