Monster Hunter: World stomps onto PC August 9th
A whole new world of dressing up cats.
It's been a long, painful wait for fans of smacking giant angry lizards in the face with huge (but comparatively still very small) swords. Released back in January on consoles, Monster Hunter: World finally has a release date on PC, and mercifully we've only got one more month to wait. Capcom's excellent semi-open-world co-op dragon hunting sim will be landing this August 9th.
As an old-school Monster Hunter fan, I couldn't stand the wait and picked up World on PS4 a while back, and have had a grand old time. While I've not played as much as I would like, I regularly return to the game for special events and new monsters added as free updates. It's a faster, more responsive and vastly more accessible game than previous Monster Hunters, and the perfect starting point for newcomers. I'm already contemplating buying it again so I can play with the PC crowd, being the idiot that I am.
There's was a lot of meat on Monster Hunter: World's bones at launch, and the game has grown steadily on consoles over the course of the year. So far, the only paid DLC has been cosmetic, and all the juicy fun stuff including regular challenge missions (some of which are very creative) and new monsters (with weapons and armour to craft from them) has come as free updates and should remain so for the immediate future. I'm excited to see just how much further the game grows after the PC release.
You won't need a massive machine to run the game, according to the minimum required specs listed on Capcom's blog here:
OS: Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-bit required)
Processor: Intel Core i5-4460, 3.20GHz or AMD FX-6300
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 or AMD Radeon R7 260x (VRAM 2GB)
And the recommended hardware, albeit to play at a locked 30fps at 1920 x 1080 resolution on High detail settings:
OS: Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-bit required)
Processor: Intel Core i7 3770 3.4GHz or Intel Core i3 8350 4GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (VRAM 3GB) or AMD Radeon RX 570X (VRAM 4GB)
Screenshots on Capcom's site show that the PC port offers a good range of graphical options, can be capped at 60fps and render at a full 3840 x 2160, though there's no mention if you can go any higher than that. It seems safe to assume that this will be the best-looking version of the game, if you've got some hardware muscle to flex.
Monster Hunter: World will be out on August 9th on Steam, and will cost £50/60€/$60.