The developer of the mighty mobile game Pokémon Go, Niantic, has confirmed that it is working on a game in Capcom’s Monster Hunter universe.
Monster Hunter Now will be a real-world hunting action role-playing game that combines classic Monster Hunter hack and slash gameplay with Niantic’s patented augmented reality implementation. It seems like a natural fit, at least at first glance.
There seems to be a lot here that fits into the Pokémon Go template, as you might expect. You’ll be encountering various monsters during your real world wanderings, and you’ll be able to team up with four friends (or other local players) to take them down in snappy battles that should only take a minute or two.
Another convenient-sounding feature is the ability to mark monsters that you encounter on your travels for battling later when you get home. We can’t always be stopping at every church, park, and monument to hammer away at our phones, after all.
Niantic and Capcom have apparently been working on Monster Hunter Now for four years. It’s been built by Niantic’s Tokyo team, which previously teamed up with Nintendo on the charming (if not exactly world-shaking) Pikmin Bloom, but they’ll doubtless be hoping to emulate the success of Pokémon Go with its seven-year lifespan and millions of concurrent players.
Monster Hunter Now will be available on iOS and Android devices this September. Beta testing for the game kicks off on April 25, and you can sign up at a specially created Monster Hunter Now website.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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