Monster Hunter, on the Iphone?

Monster Hunter is one of those games you really have to get into to like, most people can't pick it up and play it for an hour then not play for a few days, to simply, you have to go hard at this game to really make any progress. Naturally, we would associate this behavior with only the most hardcore gamers, people who have the time, energy, and patience to farm for hours trying to get one more gem, or scale, or claw; people willing to memorize the timing every single swing of their weapon so they can be perfect when it's needed. On the other end, when we think of Iphones and their games, it summons up images of average people playing for a minute or two on the bus or while waiting for a movie to stream on netflix. Can these two drastically different groups mix?

It would be easy to just say no and leave it at that, it's quite obvious that this project will most likely fail, but we should take a look at some of the past examples to show why this port, if you want to call it that, will not end well.

The main reason that this game, and most games of this nature, don't work well with the touch screen, is that the touch screen doesn't have the same feel as pressing buttons on a controller, with a controller you know when you press a button without having to look, and you know where your fingers are without looking by feeling around. However, on the iphone touchscreen there's no way to differentiate the feel of one portion of screen from another, now considering how small the screen is that may not be a big deal, but when you really get into a game you don't want to keep checking to see if your fingers are in the right place.

One reason this game in particular is doomed, is because the controls to Monster Hunter, aren't exactly steam lined; at any moment you could be attacking, moving the camera, changing inventory, moving yourself, using items and more. Now this worked on a controller because there were plenty of buttons to set each action to, but on an iphone with no buttons, the screen's going to have to be full of on screen buttons, which will cause a serious problem when you're screen's already covered in monster scale.

But we must remember, Capcom isn't full of idiots, they wouldn't sink a lot of money into a project they know will fail, so while it may not have a lot of appeal to die hard Monster Hunter fans, they assume someone will like it. We'll just have to wait until E3 for more info on Monster Hunter: Dynamic Hunting.