Yesterday’s Pokémon Legends: Z-A gameplay reveal flooded us with new information about the upcoming Pokémon games set in a futuristic Lumiose City, including looks at dozens of Pokémon we should expect to see there. But one trio of monsters that fans were really hoping to see did NOT appear: the elemental monkeys Panpour, Pansage, and Pansear.
Why are fans so hung up on the monkey trio? It’s a bit complicated. The three monkeys and their evolutions have been a part of an increasingly shrinking list of Pokémon that are currently unavailable in any Nintendo Switch game. If you want to truly catch ’em all, you still can, by transferring them from other Pokémon games pre-Switch to Pokémon Home. But at the moment, the following Pokémon are unavailable for capture natively in any Nintendo Switch Pokémon game:
Panpour
Pansage
Pansear
Simipour
Simisage
Simisear
Patrat
Watchog
Furfrou
This list used to be much longer, but Game Freak added a ton of new Pokémon in the DLC for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet that culled the list down to these nine. What’s more, the trailer we saw yesterday showed both Patrat and Furfrou, confirming these two at least will be available in Legends: Arceus. And since Watchog evolves from Patrat, it’s a safe bet it will be in the game too. So that just leaves the three monkeys.
The elemental monkey trio was first introduced in Pokémon Black and White, and are somewhat beloved by fans due to the unique way the player obtains them. In Black and White, the first Gym the player encounters will use a typing that the player’s starter Pokémon is weak against. However, if the player visits a certain person in the Dreamyard, they’ll receive the monkey that has an advantage against that Gym, making it easier to tackle. Their designs are also memorable for being based on the “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” wise monkeys of Japanese folklore.
Realistically, the odds of the monkey trio showing up in Legends: Z-A are actually pretty good. It would be very surprising for Game Freak to leave them out of what could possibly be the last major Pokémon game on Nintendo Switch, and given that they appeared in the Kalos region PokéDex back in the day, it only makes sense for them to still be there in Z-A.
Even if the monkeys are included, there’s still one other problem Game Freak needs to solve: Spinda. Spinda is catchable on Nintendo Switch in Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, but due to an error in how the game reads its spot patterns, it cannot be transferred to Pokémon Home. You can still get a Spinda from pre-Switch games transferred to Home, but the weird stuck nature of Spindas on Switch means that the dizzy little bear could probably use a functional Z-A appearance too, if Game Freak feels amenable.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Monster Hunter Wilds is now out in the wild, and monster hunters are logging on in droves to start exploring the Forbidden Lands. Before they go, though, a few are taking a moment to remember some beloved NPCs from games past who kept their bellies full for every hunt.
Over on the Monster Hunter subreddit, posts have popped up reminding players to leave well-wishes for the chefs of previous Monster Hunter games, specifically Monster Hunter World and Rise. Cooks aren’t just the NPCs you tend to interact with pretty often, ensuring you’ve got good food buffs before heading out to fight against a scary beast; they’re also, broadly, pretty well-liked in the community.
The Grammeowster Chef from Monster Hunter World Iceborne, for instance, is a sweet elderly Felyne all bundled up in scarves, since she’s the head chef at Seliana’s Canteen. One post reminded players to let her know they’d be away for a while, because of Wilds’ launch.
Similarly, another post jokes about letting Monster Hunter Rise’s dango chef Yomogi know that they’ll be gone for a bit, saying they’re “going out to get cigarettes.” Though, the chef certainly made some decent revenue on all those dango. “Bro it’s fine, I’ve paid her entire college tuition by this point,” said one commenter.
We can’t talk about chefs without mentioning the classic one from Monster Hunter World, the Meowscular Chef, either. He’s a personal favorite NPC, with his eye scar, giant knife, and incredible poses every time he served up a new meal. The “best, most muscley boy”, as one commenter so aptly said.
It might seem silly to get sentimental over this, but chefs are a core part of the Monster Hunter loop. They’re the NPCs you tend to visit often, and you always get little cutscenes of them serving up the food that fuels your hunts. It doesn’t hurt that their designs are often fantastic, from a burly Felyne chef to the sweet Grammeowster.
A nice meal before heading out was routine for my own multiplayer ventures, and it might even be why Capcom is adding a new “place to gather” in its first Title Update for Monster Hunter Wilds. Having those little zones adds a lot, and having the right character in place only helps, if it wasn’t clear from all the players of previous Monster Hunters wishing the chefs goodbye before heading to Wilds.
IGN’s Monster Hunter Wilds review returned an 8/10. We said: “Monster Hunter Wilds continues to smooth off the rougher corners of the series in smart ways, making for some extremely fun fights but also lacking any real challenge.”
Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson opens his talk at DICE Summit 2025 by talking not about success, but about one of Diablo’s most high-profile failures: Error 37.
Error 37 was an error that appeared to players at the launch of Diablo 3, preventing them from accessing the game due to extremely high numbers of players all trying to join at once. The issue, which impacted massive amounts of players, resulted in widespread criticism of Blizzard’s handling of the launch, and even became meme-ified. Blizzard eventually fixed the error and Diablo 3 was ultimately (with a lot of time and work) a success.
But understandably, Blizzard and Fergusson have been eager to avoid anything like that ever happening again, especially as Diablo evolves into a more complex live service endeavor than it’s ever been before, with frequent small updates, ongoing seasons, and major expansions planned at regular intervals. Diablo 4, moreso than any of its numbered predecessors, has embraced live service.
Another Error 37, or something like it, would be catastrophic. Especially if Blizzard wants Diablo 4 to persist beyond its major content releases: a true live service juggernaut.
Diablo, Immortal
At DICE Summit 2025 in Las Vegas, I spoke with series general manager Rod Fergusson following his talk entitled: “Evolving Sanctuary: Building a Resilient Live-Service Game in Diablo IV.” On stage, Fergusson covered four key components to ensuring the resilience of Diablo 4: successfully scaling the game, keeping the content flowing, not getting too attached to purity of design, and keeping players updated on what’s coming at the expense of surprising them.
Throughout his talk, Fergusson reiterated the team’s goals of keeping players around regularly, consistently, and for the long haul. His descriptions of content roadmaps and seasons-ahead planning is a stark contrast to past numbered Diablo games – while the series is certainly no stranger to expansions and updates, Diablo appears to be committing to a live service trend that’s seeing massive AAA games stick around for much longer and change more rapidly and significantly than they ever have before, rather than leaning on new, numbered releases every few years.
So I asked him what the plan was: is Diablo 4 eternal, or rather, immortal? Is there a marker Fergusson is looking for to know when it’s time to move on to Diablo 5, or will Diablo 4 simply be the Diablo forever, similar to Blizzard’s endlessly popular MMO World of Warcraft?
Maybe not forever, Fergusson replied. But certainly for a very long time, if he has his way.
“We want it to be around for years,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s eternal. I think Destiny tried and did that like, ‘This is a ten-year game,’ and then they quickly were not. We want people to see the road ahead, because we know that, to play a Diablo game, you’re probably putting hundreds of hours in and we want people to know that we’re respecting their time and that we’re not just here and gone.”
Fergusson reminds me that there was over a decade between the release of Diablo 2 and 3, and another decade between Diablo 3 and 4. Granted, neither of these games had anything near the aggressive update cadence that Diablo 4 is planning. But they also didn’t have Fergusson at the helm, as he joined in 2020 after years of leading the Gears franchise. And Fergusson, for his part, believes in looking ahead…but not too far ahead.
I learned my lesson about calling the shot too early.
For instance, Fergusson announced in that same DICE Summit talk that Diablo 4’s second expansion would not be arriving until 2026. Despite originally planning for an expansion a year, the team’s timeline for Vessel of Hatred was extended when they moved staff working on the expansion onto necessary, immediate updates to the live game when Diablo 4 launched, and again when the first season dropped. There were 18 months between the launch of Diablo 4 and Vessel of Hatred, not 12 as planned. But when I ask Fergusson if 18 months is the new normal for expansions, he’s not willing to commit to a specific time frame. He knows better now.
“I learned my lesson about calling the shot too early. So I think giving, ‘Hey, you can relax for the next 11 months,’ is about as far as I want to go in this right now…We’re not at a place where we want to put a stake in the ground and call it. Because we’re still building it and learning from it…Our process is generally that we get internally to a place where we have the certainty to make a call, and then you get to a place where you publicly want to make that call. We’re not at the public part yet.”
Ruining the Surprise…on Purpose
Fergusson’s caution is warranted here, especially as his team prepares to be more transparent than ever before about their future plans. Part of that is the aforementioned content roadmap, due to be shown off in April. Another element is the Public Test Realm, or PTR, where players who opt in can play through a version of upcoming patches before it’s pushed live to the wider public. Fergusson says in his talk that the team initially struggled with the decision to use features like a PTR or content roadmaps, for fear of spoiling the surprise for players. But he’s overcome that fear.
“You just realize that it’s better to ruin the surprise for 10,000 people so that millions of people have a great season,” he said during his talk. “And even if you mess up PTR, even if whatever you’re offering to them in the mechanics is bad, I would much rather have a bad week of a PTR than a bad three months trying to recover from putting in something that we were surprising players with and it turned out to be wrong.”
“You can get really spun up on it,” he added to me later in our conversation. “And we’ve had it in the early days. We’re like, ‘Oh, this got data mined, people know this.’ Okay, how many people saw it? And it’s on this Reddit thread, and there’s probably 8,000 people there. But we are going to have millions of people. So at the end of the day, it’s okay. We haven’t ruined the surprise for everybody.”
It’s better to ruin the surprise for 10,000 people so that millions of people have a great season.
One challenge Fergusson’s facing now is that he wants to offer the PTR to more people, via consoles. Right now, players can only access the PTR via Battle.net on PC, which Fergusson says is due to certification challenges and the general difficulty of releasing new builds on consoles. But he says it’s something Blizzard is investing in, now with the support of parent company Xbox.
Another perk of Xbox, he says, is Diablo 4’s presence on Game Pass. Put simply, it lets Diablo amass as many players as possible. He compares it to why Blizzard decided to release Diablo 4 on Steam in addition to Battle.net – it was simply a matter of reaching more people.
“One of the things that’s different from when you think of a live service that’s behind a pay gate, like a premium live server, which is what Diablo is, versus a free-to-play live service like Diablo Immortal is, there’s an opportunity easier to grow Immortal because there’s no barriers to entry, right? Whereas, buying the boxed product or buying the main game is a barrier for some. So that’s what Game Pass gets rid of, that barrier. You have this opportunity where you can see new Game Pass players coming in all the time, because they’re just like, ‘Oh, I just got Game Pass. Oh, cool, that’s in there?’ And off they go. So it is interesting in terms of sustaining continued new players.”
All Hours Diablo
As we wrap up our conversation, I ask Fergusson about what he’s been playing lately, in hopes of getting a grip on what he’s inspired by. I ask if he’s picked up Path of Exile 2, and how he feels about people comparing it to Diablo 4. Fergusson disagrees with the comparison. “They’re very different games,” he says.
But he’s still trying to keep folks who love both games in mind for future updates. “A lot of people actually tell us, ‘do what you’re going to do, but just do us a favor and don’t line up your seasons over top of each other. Let me play one season for three weeks and let me play another season for three weeks. Don’t make me have to pick and choose.’ So I get that. As a person who plays lots of games, I totally understand that.”
So what is Fergusson playing right now? He tells me his top three games of 2024 by playtime. In third place, NHL 24. In second, Destiny 2.
And in first, no surprises here, it’s Diablo 4. He has 650 hours of Diablo 4 playtime on his home retail account alone, not counting work time. He tells me he’s currently playing Companion Druid, but he also just rolled a Dance of Knives Rogue. He just loves Diablo that much. Always has.
“It’s something about the habit of the game,” he says. “I get interrupted from- I’m halfway through Cyberpunk, I’m halfway through Witcher 3, I’m halfway through Space Marines 2000. I get to these points where I am into a non-service game, then I get distracted by something shiny. But I have this habit of, I got to go do my daily in NHL to go open my free pack of cards, and I have to go play with my brother in Destiny 2 because this is what the game we play together on. And then I just…The reason I came to Diablo five years ago was because it was my favorite game to play. So just because I work and I work doesn’t stop me from going home and playing it for hours and hours too.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Cosmic horror, along with sci-fi in general, is a difficult genre to get right. It thrives on the unknown, the creeping sensation that something is just out of sight, not entirely clear, itching at your reality. But, if you don’t get the balance right, you’ll end up with a galaxy wide narrative that’s as deep as a puddle. Shroud understands this well, twisting its story in ways that leave you adrift in its dark world. It’s a book that revels in disorientation, pulling you deeper into its mysteries the more you struggle to grasp them. When it’s at its best, it makes you feel lost in all the right ways.
Shroud is an utterly gripping story of alien encounter and survival from Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Children of Time, and paints a grim and grotesque vision of the future, where humanity’s expansion into the cosmos is as much a test of endurance (and capitalist hell) as it is a descent into existential dread.
The descriptions of Shroud itself—its tendrils curling through the void, the sensation of alien briar tightening around the atmosphere—are striking. The opening chapters, in particular, are a masterclass in setting the tone, so much so that I found myself rereading them just to soak in their gnarly brilliance again and again.
Shroud constantly shifts, leaving you unmoored in a way that mirrors the characters’ own descent into fear and uncertainty.
Tchaikovsky’s writing heavily leans into ambiguity, using a mix of perspectives and deliberately vague language to reinforce the unknowable nature of Shroud and its horrors. The book constantly shifts, leaving you unmoored in a way that mirrors the characters’ own descent into fear and uncertainty. Alien encounters are presented in strange, fragmented imagery rather than overtly explicit detail, making them all the more unsettling.
The prose itself even feels unstable at times, as if the words are bending under the weight of something beyond comprehension. Tchaikovsky does his best at making the sci-fi elements accessible, but it’s still a style that won’t work for everyone—those looking for clear explanations or firm resolutions may find themselves frustrated at times—but it’s undeniably effective at immersing you in a world that feels utterly alien.
The characters, particularly Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne, are an interesting study in detachment. They begin as almost intentionally blank slates, their personalities stripped down to what’s necessary to survive in their assigned roles. There’s a sense that they’re meant to be shaped by their time on Shroud, and they do develop more emotion as they struggle against its horrors. Yet there’s also moments they also regress, hollowed out by their experiences for the faceless corporate machine that sent them there in the first place.
But while Shroud excels at mood and mystery, it stumbles slightly when it tries to settle into a more structured narrative. The middle section loses some of that hypnotic unease, instead slipping into a “monster of the chapter” rhythm that, while functional, feels at odds with the book’s more unsettling moments.
It’s the storytelling equivalent of an explosion in Aquaman—it gets things moving, but not always in a way that feels as meaningful as the world Tchaikovsky has built. Thankfully, the book finds its footing again in the final stretch, closing things out with an inevitably bleak, bittersweet flourish.
What stood out to me most was how Shroud shares themes with something like The Expanse, with heeps of gritty realism, but Tchaikovsky has made his narrative that bit more intimate, spending most of its time in the minds of a few lost souls rather than sprawling across a grand political landscape. It’s a story of survival, in a bitter sci-fi setting, that also manages to explore where we are now, where we could go, and whether there’s anything worth holding onto when we get there.
In the leadup to its global launch, Monster Hunter Wilds broke pre-order records on both Steam and PlayStation. It effortlessly followed in the footsteps of its extraordinarily popular predecessors, 2022’s Monster Hunter Rise and 2018’s Monster Hunter: World, achieving sales that truly cements Capcom’s unique and esoteric RPG series as one of the biggest video game franchises in the whole world.
But that wasn’t always the case. Less than a decade ago, the idea of a Monster Hunter game attaining such remarkable popularity across the globe would have seemed alien. Rewind the clock even further, back to when Monster Hunter hit the scene in 2004, and it would have seemed even more farfetched: the original game was met with mixed reviews. It wasn’t until a year later when Monster Hunter made the jump to the PSP did the series really blow up… in Japan.
That’s right. For a long time, Monster Hunter was the poster child for the “game series bigger in Japan than the rest of the world” phenomenon. The reasons for this were simple, as this story will explain, but that didn’t stop Capcom from trying to figure out how to break Monster Hunter through to the international market. And, as Monster Hunters World, Rise, and now Wilds proves, it was well worth the effort.
This is how Monster Hunter went from a domestic hit to a global force.
Around the time of Street Fighter 5’s launch in 2016, Capcom underwent an internal reorganization in order to prepare for a new generation of games. These games would run on the company’s brand new RE Engine, a replacement for Capcom’s ageing MT Framework. But this change was about more than just tools. Alongside the engine upgrade came a new mandate to ensure Capcom’s games were being made not just for existing, territory-specific fans, but for a global audience.
“It was a few factors that came together,” says Hideaki Itsuno, a former game director at Capcom best known for his work on Devil May Cry. “The change of the engine and also all teams were given a very clear goal at that point to make games that reach the global market. [Games] that are fun for everyone.”
If you look at almost all of Capcom’s games released during the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, you get the feeling that the company was going all-in on trying to capture an imagined version of the “Western games market.” The action-heavy Resident Evil 4 was a big hit, true. But the more gun-focused spinoffs like Umbrella Corps, as well as the sci-fi shooter series Lost Planet, were all clearly chasing late-2000s Western gaming trends to no avail. After several years, Capcom realized it needed to create games that could appeal to everyone, not just fans of traditional Western genres.
All teams were given a very clear goal to make games that reach the global market.
“I think that we had that clear goal of just focusing and not holding anything back,” Itsuno says. “Towards making good games that would reach people from all over the world.”
Itsuno notes that the time leading up to 2017 was pivotal. “The changes in organization and the changes in the engine, all these elements came together around that time,” he says. When Resident Evil 7 launched that year, it kickstarted a Capcom renaissance.
No other series embodies this new company goal for global success better than Monster Hunter. While it had its diehard fans in the West, for decades Monster Hunter was much, much bigger in Japan than the rest of the world. The series was never conceived to be something that was only big in Japan, but there were real-world factors as to why this happened.
Firstly, Monster Hunter found tremendous success moving from PlayStation 2 to the PSP with Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. The handheld gaming market has always been much stronger in Japan than in the West, as seen with the success of not just the PSP but also Nintendo’s DS and, more recently, the Switch. The popularity of handhelds in Japan is rooted in a number of factors, but the thing that really worked for Monster Hunter, according to the series’ executive producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, was that Japanese gamers were able to reliably play with friends thanks to the nation’s heavily developed wireless internet network. It was years ahead of anything available in the United States at the time.
“20 years ago, Japan was in a very, very solid state in terms of the network environments available to people, and being able to connect and to play online together,” Tsujimoto says. “And of course, we’re not speaking for everyone there, because we realize that there are people who may not have had the chance to play with friends back then. But by moving over to handheld systems, we were able to grow that player base that was interacting and playing multiplayer together.”
Monster Hunter, which is built on a core pillar of cooperative play, recognized that this aspect would best be served when friends could quickly jump into hunts together. There was no better avenue for that at the time than handheld consoles. Thanks to Japan’s advanced internet, it meant Monster Hunter was being developed for a local market first, even if that wasn’t an intentional approach.
This created a loop of sorts. Monster Hunter games would become best-sellers primarily in Japan, and to keep pace with the audience, Capcom would release Japan-only content and host Japan-only special events, further reinforcing Monster Hunter as a “Japan-only” brand.
Monster Hunter did have fans in the West, and they were enviously looking from the outside in.
But the reality was that Monster Hunter did have fans in the West, and they were enviously looking from the outside in as Japanese players received exclusive tie-ins and quests. But as the Western world improved its internet infrastructure and online play became practically mandatory for most console gamers, Tsujimoto and the team saw an opportunity to launch their most advanced and most globally-accessible Monster Hunter game to date.
Released in 2018 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, Monster Hunter: World was a gigantic change for the franchise. Rather than being scoped for small, less-capable handheld consoles, it delivered large-scale, AAA console quality action with souped up graphics, bigger areas, and, of course, bigger monsters.
“Our approach to the globalization of the series and Monster Hunter in general really ties into not only the themes that we had going into designing the game, but also in the name of the game,” Tsujimoto reveals. “The fact that we called it Monster Hunter: World is really kind of a nod to the fact that we wanted to appeal to this worldwide audience that we wanted to really dig into and experience Monster Hunter for the first time.”
It was also vital that Monster Hunter: World not do anything that gave off the impression that Capcom was prioritizing one market over the other. Monster Hunter: World would be released simultaneously worldwide, and there wouldn’t be exclusive content locked to Japan, something Tsujimoto says “comes with realigning ourselves to hit those global standards that people come to expect of titles around the world.”
It wasn’t just a matter of making sure other regions got Monster Hunter: World at the same time as Japan (though it certainly helped). Tsujimoto and co. drilled deep to see what other ways Monster Hunter’s formula could be tweaked to broaden its appeal with players from all around the world.
“We did focus tests and user tests across the world, and some of the impact of those — the feedback and the opinions that we got during that really affected how we designed our game systems and really affected how much success we had as a global title for that game,” Tsujimoto says.
One important change that resulted from these playtests was simply showing damage numbers when players hit the monsters. Little tweaks here and there to an already successful formula drove Monster Hunter to the greatest heights it had ever reached. Previous Monster Hunter games had typically sold around 1.3 to 5 million copies, not including re-releases and special editions. Monster Hunter: World and its 2022 follow-up, Monster Hunter Rise, both recorded sales greater than 20 million copies.
This explosion of player growth didn’t happen by accident. Instead of changing the spirit of Monster Hunter to suit Western tastes, Tsujimoto and the team found ways to open up the series’ unique (and, admittedly, obtuse) nature to a wider audience without making sacrifices. This approach continues with the series’ latest game, Monster Hunter Wilds.
“At its heart, Monster Hunter really is an action game, and that sense of accomplishment you get from really mastering that action is an important aspect of Monster Hunter,” Tsujimoto explains. “But for newer players, it’s really getting to that point. The steps involved in getting to that sense of accomplishment is really what we’re trying to strategize for, in terms of designing for new players. So with World and Rise, for example, we were taking really great care to analyze where players got stuck, what was hard to understand, what they were having trouble with, getting player feedback, and also doing our own kind of research into that. And all of that kind of knowledge has impacted how we’ve implemented new systems into Wilds.”
Within 35 minutes of its release, Monster Hunter Wilds hit 738,000 concurrent players on Steam, a figure more than double Monster Hunter: World’s all-time high. And so there’s every chance that Capcom’s latest hunt may go on to quickly exceed even World and Rise’s lofty achievements. And thanks to a collection of glowing reviews and the promise of more content to come, it seems incredibly likely that Monster Hunter Wilds will continue the series’ mission to take over the world.
This article is an excerpt from an upcoming IGN story that explores how Capcom turned itself around after a chain of missteps and failures. Discover the whole story of Capcom’s fall and rise soon, only on IGN.
Capcom has announced early details of Monster Hunter Wilds’ first major patch, which is due early April.
Amid the huge launch of Monster Hunter Wilds itself, Capcom detailed Title Update 1 in a post on Steam. The company said the patch’s early April release date, set to arrive a little over a month after the game itself, “will give hunters enough time to prepare for the new content, and challenges, that await them.”
To that end, Title Update 1 adds a new level of challenge: “Prepare your gear, and resolve, hunters!” Capcom said. “TU1 will bring with it a monster of formidable strength at a level above Tempered!” Meanwhile, a new challenging monster will be added with Title Update 1.
Interestingly, Title Update 1 also adds an endgame place to gather. “A new place to meet, communicate, have meals together and more with other hunters will be added to Monster Hunter Wilds in TU1!” Capcom said.
“This area will be available to hunters who have completed the main story, so get hunting and be ready!”
Early reaction to the news that Title Update 1 will add a place for endgame players to gather has been mixed, with some welcoming the addition, others wondering why it’s not in the game at launch. It sounds very much like a Gathering Hub from previous Monster Hunter games, but as some have pointed out, it’s interesting that Capcom has chosen not to call it that here. While other players can turn up in your camp, Monster Hunter Wilds lacks a true social hub, so hopefully whatever this is will fill the void.
Capcom released a few images showcasing this new place to gather:
IGN’s Monster Hunter Wilds review returned an 8/10. We said: “Monster Hunter Wilds continues to smooth off the rougher corners of the series in smart ways, making for some extremely fun fights but also lacking any real challenge.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Capcom has issued official advice for PC via Steam players of Monster Hunter Wilds after the game launched to a ‘mixed’ user review rating due to performance issues.
The Japanese games company said Steam users should try updating their graphics driver, turning off compatibility mode, and then readjust their settings if they’re experiencing any initial issues.
“Thank you all for your patience and support!” Capcom said in a tweet.
One of the ‘Not Recommended’ Steam reviews flagged as ‘most helpful’ says Monster Hunter Wilds “has the worst optimisation I’ve ever seen.”
“I understand that new games are becoming more demanding and people are expected to upgrade, but this is absurd,” they said. “I’m aware this isn’t the first instance of new games having poor performance on launch, because the same thing happened with World, but it feels inexcusable at this point.
“I am by no means saying the game is bad, but in its current state, you should probably consider waiting for a more stable release.”
Another negative review also focused on the game’s optimization, saying: “Absolutely atrocious performance for how the game looks. Runs even worse than the beta.”
In a bid to help Steam users improve matters, Capcom published a ‘Troubleshooting & Known Issues’ guide with potential solutions. Capcom asked PC players to follow the steps below “to rule out problems with your PC, Steam, or the game’s files.”
Monster Hunter Wilds troubleshooting and known issues guide
Troubleshooting
When the game does not run properly, please try the steps below.
Make sure you meet the minimum system requirements for the game.
Update your Video/Graphics Drivers.
Check for Windows Updates and ensure all of the latest programs are installed to your OS.
If you still experience issues, try performing a clean installation of the video driver set.
Update DirectX to the latest version. For details on how to update DirectX, please visit the Microsoft support page or Microsoft Download Center.
Add the game’s folder and files to your anti-virus program’s exception / exclusion list. Default Paths: C:Program Files (x86)SteamSteamAppscommonMonsterHunterWilds C:Program Files (x86)SteamSteamAppscommonMonsterHunterWildsMonsterHunterWilds.exe
Add folder and files for Steam.exe to your anti-virus program’s exception / exclusion list. *Default Paths: C:Program Files (x86)Steam C:Program Files (x86)SteamSteam.exe
Give administrator privileges to Steam. To run Steam.exe in administrator mode, right-click on the .exe file and select “Run as administrator.”
If you still experience issues, try logging into your PC in administrator mode and then run the game’s execution file (MonsterHunterWilds.exe).
Verify the game’s files on Steam. To verify your game’s files, follow these steps: (1) Restart your computer and launch Steam. (2) From the “Library” section, right-click on the game, and select “Properties” from the menu. (3) Select the “Installed Files” tab and click the “Verify integrity of game files” button. (4) Steam will verify the game’s files – this process may take several minutes. Important: One or more files may fail to verify. The files that fail to verify are local configuration files that should not be replaced as part of this process. You can safely ignore this message. If problematic files were detected during this process, Steam will automatically download and / or replace those files.
Disable Compatibility Mode for “MonsterHunterWilds.exe” if enabled. (1) Right click on “MonsterHunterWilds.exe” located in the following folder: C:Program Files (x86)SteamSteamAppscommonMonsterHunterWilds *The above is the default location. (2) Go to Properties (3) Open Compatibility tab (4) Untick “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” If the above does not resolve the issue, please disable the Compatibility Mode for “Steam.exe” located in the folder below. C:Program Files (x86)Steam
Despite these performance problems, Monster Hunter Wilds is off to an incredible start, with nearly 1 million concurrent players on Steam alone. That’s enough to crack Steam’s top 10 most-played games of all-time list, and it’s only going to get bigger as we head into the weekend.
IGN’s Monster Hunter Wilds review returned an 8/10. We said: “Monster Hunter Wilds continues to smooth off the rougher corners of the series in smart ways, making for some extremely fun fights but also lacking any real challenge.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Monster Hunter Wilds has enjoyed a huge launch, with nearly 1 million concurrent players on Steam.
Capcom’s action adventure game launched on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S, and quickly became the eighth most-played game on Steam of all-time with an incredible 987,482 concurrent users.
To put it into context, that’s ahead of the all-time peaks of best-sellers Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, and Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s already outstripped its predecessor on Steam, where 2018’s Monster Hunter World enjoyed a peak concurrent figure of 334,684.
And it’s worth noting that Monster Hunter Wilds’ actual peak concurrent figure will be much higher, given neither Sony nor Microsoft report player numbers.
The question now is how high can that Steam concurrent figure go as Monster Hunter Wilds heads into its first weekend on sale and beyond. It seems likely it will crack the 1 million concurrents mark later today, overtaking Cyberpunk 2077 in the process. Could 2 million be possible?
While Capcom is yet to announce a sales figure for Monster Hunter Wilds, all signs point to a hugely successful release. (Monster Hunter World topped 25 million sales in six years to cement its position as Capcom’s best-selling title ever.) However, the game has a ‘mixed’ user review rating on Steam, with some reporting performance problems.
IGN’s Monster Hunter Wilds review returned an 8/10. We said: “Monster Hunter Wilds continues to smooth off the rougher corners of the series in smart ways, making for some extremely fun fights but also lacking any real challenge.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Steam Next Fest is the all-digital event where you can play literally hundreds of demos on Steam for free, so you can find your next favorite game. But with so many demos to play and the event lasting only a week – it ends 3 March at 10am PT – it can be daunting to know where to start.
IGN’s team has been downloading and trying out the best and most interesting demos, which we’ve compiled below. It’s not a comprehensive list of everything to check out, more a starter list of demos you should definitely go to first and, if you want more, well, there’s hundreds of others to choose from.
Monster Train 2
I still play the Monster Train daily challenges on my phone to this day, and I’d just finished one when the announcement of Monster Train 2 and the demo popped up. So I was pre-grabbed on the roguelike, deck-building fantasy game series. But so far I like what I’m seeing of the sequel. It’s not a radical reinvention of the idea, but it’s layering on some new stuff like equipment and room cards where you have to upgrade on the fly moore, and building resources like Dragon’s Hoard and Valor are different enough from the original that it’s refreshing – Dan Stapleton
Dark Deity 2
If you like Fire Emblem, you’ll like Dark Deity 2. As somebody who enjoyed the first game despite its rough edges, the second game is shaping up to be a significant improvement with even more room for player creativity. The standout feature is build flexibility, as each unit has four mid-tier classes and an additional four high-level classes. My personal favorite unit is the hunter who is given the choice of an orangutan, toad, lion, or hyena to fight with them. The story has you playing as the children of the first game’s protagonist. I really enjoyed the sibling dynamic, along with Alden, a returning character acting as the chill uncle. The demo also showed off some early choices with branching paths which is promising for a more memorable and replayable adventure. – Eric Zalewski
Out of Sight
In Out of Sight you play as Sophie, a blind girl who’s trapped in a mansion and trying to escape. You see through the eyes of her teddy bear and you have to guide her through environmental puzzles to help her escape the building, while avoiding the adults who want to keep her there. Sophie carries the teddy (you) much of the time, giving you a first-person perspective as you play. But in order to climb or manipulate items in the environment, she has to set you down, shifting the perspective to third-person. It’s a clever trick that adds to the off-kilter vibes of this creepy puzzle game that reminds me of parts of Resident Evil 7, but with enough new ideas to make it worth a look. – Chris Reed
Monaco 2
You can never rely on your friends, but sometimes that’s what makes hanging out with them so fun and funny. That’s a big reason why Monaco 2 is so much fun. It’s a co-op stealth experience where you’ll have to rely on your teammates to not get caught, and react accordingly when they inevitably do. Monaco 2 isn’t the next live service phenomenon, but when you’re itching for a new game to get deep into with your friends, it’ll be there for you. It’s got fun and often hilarious stealth mechanics, tons of ways to strategize, and an aesthetic that brings everything together. It’s definitely not one you’ll be able to enjoy on your own though, but who’d want to do a heist on their own anyway? – Tyler Robertson
Note: Humble Games is the publisher of Monaco 2 and shares a parent company with IGN.
Everhood 2
Everhood, released in 2021, was an incredible indie mashup of Undertale, Yume Nikki, and Guitar Hero that asked players to meditate on life, death, and existence in a trippy, mushroom-filled world. I loved it, and it had absolutely no business getting a sequel. Yet here we are, and I’m already hooked by whatever the heck is going on in Everhood 2. The dance battles are better than ever, its wacky cast has me constantly on my toes, and I have no idea where this wild story about soul weapons and mind dragons is going but I am absolutely buckled up for the ride. – Rebekah Valentine
Haste: Broken Worlds
If you’re looking for the speed of a 3D Sonic game with stylings that seem to have come out of a Dreamcast launch title, Haste: Broken Worlds might just be it. The main gameplay mechanic revolves around landing perfectly on the back edge of slopes in order to fill a meter that lets you give yourself more hangtime. From the short amount of time I’ve spent with it, it seems to nail the “just barely hanging on” nature of the good “Fast Games.” The soundtrack is also a bop. – Aaron Barrier
Skin Deep
Skin Deep is the perfect marriage of immersive problem solving and slapstick humor that has you protecting a spaceship crew of cats from strange pirates who also want you very dead. Much of Skin Deep’s charm comes from just rolling with the absurdity of it all: Don’t think too hard about why you’re the lone unarmed human insurance agent on a ship of tiny felines, or why the pirates’ heads slowly float back to respawn points when killed. How you defeat the armed pirates while sneaking through the sandbox-like spaceships is entirely up to you, but what really makes Skin Deep stand out is how all of your tools can also be hazards. Pepper can stun foes, but also gives away your position if you sneeze. Windows into space can be broken to create new entry points, but leave glass shards to slice up your feet. The dynamic of what helps you can also hurt you sets the stage for some truly hilarious bouts of unintended consequences that I cannot get enough of. – Brendan Graeber
Teenage Mutant Ninja Tturtles: Tactical Takedown
As someone who LOVES the Turtles, but has never fully fallen in love with a turn-based tactics game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown has the sauce. Fast, fluid actions taking place right as you hit the button make it feel less turn-based than other tactical games, and the potential of its story makes it one of my most anticipated games of the moment. Some fonts and UI elements need some work, but that’s why it’s a demo! That’s what Next Fest is for. – Tyler Robertson
Promise Mascot Agency
Described as an “open-world narrative adventure mascot management simulator, “Promise Mascot Agency feels like a Yakuza side-quest, partly because it kind of is. Playing as an exiled Yakuza member named Michi, your new job is to help a cutesy mascot agency find financial success by hiring different mascots and sending them out to events where they can be as cute as they can be, bring in more fans, and unlock more jobs. It’s a very madcap kind of game combining the numbers go up stonks feeling of a management sim, but with the sense of humor and style of cult-Japanese games like Yakuza and No More Heroes. – Matt Kim
Labyrinth of the Demon King
I’m a sucker for old-school, first-person dungeon crawlers and Labyrinth of the Demon King certainly scratches that itch. Developed by a lone developer, Labyrinth of the Demon King is a throwback to games like King’s Field, but with splashes of J-Horror like Siren thrown in for good measure. As a lowly footsoldier to your lord, you decide to enter the nightmarish realm of the demon king to try and avenge your master. But the hellish monsters and a nightmarish version of feudal Japan might not be worth your honor. Great visuals, classic vibes, and a lot of style makes this one demo to keep an eye on. – Matt Kim
And those are just some of the demos we’re playing at this Steam Next Fest. Check out the games on our list and, again, there are hundreds of game demos currently available to play on Steam Next Fest until March 3. So let us know in the comments which demos you’re playing.
This morning, we got our first lengthy look at Pokemon Legends: Z-A, Game Freak’s futuristic new Pokémon game set in the familiar Pokémon X/Y locale of Lumiose City. But even though we saw a number of features such as running on rooftops, changes to battling, and Mega Evolution, we still have loads of questions about exactly when Pokémon Legends Z-A takes place relative to the other Pokémon games, and which returning characters we might see in Lumiose City.
That’s where the community comes in.
For context, while most Pokémon games tend to be standalone affairs, the first Pokémon Legends game dealt with time travel. It also heavily featured familiar locations from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl set hundreds of years in the past, numerous characters who were clearly ancestors of characters in other Pokémon games…or, in one case, just a Pokémon Black and White character plopped down in the past by Pokémon God themself. With that in mind, fans are eager to know when Pokémon Legends: Z-A is set, if there are any time traveling shenanigans, and if we’ll see any familiar faces in Lumiose City whenever this game takes place.
In the last few hours since the trailer debuted, fans have been combing it for connections to other Pokémon games…and they’ve found a surprising amount. The most obvious connection is the presence of AZ, which is called out directly in the trailer. AZ is a character who was granted immortality 3000 years before the events of Pokémon X and Y, so it makes sense that regardless of when Z-A takes place, he’d be around. In Z-A, he seems to run a hotel in Lumiose City, and he looks a lot happier now that he’s been reunited with his beloved Floette.
But there are far more subtle ties. One of my favorites that fans have discovered is the potential presence of the Looker Bureau in Z-A. Looker is a fan-favorite detective character who first appeared in Pokémon Black and White, but has since made appearances in several other games. Several eagle-eyed fans have noticed that one office shown in the trailer looks nearly identical to the Looker Bureau in past games, which they believe confirms the presence of either Looker or his protege Emma in Z-A’s Lumiose City.
Another really bonkers theory floating around is the connection between the two main protagonists and some other familiar faces. Now that we’ve got full character art for the protagonists of Pokémon Legends: Z-A, fans have pointed out that the two characters look suspiciously similar to Ethan and Lyra, the two player characters from Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver. This has led to speculation that Legends: Z-A may feature a time traveling scenario where Ethan and Lyra are pulled out of their version of Johto and sent to a futuristic Lumiose.
But another interesting, protagonist-related theory suggests a different origin story. Fans are also pointing out that the pair look somewhat similar to Kalos Pokémon scientist Professor Sycamore and the mother of the protagonist in Pokémon X and Y, named Grace. This one, especially the bit involving Grace, is a bit more of a stretch, but still a super interesting theory in light of past plays on ancestry in the Legends series:
What’s most curious about all those theories is that some version of them could all be true at the same time. As multiple fans have pointed out, we have absolutely no idea where Pokémon Legends Z-A takes place in the timeline. Pokémon games over the years have had a very loosely sequential timeline that also occasionally involves alternate realities (don’t worry about it, it’s fine) and, again as in the case of Legends: Arceus, time travel back to the past. If AZ is running a hotel, fans are pointing out that this game must take place after the events of Pokémon X and Y.
But it’s possible that could mean hundreds of years after, given AZ’s immortality. The greatest evidence of this is Lumiose City itself, which is ginormous and futuristic in Legends Z-A in a way that would have taken decades to build. If that’s true and this takes place that far into the future, that would mean the two protagonists, as well as whoever is running the Looker Bureau, are descedents several generations down the line of the characters they resemble.
This woman looks like a Hex Maniac, which was a trainer type that appeared in Pokémon X and Y. While a number of returning trainer types have been spotted in today’s news, this girl is particularly interesting due to an ongoing Pokémon mystery: the Ghost Girl.
In Pokémon X and Y, there’s a scene you can view by entering a building in Lumiose City and heading up to the second floor. When you arrive, the lights will flash, the music will stop, and a Hex Maniac will appear behind you, glide toward the front of the screen, and say, “No, you’re not the one,” before disappearing. It’s a weird, creepy scene that to this day has absolutely no explanation. This girl is never seen again, does not unlock anything, and just appears to be a strange easter egg. So because that Hex Maniac has remained a mystery for years, the sight of one creepily wandering around Lumiose in Legends Z-A has a lot of fans hopeful this thread might finally lead somewhere. After all, if she’s a ghost, she could have continued to haunt that building for hundreds of years…
In the coming days, there will almost certainly be more new discoveries, easter eggs, and connections found throughout all the footage, art, and news we received today about Pokémon Legends: Z-A. We have a bit of a wait for the game’s release, as it’s currently planned for “late 2025.” But in the meantime at least we have lots of new information to obsess over. You can catch up on everything announced at today’s Pokémon Presents, including Legends Z-A news, mobile gaming news, Pokemon Champions, and more, right here.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
