Monster Hunter Wilds feels undercooked on PS5, Series X and especially Series S

Monster Hunter is back with a bang on current-gen consoles. Wilds – the latest series entry – features a seamless open world in a series first, plus plenty of visual bells and whistles courtesy of Capcom’s RE Engine. So can the longstanding series hold up to current-gen pressure? And how do performance and image quality fare across PS5, Series X, and Series S?

Let’s first focus on the areas where Monster Hunter Wilds excels. Capcom’s latest does a generally very good job of depicting wide-open gameplay spaces without too much pop in and with plenty of flora and detailed static geometry. The crags and caves of the game’s opening desert section are impressively ornate, and the game’s forested second area shows off a lush, foliage-rich environment. Wilds generally meets current-gen standards here, without hard polygonal edges or low-res texture work that might betray adherence to earlier console hardware.

The game’s titular monster hunts showcase unique foes in interesting arenas, often with fascinating secondary animation that remains interesting throughout often long fights. The same level of care also extends to NPCs, with eye-catching designs, sophisticated skin shading and hair rendering, highlighted in a surprising volume of well-animated and ambitious cutscenes. The excellent animation also extends to gameplay, with effective attack telegraphing and responsive player and mount movement.

Wilds’ lighting can also be pretty good at times. At its best, we get very effective large-scale light bounce and occlusion, which is most obvious in strong sunlight. Smaller-scale detail is mostly treated with screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO), but archways and large rock formations seem to be lit primarily using a baked global illumination (GI) technique, which is often effective. At times, the results can be quite striking.