Monster Hunter Proper Comes to Mobile

Capcom is no stranger to bringing its portable games to mobile. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective and Phoenix Wright both made the jump with varying degrees of success. There was even a Monster Hunter game, after a fashion, in the form of Monster Hunter: Dynamic Fighting.

Monster Hunter: Freedom Unite, however, will be the first full game in the franchise to hit iOS according to a press release on Capcom’s E3 line-up.

In fact, most of their pre-E3 plans involve ports and re-releases: Dead Rising 3 is coming to PC, Ultra Street Fighter 4 is coming to PlayStation 4, and the DS versions of the first three Phoenix Wrights (themselves remakes of Game Boy Advance games) are headed to 3DS.

Freedom Unite (originally a PSP game) bring added features like “higher HD resolution graphics, touch screen optimized controls, target camera options, support for MFi controllers and seamless co-op multiplayer quests via Wi-Fi connection for up to four hunters.”

On that subject, I want to express my pet peeve with developers touting touchscreen controls on ports as “new features.” If you’re porting a game to iOS and/or Android making sure the game actually works isn’t a feature, it’s a necessity.

Ironically, one of the biggest knocks against  when it launched was a poor control scheme. If you happen to swing by E3 this year you’ll have a chance to check the new one out yourself as it will be part of Capcom’s annual lineup.

Steven Strom

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Steven "The Future of Games Journalism" Strom plays entirely too much Dota 2. He sometimes plays games when he's not too busy writing about them and their place in our culture, and thinks maybe they're not just a fad after all.