It’s strange to think that not too long ago I had lost all faith in Capcom. They were on a fairly bad downward spiral of game releases that lacked content, bad monetization, or bastardized a beloved franchise (looking at you Resident Evil 6). I was convinced that the Capcom I knew and loved was no more and I had to cut loose what originally was a great developer and producer. Then they decided to surprise the holy hell out of me and release what is still one of my favorite VR games with Resident Evil 7. From there they seemed to start turning things around albeit with a couple stumbles like Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite. But after that we have been getting great releases like Monster Hunter: World, Mega Man 11, Resident Evil 2, a ton of port support for the Nintendo Switch along with some nice collections. Hell, we rarely give 10’s around here, but Devil May Cry V was a fantastic return to the series which grabbed a perfect score.

While Capcom may not have had a killer E3 2019 since they didn’t really have a new game to show, what it let me know is that they are still going strong. Continuing with the success of porting their series to Nintendo Switch; Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6, and Devil May Cry HD are making their way to the Switch. They are also supporting one of their biggest titles, Monster Hunter World, with a massive DLC update that is as large as the original base game. I was able to get my hands on a couple of these titles as well as a couple missions of the new Iceborne expansion.

There was actually a queue to wait in before I got into the Iceborne gameplay since they want to team you up with someone and a couple of Capcom reps. I took advantage of the queue line to hop into one of the kiosks they had set up with the various Switch ports. I hoped right into Resident Evil 5 because I refuse to ever play Resident Evil 6. My experience with the opening level was just fine, no lag issues, and the graphics looked pretty on par with the original version. I wasn’t able to play on handheld however since they had them locked into the dock.

All the features were present here which included the full co-op experience. I also took a look at Devil May Cry, which is the 360/PS3 HD version, and much like Resident Evil 5 it looks and plays just as well. Like I mentioned, I wasn’t able to try in handheld so performance is still a question that way, but if you love these games then I can at least confirmed they will be still just as good.

Finally it was my turn to play the Monster Hunter World expansion and there were two missions available. One of which my group just need to traverse and track down one of the new monsters in the new frozen landscape. This mission was the easy one, meant to let us experience the new location, items, and mechanics available. The demo starts in the departure loadout screen so I wasn’t able to check out the new Headquarters, but I did get a peak at some new armor and weapon sets. These sets will obviously provide cold resistant buffs since you’ll constantly need to worry about freezing and always having a warm drink on you. One of the new sets of armor and weapons for your Palico is a full snowboarder set making him look like he is about to shred it hard out there.

We ready up and load into the game and from here everything is essentially the same. You’ll need to access your item box and collect your essential gear first, and all the controls remain the same. As I mentioned before, since this is Iceborne , you’ll need to stay warm during the whole mission. Once we leave the camp and start tracking monster tracks and such, we come across one of the new mechanics. You’re now able to mount monsters using the Clutch Claw extension and then use the Flinch Shot to make them run forward. We mounted onto a couple wandering creatures who looked like massive wolverines and we used these to explore around quickly. This will make escapes and tracking monsters when they flee much easier.

There are a lot of additional features added into the expansion like: Master Quests, new combo moves for each weapon, riding tailriders as a permanent mount, new view port, new squad features, as well as the new things I mentioned above. Besides this the majority of my time spent on these missions felt similar to the base game, as it should. If you’re a fan of Monster Hunter World or you’re looking for a reason to jump back in, Iceborne will not dissapoint. It’s essentially a full game of content for $39.99 or if you don’t own the base game there will be a bundle that will be $59.99.

Capcom is killing it and I hope they continue on this trend of not only providing new titles, but also providing high quality remakes and ports of their older franchises. I personally hope to see Deep Down make a resurgence since they did re-up on the IP copyright. I would also kill for a full remake of Dino Crisis like they did with Resident Evil 2, but we will likely get a remake of Resident Evil 3 before that happens. With Marvel getting the rights back to X-Men I would love to see a return of a proper MvC that has a large roster and plenty of features. Capcom has set themselves up for many future successes, let’s hope they continue that.