I don’t like Monster Hunter. Despite several friends trying to get me into various iterations of the series, it’s never been my thing. The graphics looked good, the mechanics were interesting, but it never grabbed me. Then I saw Monster Hunter Wilds.

To say that the Monster Hunter Wilds demo I saw at a closed-door preview of the Summer Game Fest was impressive would be the understatement of the year. It surpassed everything else I saw and played: the enormity of the world and its creatures, the fluidity with which we seamlessly moved between biomes, and the overwhelming range of options at your disposal when hunting down a beast. On one hunt, I saw a particularly beefy Doshaguma climb, slice, shoot, lure into a giant sand trap created by another monster to thin out its herd, get lured into a fight with a massive dragon that breathed lightning at it, get chased into a massive sandstorm that turned day into night, have massive stalactites fall on its head as it chased our character through a cave, and ultimately finish it off with the help of other hunters—and it seemed like we’d only scratched the surface of the combat that lay ahead in Wilds.

Is it too early to say that it will absolutely be the game of the year in 2025? Yes, absolutely. But that doesn't mean I can't mark it as my early favorite.

The demo itself was relatively short, only half an hour, but the amount of features and options we saw in that time made the various hour-long playtests and demos I participated in feel like they were searching every corner of their game for something else to show me. If anything, I felt an overwhelming sense of excitement to get my hands on a Monster Hunter game that I’ve honestly never experienced before.