17 | August | 2017 | "DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!"

Well, Monster Hunter Stories will very likely be a big ol’ very well deserved smash hit for Nintendo, Capcom and developer Marvelous! when it lands at retail and on the eShop September 8, but it really needs to be on a more powerful system that would allow it to be even better visually.

Yeah, I said it – the well-aged 3DS hardware just can’t handle all the game wants to show off and that’s too bad in this day and age. So you get NPC’s popping in, occasional frame rate drops, some nice-looking (but would be nicer looking on an HD system or handheld) cinemas and a few other issues. That said, the game is fun as heck and absolutely the most accessible Monster Hunter game to date.

Granted, I’m someone who has a huge love/hate thing going with this franchise for over a decade. The character and enemy designs are great, but up until this turn-based installment, the combat has always been what left me annoyed. The funny thing is, MHS grabbing at the brass ring cash cow Pokemon has been for decades makes for a game that’s hard to dislike unless you’re not a fan at all of “Gotta catch ’em all!” styled play.

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The Initiation_AV071 Amusingly enough, The Initiation is okay enough to not need the old eyebrow-raising poster and new Blu-Ray art along with its initial promise of nubile college-age gals doing the schoolgirl witches coven experimentation thing. That’s a plot element teased more than an 80’s hairdo and tossed aside fast in favor of simpler sorority pledge antics. Boo.

Still, the film works fine as intended if you love your slasher flicks with twist reveals near the end (this one might remind you of Blood Rage), some nicely done gore FX and a solid performance by Daphne Zuniga (her first major film role after 1982’s The Dorm That Dripped Blood).

The film was shot by two different directors (Peter Crane, Larry Stewart) and is a case where the initial one did some incredible and atmospheric work but wasn’t fast enough to meet deadlines. He was replaced by a faster director who shot the bulk of the film in a TV-style format and some of the original footage was incorporated into the new stuff to give certain scenes that extra visual oomph. Hey, it all worked out in the end, so it’s all good.

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