Daily Archives: February 3, 2013

Analysis about Monster Hunter series by Wee Leong

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Monster Hunter franchise by Capcom

URL: http://www.capcom.com/monsterhunter/

Trailer (Monster Hunter 4 for Nintendo 3DS): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUj5WsQYbGU

Gameplay video (Monster Hunter 3G for Nintendo Wii): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKMspMURdP0

Introduction

Monster Hunter franchise is a series of Fantasy Action Adventure video games by Capcom. The player takes the role as a hunter in a fantasy environment and complete quests by either collecting items, seeking out monsters to hunt or capture. The player has to complete a quest by purchasing contract to get started of a quest, as well as with equipped desired weapon and armor. Each player will be rewarded with money and random set of items such as armor or weapon parts depends on a quest.

Goal

  • There is no specific ultimate goal for this game. It defined by the player such as either complete all the available quests or collect all the weapons and armors or both.
  • Since the goal is defined by the player, therefore the goal is clear and understandable for the player to achieve.
  • The goal of each quest is straight forward and concrete as there is no special side quest offered, therefore the goal of each quest is concrete. Besides, the goal of each quest does emphasize the maximum amount of player to be allowed to join a quest, therefore it is achievable for the player either solo or with friends.
  • The rewards are promising to the player depends on the difficulty of the quest and it relates their ultimate goal, therefore the rewards also played a major role for long term goals in the game.

Problem Solving

  • Even though each quest has a concrete achievement, it is not easy to achieve without prior knowledge or set of particular skills. Such as monster hunting or capturing, the player could take minutes to encounter the monster continuously with given 50 minutes for every quest time.
  • Some monster has fast and agile movement; therefore, it is tricky to the players to encounter it without prior strategies.
  • The set of the movements is fixed for each monster, however the next movement for a monster is unpredictable and it natural remedies for herpes is unique for every monster, therefore it has high replay value for the players to return and encounter the same type of monster.
  • All monster has different weakness depends on body parts and elements, therefore players have to choose their equipment wisely before the quest started.

Fun

  • Challenging, addictive and high replay value has become best selling point for the game. With the introduction of multiplayer feature and long gameplay time, the interaction element has made the game more fun for the players to return and play.

Endogenous Value

  • The rewards obtained by players once every successful quest would lead to the improvement of their avatar physical strength, such as weapon and armor strength.
  • The satisfaction of successful capturing or hunting the monster leads to the emotion of the players after long gameplay time in each quest, depends on the difficulty of each quest.
  • The value of agility and teamwork is set to the essential virtual reward for the players to develop their strength in terms of skills.

Essential Experience

  • The game is set in fantasy environment, but realistic gameplay experience, as hunter does not have supernatural power to hunt or capture a monster. Therefore, the players would have great imagination experience of applying the game environment into real world.
  • Lesson learned from the game, such as agility on making decision, and importance of teamwork, is an essential reward for the players to get to apply into real life.

Conclusion

Monster Hunter franchise has set as one of the legends in the video games industry where the players can obtain unique experience from the game, which could not be achieved from other similar genres video game. High replay value and long gameplay time became the essential elements for the game to continue selling well around the world. The introduction of multiplayer has fully enhanced the gameplay experience with the addition interaction between players around the corner (ad-hoc) or world (online).