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Bundle up for the huge ‘Monster Hunter: World’ expansion coming in 2019

Monster Hunter World: Iceborne reveal

Monster Hunter: World will get a major expansion in fall 2019 called Iceborne, Capcom announced during a developer stream. Iceborne will release on PS4, Xbox One, and PC as a paid expansion, though it’s unclear how much it will cost at this time.

The reveal trailer doesn’t show us much besides a large landmass in the distance that is presumably frigid and covered with ice. Iceborne will feature new monsters, weapons, armor, quests, and of course, a brand-new environment to hunt monsters in.

It may sound a little odd that Monster Hunter World: Iceborne will launch close to two years after the release of Monster Hunter: World, but Capcom is treating the expansion like the “Ultimate” versions of previous Monster Hunter games. Ultimate entries in the series, like the recent Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, typically include additional monsters, environments, and a more challenging rank. In this case, however, at least a portion of the new quests will take place on a never before seen land. You will also need the base game to play.

Monster Hunter: World – The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Collaboration Trailer | PS4

A lavish new expansion is certainly the biggest thing in store for Monster Hunter: World, but it’s not the only thing for fans to look forward to.

Monster Hunter’s latest crossover will bring Geralt of Rivia to the game in early 2019. And it’s not just The Witcher 3 hero’s outfit that will enter World. You’ll actually get to play as Geralt in Monster Hunter, and the voice of Geralt, Doug Cockle, will even provide new lines for the appearance. World has previously featured Final Fantasy and Street Fighter crossovers, but something tells us Geralt’s arrival will bring the most fanfare.

While the crossover and expansion are still a ways off, Capcom will give hunters a new reason to jump back into World very soon. Arch-Tempered Kulve Taroth will appear from December 19 to January 3 on PS4 and Xbox One.

For those who haven’t played Monster Hunter: World, you’re in luck. Capcom is hosting a free trial period December 11-17. During the trial, you can play up to Hunter Rank 4 — a substantial amount of content — and your progress will come with you should you choose to take the plunge and buy the full game. Players will also get to have a taste of Iceborne during two beta weekends on the PS4 in June 2019.

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Steven is a writer from Northeast Ohio currently based in Louisiana. He writes about video games and books, and consumes…
With EA’s help, Wild Hearts solves Monster Hunter’s biggest problem
Three players build to fight a monster in Wild Hearts.

Although Capcom’s Monster Hunter series is more popular than ever in the West, it’s still a daunting series to get into because of its overbearing tutorials and complicated UI. Koei Tecmo development team Omega Force didn’t want to repeat this mistake with Wild Hearts -- its upcoming fantasy monster-hunting game with a complex offensive crafting element. To solve this issue, it partnered with Electronic Arts’ EA Originals label to better understand how western players prefer to be treated in the earliest stages of a complicated adventure.
“We wanted to understand better how this game might be received by players in different parts of the world,” Co-Director Takuto Edagawa said when discussing the fruits of the EA partnership. “Players around the world don’t tend to like information being over-presented. They don’t want you to explain too much; they want to learn more in a hands-on way by experiencing it themselves through play.”
WILD HEARTS | 7 Minutes of Gameplay
Digital Trends put this to the test with our playable three-hour build of the earliest parts of Wild Hearts and found its introduction and tutorials to be better than anything Monster Hunter has done. Within 30 minutes, Wild Hearts players should be familiar with the basic concepts the game deals with and be set for what’s shaping up to be an enjoyable cooperative hunting and crafting adventure.
A wild hunt
“One thing that was very important to us was to not do a lot of explaining and then get into the story and gameplay,” Edagawa tells Digital Trends. “We wanted you to be able to play as soon as possible. We know that our players want to experience the game and world as soon as they can, so that was the fundamental approach we took with the opening.”
Wild Hearts begins peacefully, with a lone hunter walking through a forest rife with small friendly Kemono creatures. Soon, a small-time hunt begins as the player spots a deer-like Kemono. During this hunt, players will learn the basics of the camera and movement controls, the attacks at their disposal during combat, how to climb ledges with limited stamina, and how to sneak up on an enemy.
These are some basic fundamentals in hunting games, but the difference compared to Monster Hunter Rise is that the game isn’t constantly stopping the player with long cutscenes or large text boxes to explain basic things. Text boxes only appear if players choose to activate them when a tutorial pops up.
WILD HEARTS Official Reveal Trailer
The best game openings get right into things, which Wild Hearts successfully does. According to EA Originals Executive Producer Lewis Harvey, this is the aspect of the game Koei Tecmo wanted to work closely with EA on, although EA provided some character and world design input to the Japanese development team at Omega Force as well.
“EA has a great wealth of experience in its user research division, and we were able to provide a huge amount of testing and data to Koei Tecmo that really helped them fine-tune the game and make critical decisions around their feature set,” Harvey said. “A lot of the creative input and feedback we have given has been around tutorialization, onboarding, and clarity of features and UI to players.”
The hunt continues
The setup EA and Koei Tecmo settled on was already effective but wasn’t quite over yet. I soon came across a mystical being calling themselves Mujina. During a discussion with them, I established my character’s backstory, customized their look, learned more about the Kemono, and got my first significant objective: go to the nearby town of Minato.

Before I could do that, though, the environment around us quickly changed and was overtaken by ice. I used the skills the game had effectively taught me by that point to hunt down the source, a giant ice wolf Kemono, and I engaged them in battle. Unfortunately, this fight was impossible to win, so my character was defeated and tossed into a deep cave. That’s when Mujina reappeared and activated my Karakuri, a little device my hunter found in the last hunt and carried with them.
Then came the second part of the tutorial, which focused on this unique system. During development, Koei Tecmo decided to make crafting in Wild Hearts not just a defensive or preparation thing but something that can help during exploration and fights. To get out of this cave, I had to build up boxes of Karakuri to help me climb up a wall and then build more to create a vantage point I could aerially attack enemies from.
Karakuri building skills are critically important when preparing for hunting large Kemono, too. After escaping the cave, I used the Karakuri more traditionally to build a camp near a girl I found unconscious on the ground. Once I did that, another giant Kemono that looked like a giant rat with plants growing out of it attacked, and I set off on the first real hunt of the game, concluding the opening and kicking off the true Wild Hearts adventure.
While a lot more pleased me afterward -- like the colorful world design, attack damage numbers, and fact that Karakuri remains in the world map after a hunt to remind you of previous exploits -- this opening is what stuck with me.
Sayonara, Monster Hunter
I’ve tried to get into the mainline Monster Hunter series multiple times but always found the beginning of those games off-putting because of how daunting their openings and tutorials are. The king of this genre has an approachability problem, and Wild Hearts has a great chance of becoming the preferred option for new players thanks to how it handles player onboarding. Couple that with a cleaner UI, and this Wild Heats already has a better user experience -- even just 30 minutes into a preview build I played months ahead of its launch.

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luke from street fighter 6

Tokyo Game Show returns this year with a Japanese-developer-filled showcase. One of the guests of honor is Capcom, the publisher of popular series like Street Fighter and Resident Evil. Some fans are eager to find out more about their favorite franchises, but those in the West might worry they won't be able to watch the publisher's showcase because of the time difference between the U.S. and Japan. Thankfully, the TGS schedule aligns just enough for those with room in their morning schedules, depending on what coast you're on. Here's how to watch the Tokyo Game Show 2022 Capcom Online Program and what games will be present.
When is the TGS 2022 Capcom Online Program?
https://twitter.com/CapcomUSA_/status/1567924132683337729?s=20&t=spWNF48gfcAx9J_PYGSTiA

The Capcom Tokyo Game Show Showcase airs at 10 a.m. ET September 15. It streams live from the Capcom USA YouTube channel and from each of the featured games' dedicated Twitch channels. The whole Tokyo Game Show itself starts much earlier because of the time zone difference, but westerners should still be able to catch the showcase at this mid-morning time.
What to expect from the TGS 2022 Capcom Online Program
The Capcom Tokyo Game Show Showcase features deep dives into these upcoming titles:

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Hunters facing off against Malzeno

Returning to a game like Monster Hunter Rise is not at all like riding a bicycle. It’s a lot harder than you remember and muscle memory is not enough to save you from getting yourself knocked out.

However, I am a glutton for punishment and decided to get back into monster slaying with the newly released expansion Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak. It follows in the footsteps of live service expansions before it, including the excellent Monster Hunter World: Iceborne. The new DLC brings more monsters and story content to the Switch and PC game, but it lacks some of the essential hooks that this genre usually demands.

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