games website "Monster Hunter P2G" iOS version detailed review: the touch screen is still hard

The Japanese game industry today is ruled by three dragons. The first is an ancient dragon named Dragon Quest, which represents the glory of traditional Japanese RPGS and the golden age of TV games. The second is called "monster hunter" demon dragon, he not only created a new type of game called "fighting game", but also set off a wave of online hunting on the handheld platform;

The last is the social dragon called "Puzzle and Dragons", the speed and wealth of the mobile dragon as Smaug not only beat the first two dragons to become the industry's upstart, but also to create a new model of game development in the future - when the development of AAA games with tens of millions of dollars in revenue than those social mobile games with less than a tenth of the development budget. The choice for profit-driven developers is obvious.

Console, handheld, mobile phone, three seemingly completely different audience media are merging with each other at an amazing speed. On October 9, 2013, when SE announced its "Dragon Quest" series of 8 original works were fully launched on iOS and Android two months later, "Puzzle and Dragons Z" charged for the original game (4400 yen). The gesture, without any in-app items, hit the 3DS and quickly passed the million sales mark (the physical game has sold 142W units, excluding downloads, to date).

If the former is to lay down his body to cater to the eyes of potential light players to obtain more profits, then the latter has staged a real "diaosi counterattack" for us. At a time when millions of core gamers think that games on mobile platforms are boring, mentally retarded pieces of crap, the success of Puzzle & Dragons Z is a wake-up call.

Similarly, recently, when the stubborn old Nintendo finally willing to remove the guard of mobile devices, for the upcoming Wii U exclusive blockbuster Mario Kart 8, a special customized mobile version of the auxiliary tool "Mario Kart TV" - although it is a simple APP that can only see player rankings and player upload videos.

And almost the same day, "Monster Hunter 2G" iOS a few hours after the launch of the app store quickly topped the list of paid downloads, easily obtained a large number of five-star reviews, such results on TVGame, almost equivalent to obtaining sales and word-of-mouth win-win.

On May 9, 2014, Capcom announced its 2013 fiscal year (April 1, 2013 - March 31, 2014) results, sales, operating profit, and net profit of the current period were all higher than the previous period, most of which were attributed to the flagship Monster Hunter 4, a 3DS exclusive game that contributed 400W units of game sales. It was a shot in the arm for Capcom, which had been battered by the failures of Resident Evil 6 and Lost Planet 3.

At the same time, Capcom announced that its mobile phone business is struggling due to a lack of strong titles and a fierce competitive environment in the industry. In the future, the most important task is to establish a corporate system that can ensure stable profits by revising the income structure and business model, focusing management resources on growth areas, and restructuring the mobile phone business.

From the above official written report, it is not difficult to conclude that in the future, Capcom's work focus should be around the golden brand of "monster Hunter" and will strengthen the quantity and quality of mobile platform games, and strive to squeeze SE to become the new Japanese social mobile game factory (of course, the latter sentence can be ignored)!

When the fans shrouded in the halo of Kazuo Hirai, founder of SONY's God Cult, are still looking forward to the PSV version of "Monster Hunter", on May 8, 2014, CAPCOM Lightning provided the "Monster Hunter Portable Edition 2G" (モンスターハンターポータブル 2nd G for iOS, Hereinafter referred to as "Monster Hunter P2G for iOS") letter download.

If once the cable system platform exclusive "monster hunter" abandoned the PS platform to embrace the "screen big fruit game full load" of women and children's console is out of commercial agreements and installed number of helpless compromise, then this landing on the iOS platform is tantamount to once again the cable powder's slap loud.

Monster Hunter P2G was originally released in 2008 for the PSP and is the seventh game in the series after MH - MHG - MHP - MH2 - MHP2 - MHF. The whole series has a long and glorious history. The previous work "MHP2" is at the beginning of the PSP release, creating a cumulative sales of 1 million sets of the miracle.

The iOS version includes all download tasks, supports up to 4 people Wi-Fi online cooperation, priced at 1,600 yen, no internal purchase, the corresponding operating system is iOS 6.0 or above. The transplant work was taken out again after 6 years, for reasons also roughly mentioned above, to expand the brand effect of "monster hunter", not only to re-tap the enthusiasm of old players, but also to attract new players to join the hunting army.

From the iOS reviews in the day area, we can also see that those who tease the operation are basically old players on the original PSP platform, and those who call God should be light players who are new to such games. Second, it is also Capcom's test of the water on the mobile platform, this time it was successful, and it is inevitable that there will be more card club classic game old wine new bottles.

Although up to now, the card club's "Devil May Cry", "Resident Evil", "Street Fighter", "reverse referee" and other series have appeared in mobile intelligent devices, but according to the consistent urinatory nature of the card bitch, maybe one day we will see Capcom's exclusive masterpiece created specifically for the mobile platform? Laughter ~

Since it is a cold rice work transplanted to the mobile platform, the operation and screen of the game should be the focus of everyone's attention. First, the game screen. 6 years ago, the original outstanding product on the PSP platform is 480*272 widescreen resolution, and now everyone's eyes are spoiled by a variety of retina HD screens, and then look at the game screen of the last generation of handheld console platform is undoubtedly a dog's tooth.

This iOS port supports a resolution of up to 2048×1536 (only for iPad3 and above models) output, although the game modeling has not changed much, but after reproducing the ultra-high resolution picture, we can see that at least in terms of fine improved a lot, the texture effect has also been enhanced, and the visual range can see more and further. Of course, this is all compared to the PSP original games.

Compared with the large number of large 3D games with beautiful pictures on the current smart mobile platform, Monster Hunter P2G for iOS is undoubtedly slightly inferior. In terms of the frame rate of the game, the author used the ipad air. In addition to the slight drop in the frame of the village overview screen at the official start of the game, the game was very smooth and the power consumption was relatively moderate. In the first test, the game time was about 2 hours, and the power dropped from 100% to 85%.

Also due to the powerful access speed of the ipad air (of course, relative to the PSP), "Monster Hunter P2G for iOS" map switching speed is quite fast, Ma no longer have to worry about my loading dazz!

The screen part of the review is over, the following is all only mobile platform games have to face the biggest problem - the virtual joystick operation and feel. Although "Monster Hunter P2G for iOS" did a very good job of secrecy before the official letter, from the promotion to the official launch of many players a surprise.

But according to game director Hideaki Itsuno, Monster Hunter P2G for iOS took about a year from development to release, and the last few months were almost entirely spent fixing the comfort of the operating system.

As a layman in game development, I have no way of knowing whether this number belongs to the deliberate satellite release of the card club, but we can really feel the sincerity of the card club transplantation in this Monster Hunter P2G for iOS.

The game uses a virtual joystick on the bottom left to control character movement and menu direction selection. Because the left rocker is divided into inner and outer layers, the inner eight-direction rocker is used to control the movement of characters, and the outer four-direction rocker is used for menu options.

To rotate the Angle of view, simply swipe the screen and tap the screen to return to the default rear-end view. The virtual buttons on the right side correspond to attack, roll, collect, and climb into one-click operations, which can be completed by tapping the corresponding virtual buttons. The change of the attack mode is the most important, pay attention to the direction of the attack button circle, in addition to touching the attack button to attack, you can also drag the button in the direction of the derived attack, simple and convenient, eliminating the bloated feeling of piling up a big push button on the right. At the bottom of the center is the item bar, slide to switch items, tap to use items.

However, the virtual joker still can not do the attack and perspective conversion together to operate, taking mobile phones as an example, the holding position should be the same as that of handheld consoles, but because of the lack of R/L keys, the upper finger is completely waste, not to mention the ipad, can only use two thumbs to play the game, the remaining 8 fingers can only be placed on the back of the ipad to assist support.

Although Monster Hunter P2G for iOS has added rear-end view and locking view features (useful only for large monsters and bosses, not small monsters), this still doesn't change the clumsy point of view conversion in the game, especially during the fight against monsters:

If you are not careful to move fast monsters siege, can only scramble while sliding the screen to move the perspective to find the target while rolling dodge cancel hard straight, straight want to send their tongue to touch the screen or simply turn into a tentacle monster.

If you are not comfortable with virtual buttons, you can purchase an iOS controller (MFiゲームコントローラー) and experience the perfect operation of a home PC.

Okay, leaving aside the price of the iOS controller, do I have to bring a controller bigger than my phone when I go out? I don't know why I'm bringing this if I don't have a ton of consoles. Someone over there said you can play at home, so I put a big push of mainframe at home to eat dust?

In terms of game content, weapons, equipment, monsters, and tasks are a lot, it can be said that a complete transplant, a one-time payment (nearly 100 RMB price) without any internal purchase consumption mode is also considered conscience, after all, no internal purchase means that you can experience the complete game with XX assistant flow, which is the favorite of diaosi players.

The biggest highlight of the "Monster Hunter" series is team hunting, in the original PSP Game, players can only use Bluetooth connection, and in the "Monster Hunter P2G for iOS" you can log in to the Game Center to use WiFi online, support a maximum of 4 team games, you can choose your own friends to team up. You can also use the ability to quickly match and filter specific teammates for team play, which I think is the biggest evolution of the iOS and PSP versions.

Write at the end

Console games cross over to mobile, mobile games counter to console games, and console games are not outdone to rival mobile platforms. On the surface, it is the sharing of resources between different platforms, but in fact, it brings us a new revelation, that is, the seemingly insurmountable gap between core players and casual players is gradually bridging.

While it's still very difficult to get light gamers to buy a console and fork out $59 for a game on it (if you have a good idea, please contact @Nintendo @Satoru Iwata @Sony @Kazuo Hirai), what's the difference between a core gamer and a casual gamer when a core gamer pulls out his phone to shoot a few planes and show off some parkour? Were you late to the blurring of the line between hardcore and casual gamers, or were you already aware of it but afraid or unwilling to admit it?