I second that, BEST NEWS ALL DAY!

This game will own! I am just waiting for wii speak support now...

Good news but Nintendo's online infrastructure still worries me, Monster Hunter is NOT a game you wanna lag in.

Don't care how much it costs, this is a launch day buy for me.

This game (and its online component) is the only thing that can fill the PSO-sized hole in my heart.

Now is the online in the US free?

Capcom still ran their own servers on the PS2 version and that was still free-to-play while it was still subscription based in Japan. However until we ge official word from Capcom we'll have no idea.

If Capcom's goal in the Northern Market is to boost Monster Hunter's popularity, then being the only pay-to-play Wii title is not going to work out for them.

No friend codes is a good start. Now let's just hope to see the confirmation of free online play and Wii speak support would be nice to have.

Awesome news! Now I just need a Wii. :(

@Tubatic

Absolutely not. Say that the "hunt and capture" taking place in either game are comparable is the furthest description of what takes place in either game as possible.

You do not prance around through tall grass and get a random encounter, and then have your furry best friend hit it's weak point, to the point where you can throw a ball at it, and then it joins your team as you become best friends, where it levels up and gains abilities so you can fight other friends and their captured monsters.

Do you know what "hunting" in Monster Hunter is? Murdering the beast. Not as a bystander giving orders to a furry friend, no, by taking a Spear and jabbing it in the damn appendix, taking sword and chopping it's tail off with blood splattering to boot, ripping open it's chest cavity with crag grenades shot from a bowgun, breaking it's horn off with a hammer to the face. And then when it's dead you take a knife, and you tear it's flesh off for eating, you tear it's scales off for armor, and you rip it's bones out for weapons.

Hell, the "capture" element to Monster Hunter is not a main focus to the game, it serves as a challenge run of a monster to try and AVOID killing it (because the whole game you just oh-so love killing everything), then hitting it with a paralyzing dart, make it step on a trap and breaking it's back. Oh, and then is it your best companion forever that sits by your side and helps you fight? No, it still dies, your reward is simply to be able to get bonus carvings from it's carcass, for example, tearing out it's god damn eyes.

And then you take those eyes, and you put those eyes into your next Lance, which you then use that Lance to stab *another* monster in the god damn eye. It's glorious, it's probably the manliest thing to come out of Japan since Fist of the North Star and Segata Sanshiro, and it's not Pokemon.

This news isn't quite new to me. When I first read this I thought it was Capcom announcing that the online was not pay to play, sadly it seems to be the opposite by the way Joseph put it. I don't have the money to pay for a single game online and I'm almost positive it isn't just me with the economy and the holiday rush of AAA games. Unless it's free to which I doubt at this point I won't be getting it.

@ The Silent Protagonist - For reals. Buy one less game a month and you're covered for four months, if the sub is $15/mo.

I would personally prefer to pay for several fun games rather than a single game that I need to support each month to keep it from being incomplete.

What sets Monster Hunter apart is that it has no level grinding. At all. Progression hinges on player skill. Instead of finding armor and weapons in the stomach of a pig, you take monster parts to create weapons and armor with. You use armor spheres to upgrade your armor's defense, and you can use more monster parts to upgrade and branch out your weapons. Your armor gives you skills that allow you complement and augment your playstyle in realtime.

The game isn't really grinding-based in that the combat is not turn-based, but is a straight up action game with RPG elements. You could strip away the RPG elements, and the multiplayer, and you would still have a game with gameplay that could stand on its own merits. Hell, if it wasn't 3D it wouldn't be hard to see it as the kind of game you would play back in the NES or Arcade era.

But Monster Hunter marks an important paradigm shift in online gaming. It's taken a little while for the significance of what Monster Hunter has done to seep into the rest of the gaming industry, but we're very gradually seeing it.

Final Fantasy 14 having greater emphasis on gear and no level-grinding is no coincidence. They want to cash in on the Monster Hunter craze in Japan. Of course, if that actually makes their game even remotely less boring than their last foray into online gaming with FF11, then I'm not gonna complain.

"Do you fight giant sands worms in Pokemon?"

You fight all sorts of wacky shit in Pokémon. Hell, you fight GODS OF TIME AND SPACE.

Which is really kind of ridiculous and makes me long for good old Red & Blue.

Anyway, I finally took the time to watch a video of Monster Hunter Tri a few weeks ago, and I too had assumed it was some monster-collectathon from the name and apparent rabid popularity in Japan. I was pleasantly surprised that it really wasn't like that, and my interest was piqued. The damn fine visuals didn't hurt. Depending on my mood when it comes out I may have to give it a look.

Monster Hunter is cool. Pokemon is cool. Done.