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Glide, (edited ) do games w Eurogamer: we can't recommend the PC version of Monster Hunter Wilds

The experiences people are reporting with this game are so strange to me.

I loaded the game today during a 1hr break at work on my Legion Go. It took ~10 minutes to do the shader compilation, I opted to turn frame generation on, and the game defaulted the settings to high, which felt awful. After turning the settings to low, turning the upscaling quality from “Max Performance” to just “Performance,” adjusting the sharpness up from 0.5 to 0.6, and then disabling other features I don’t care about (cloud textures? I barely look up) or outright hate (why games continue to push aggressive motion blurring is beyond me - it looks horrible), I started playing.

I experienced a stutter whenever I step into a new space, or load a new cutscene, but it smoothed out in a fraction of a second. While the graphics don’t look the best, the game plays smooth. I did the opening sequence with no stutters, got to the not-tetsucabra fight, and maintained 45+ fps throughout the entire fight, with no stutters or issues. At points, the monster ran into a cave, which aided my hand-held PC and kept the game running at a smooth 60fps for those sections. This is directly in-line with my experiences running the benchmark on Legion Go, which averaged ~45 fps on nearly identical settings.

I haven’t yet run the benchmark or played the released game on my home PC, sporting a Ryzen 7 5800 and a 3070 ti, but the demo, which was less optimized and frame generation did not work during, played “fine.” I was unimpressed with the performance relative to the graphical fidelity in that play (though I am of the opinion that the more gritty, realistic aesthetic is ugly relative to the vibrant worlds of Generations, or Rise and unapologetically think they look better than even World).I can’t say I had problems or felt that performance or visual quality would impede my enjoyment of the game.

This article notes specific stuttering and runs the frame health tests to demonstrate it. I suspect they’re onto something that I am not experiencing for some reason or another. That said, I ultimately think the 4k, 144+ fps gamers running expensive GPUs are offended that they can’t play this one on the highest settings, and are review bombing the hell out of this title. I’m not sure what the deal with all the “ThAt’S nOt HoW fRaMe GeNeRaTiOn WoRkS!” screaming relevant to low end systems is about, as I am experiencing notable improvements through it.

I encourage people to test on their own hardware, rather than taking reviews at face value, as I’ve begun to believe that whatever issue is occurring is deeper than “Capcom didn’t optimize!” Use the benchmark, and take advantage of Steam’s refund policy.

SuperSleuth,

You had to make the game look as terrible as possible and use fake frames to have an “enjoyable” experience. How is that acceptable? What about that is worth $70?

You should be getting a stable 60fps @ 1440p on medium settings with a 3070ti at the bare minimum. MH is not visually impressive enough to justify how demanding it is. If you think otherwise look at RDR2 performance.

Glide,

Please reread. I had to make the game look mediocre (low, not lowest) to have an enjoyable experience on a $750 hand-held PC.

I was getting 60-80 fps on high settings in the beta on my 3070ti, when frame generation was broken. I have not tested on my home PC yet.

ImplyingImplications,

That said, I ultimately think the 4k, 144+ fps gamers running expensive GPUs are offended that they can’t play this one on the highest settings, and are review bombing the hell out of this title.

I can understand. I haven’t played this game but I do have an expensive rig. If turning on dynamic lighting causes the game to stutter, then the dynamic lighting feature is broken. That’s not my machine’s fault. I don’t know exactly what settings aren’t working, but it seems like there are a few nobody can actually use. Negative reviews for a game with broken features is justified.

Adalast, do games w Eurogamer: we can't recommend the PC version of Monster Hunter Wilds

My Steam Deck doesn’t even pass the benchmark. I play Rise on it at the best settings. I was kinda disappointed.

GoodEye8, (edited )

Rise isn’t a good for comparison because Rise was designed for the switch. Or course it’s going to run exceptionally well on the Deck. It probably runs better than World, because World was designed for X1/PS4.

Edit: just to clarify I’m not defending the poor performance of Wilds, they did the exact same shit with World. I’m just clarifying that Rise performance was probably never going to happen.

CH3DD4R_G0BL1N, do games w Eurogamer: we can't recommend the PC version of Monster Hunter Wilds
@CH3DD4R_G0BL1N@sh.itjust.works avatar

I upgraded my rig after the beta just for this game. I’m playing it with plenty of frames after the new drivers and dlss 4, no frame gen. I have an i9-1400kf and 4080, way out of average range. It defaults to ultra everything. It still looks like absolute shit. I can’t believe they released this.

It’s a major shame because combat feels amazing. But they are ship of Theseusing MH. So many little baffling decisions. The scout flies aren’t actually as bad as I thought they would be. But there is just so much shit on the screen all the time. And the available settings don’t help so mod is the only hope I guess. They redesigned the item box interface, so 15 years of muscle memory is worthless and I think they removed the ability to sort items cuz I haven’t found the button to do it yet. You can’t simply open the menu and look at your status to include food skill descriptions anymore (or I can’t figure out how). There is no MH language?!? At this point I feel lucky they left in cat noises for felynes cuz the subtitles of their dialogue show me I’d have refunded if it was stuck in English.

I had a sense of awe and…pride?… when world was such a hit after loving this niche title for so long. But I got a sense of the transformation that was coming due to westernization/casualization and it’s just a let down. Idk why they didn’t have faith in their original, more whimsical vision.

God save the portable team.

Squirrelanna,
@Squirrelanna@lemmynsfw.com avatar

For the item box, open the sub-menu. First option is auto-sort.

CH3DD4R_G0BL1N,
@CH3DD4R_G0BL1N@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah that’s just for the pouch, not the box. It looks like the categorized tabs are supposed to replace the need for auto sorting the box, but it doesn’t feel right with the aforementioned 15years of playing. Guess I’ll get used to it.

User79185, (edited ) do games w Eurogamer: we can't recommend the PC version of Monster Hunter Wilds

YOU HAD ONE JOB… to render a damn desert… that is mostly empty… this should work on literally 10 years old gpus with 2gb ram with 100+ fps… they are lazy, they are cheaping out on optimization, game textures do not even look good.

Absolute state of PC Gaming in 2025. It is piss poor, but keep upping ngreedia stock with those $1000 gpus to play vaseline mess with PS3 textures.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Have you ever worked on a game before? I’m curious how you think laziness plays into this when the entire industry is collapsing and everyone would love to hold on to their jobs.

elephantium,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

Indeed. This is 100% on management for not prioritizing PC and rushing the release dates. Cheaping out is right, lazy…not so much IMO.

ms_lane,

Doesn’t really matter though, it’s NOT on the consumer. We don’t have a responsibility to buy badly optimised garbage.

elephantium,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

O…kay? I never said you HAD a responsibility to buy MH Wilds. I’m really not sure where your vehement reaction is coming from.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

You don’t, but the “lazy devs” accusations are nonsense explanations for it being poorly optimized.

yamper,

agreed, making video games has gotta be the worst ROI software job in the world. bad hours, bad pay, bad management. anyone who wanted to be lazy could do so anywhere else but video games.

finitebanjo, do games w Eurogamer: we can't recommend the PC version of Monster Hunter Wilds

TBH I used to be a huge Monster Hunter fan, pre-ordered MH: World but it was such a huge disappointment that I will never purchase any capcom game ever again.

Anybody surprised about the state of wilds hasn’t been paying attention.

LandedGentry,

I got so tired of spending an hour with friends prepping for a hunt then 10min into actual hunt half of us getting one-shotted because we chased our quarry 50m too far into some area with enemies that can insta-gib you (this was World). And with PS4 load times too ugh

Kazumara,

Yeah that game was unplayable for me. I rebind my keys, but there were functions hard bound to keys, probably from like debugging or something, so pressing them would execute two functions. Specifically it was camera rotation. That was disorientating as hell.

For one of my friends it kept crashing, and since you can’t save during the intro he had to play it 3 times or so.

okamiueru,

MH: World is the only MH game I tried, out of curiosity. It ended up on my library at some point as a PS+ game. Got through the initial “story” thing, if you can call it that. The tutorial. Getting to the camp. The mandatory chat with 10 different people. Did the first real “hunt”.

It seemed to mind bogglingly boring, that after that mission, I just uninstalled the game.

Wilds looks amazing. Which makes me wonder if the games are sufficiently different that it might be worth give it a chance.

HeyJoe, do games w Visions of Mana co-director Kenji Ozawa opens new studio following NetEase departure

That’s some good news. I was sad when the last game came out it was basically released within the same week that the visions series was no longer going to be created. I hope they make some more RPGs and try to make something new and original.

nokturne213, do gaming w Pokémon games have become consistently ugly, and it's alright to wish they weren't

The only one I have found ugly has been Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, I feel like I am playing in a fisher price universe.

BmeBenji, do gaming w Pokémon games have become consistently ugly, and it's alright to wish they weren't

Dudes be like “devs too focused on making a game pretty instead of fun” then be like “this game is too ugly and it’s making me upset”

MisshapenDeviate,
@MisshapenDeviate@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

That would be more valid here if Pokémon were focused on being fun. As a lifelong fan, modern Pokémon games are typically both ugly and not terribly fun. They make decent “turn off your brain” games, but the quality of game did not go up with the decrease in graphics.

BmeBenji,

Yeah that’s fair. I haven’t cared about Pokemon since the remakes of Sapphire and Ruby during which I didn’t lose a single battle. It was a cool nostalgia trip but since there was absolutely no strategy necessary I never ever wanted to go back since there’s not enough reward for the time sink; it’s just not fun imo.

thejml,

While it wasn’t necessarily pretty and had its share of glitches, I quite enjoyed Arceus. It was a nice break from the standard patterns it’s fallen into.

Course I say that as someone who also enjoyed Sword and Shield after a skipping a few prior.

Graphics definitely aren’t everything, but they could stop it With the half finished games with glitches.

MisshapenDeviate,
@MisshapenDeviate@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Arceus was a fun break from the norm, and was even more fun once I played it on redacted to remove some of the performance issues my Switch had with it. I’m looking forward to Z-A exclusively because the impression Arceus made (well, and

Spoilermega evolutions

)

I’ve been playing a randomized (and slightly higher level enemy Pokémon) run of Shield after beating it once originally and being quite disappointed, and I’ve enjoyed that pretty thoroughly as well. The return of follower Pokémon in the DLC is something I’ve been asking for since HG/SS.

algorithmae,

New pokemon games are neither so that doesn’t really work

drosophila,

When people say that I think they mean they want games to look like this:

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/fb8b6bdc-b1f7-4986-bd67-27158535acd8.webp

Or like this.

So, still atmospheric and beautiful, but low poly enough that artists don’t have to spend so much time creating detail. Sort of like an impressionistic painting.

To be honest though for most AAA games I think its animations and highly choreographed gameplay sequences that are bottlenecking development more than the art is. Look at games like cyberpunk and fallout 76: they largely didn’t have unfinished art assets (in fact the art assets in both those games, particularly the environments, look quite good). Instead they had broken animations and gameplay systems. I guess art style does play a roll in that though, as a more realistic model kinda demands more realistic animations to avoid looking weird.

stray,

“devs too focused on making a game pretty instead of fun” is talking about making the art photorealistic with fancy hair engines and such, when doing so doesn’t add meaningfully to the experience and only serves to needlessly complicate development and inflate the cost.

We can tell that making all these 3D models and animations is a problem for the devs because they’ve said so repeatedly. They’ve even said they can’t have every Pokemon in the same game as a result. Instead of the lovely pixel art of FRLG we have a mish-mash of dead-eyed, poorly-animated cartoons with PSP-quality “realistic” terrain that grate against each other. And for what? Why do 3D when you can only do 3D so poorly?

loren,

Games don’t need to be graphically ground breaking to be fun but the art should at least not be repulsive and/or incoherent as fuck like modern Pokemon games.

PonyOfWar, (edited ) do gaming w Pokémon games have become consistently ugly, and it's alright to wish they weren't

I agree. Pokemon once was my favorite video game series, but it has been technically and to some extent creatively stagnant for quite some years now. And whenever people point that out online, there is always a vocal horde of fans coming to Gamefreak’s defense, saying things like “Pokemon never looked good”. Which wouldn’t be a good argument, but it’s not even true. Pokemon games were never technically advanced, but they had a simple, clean look in the 2D/2.5D era. S/V has some really appallingly low-res textures in places that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the N64. It just looks muddy and inconsistent to a point where it’s distracting from the game itself. At the same time it runs at sub-30 FPS quite often.

Probably the only good looking Pokemon games we got this generation were the “Let’s Go” ones. Those had simple but consistently good-looking graphics just like the older titles.

Badabinski,

Yeah, Pokemon had some nice 2D sprites. I yearn for a pokemon game that doesn't hold your hand and is challenging with nice sprite work. It'll never happen unless Game Freak lets the fans do something like Sonic Mania.

millie,

To be fair, it’s almost infinitely cheaper to hire a bunch of people to post in threads muddying the waters of any discussion than it is to fix any given issue. If any public criticism devolves into bickering, it’s hard for outside observers to make enough sense of it to heavily impact sales.

Look how well it worked for the election. With a proof of concept that dramatic lying around, what money-grubbing executive wouldn’t want to follow the example?

smeg,

I’ve not played many since they went 3D, do all the NPCs still look like they were designed with the Mii Maker?

JustEnoughDucks, do gaming w Pokémon games have become consistently ugly, and it's alright to wish they weren't
@JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl avatar

I love how they say

there are moments when Arceus is genuinely pretty

and then show a screenshot of a game that looks objectively worse than a low-budget movie tie-in from 2007. I mean look at the 1 tile, non-randomized, no noise, no depth, repeating light effect on the water with 0 effort put in to even make it look slightly good. The depth of field and fog looks like it is from pokemon pearl with a gaussian blur put on top of it.

Super mario sunshine from 2002 looks almost as good at the water looks 10x better lol

Gamefreak puts literally 1% effort into any of their games…

KingThrillgore, do gaming w Pokémon games have become consistently ugly, and it's alright to wish they weren't
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

And they attack Palworld for being derivative

SharkAttak,
@SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org avatar

If they spent on bettering themselves, even half of what they employed to attack others..

DoucheBagMcSwag,

But that actually requires effort and money

Wahots, do gaming w Pokémon games have become consistently ugly, and it's alright to wish they weren't
@Wahots@pawb.social avatar

I agree, the last genuinely pretty game was Emerald, imo. Diamond and beyond is where 3D assets started weakening the art direction, imo. Either keep the beautiful pixel art, or do proper cel shaded graphics, like windwaker. Personally, I’d stick with pixel art for the strongest possible art direction.

LucidNightmare,

Random, but you should check out Emerald Seaglass! Beautiful art style combination!

Wahots,
@Wahots@pawb.social avatar

Oooh, that does look pretty!

OneRedFox, do gaming w Pokémon games have become consistently ugly, and it's alright to wish they weren't
@OneRedFox@beehaw.org avatar

It’s also ok to wish that they run at a consistently smooth framerate. It’s one thing to look like crap and it’s another to both look like crap and run like it too. I’ve been playing Palworld on medium for the past couple of weeks and it was pretty jarring going from that to seeing the Legends Z-A footage.

callouscomic, do gaming w Pokémon games have become consistently ugly, and it's alright to wish they weren't

Meanwhile the game will break records and sell switch systems cause people are fucking morons.

I’ve said similar things about many switch games. Even Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom might be fun games, but they are legitimately crappie than they should be. The world’s are very empty and often times look like PS2 quality textures and shapes. The frame rates are also appalling at times. Like no consideration for performance and art direction with so much Nintendo trash, and people still eat it up.

BastingChemina, do gaming w Pokémon games have become consistently ugly, and it's alright to wish they weren't
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