Many people see the PSP, developers included, as just another version of the PSOne, albeit slightly more powerful. It's probably for this reason we see the PSP titles catalogue being filled with remakes of old PSOne titles, or rehashes of very familiar genres. However, every now and again a game comes along disguised as such a remake, but eventually proving quite the otherwise. Such is the case with Monster Hunter Freedom, a version of the original PS2 release, which was in a largely online format. Capcom have seen fit, in a move not entirely unlike the recent genius of placing the Resident Evil fire fights from over the protagonists right shoulder, to rework this title to fit their vision of the PSP, turning it into a title for gamers on the go, at work, on the train, in school or even in bed at night before lights out.

For those of you not familiar with the original game, the premise is fairly simple. You play an up and coming Hunter ('Hunter' mind you, not marksman, or warrior, or assassin - a Hunter) whose village is besieged by dinosaur-like monsters and dragons of all shapes and sizes; massive herbivores running scared from fast and nimble raptors, buzzing giant insects dancing merrily in the shadow cast by gargantuan winged lizards, while sands thrum with the passing of scaly, piscine creatures diving through the shingle as a killer whale may through the deep ocean. It's your job to run errands for either the Guild Master (if playing with friends) or the Town Elder, ranging from fetching berries to taking down the mightiest of these monstrosities.

It all comes at a price though, and that is a great deal of your time. However, after an initially slow start, I was more than prepared to hand my life temporarily over to this title, as the gaming rewards are great. I can see why many people may be put off to begin with, as the first hour of the game can be a bit of a grind, the quests being fairly menial. However, their purpose is to open your eyes to the possibility of the gameplay to come, teaching you a wide variety of skills. These include foraging for different herbs, cooking meat from herbivores you've recently killed, mining, and skinning hides, then using them to upgrade your equipment.

They also get you used to how the game hangs together. Viewed from a third person perspective, you run around varied but fairly small three-dimensional areas, and you find yourself moving from one big loading point to another reasonably quickly. Looking at the map, supplied at the start of the quest, an area can be broken into as many as thirteen of these, so it can get quite wearing hopping from one section to the next, hunting down your prey. Occasionally, during a fight, you can be knocked from one area to the next by a hit from an opponent too, which takes the pace out of a conflict and is really, really annoying! However, there's a lot in the game that makes up for this.

Not a lot of the first quests involve taking down anything more dangerous than a large grey striped dino chewing the cud, and a few whacks of a basic weapon will usually take care of them. They try to leg it, and in doing so you notice that the game doesn't have any lock-on system. You can't automatically pick your target and stay with him until you give up the chase or kill him, but have to manually steer the camera onto whatever target you're after, whether it's running, jumping, swimming or even flying. However, while I struggled with this at first, I often feel lock-ons are a bit of a cop-out anyway, and enjoyed the skill involved in keeping tabs on your target. Later on I discovered the lack of auto-lock worked in my favour, which I'll come to shortly.

My first real challenge was a bunch of raptors that the village guy asked me to take out. Going into this quest, even though I had a time limit and these guys were all over me, I still had a bit of a forage as I moved from zone to zone. I found that each quest can actually offer up different types of finds, depending on which region you go into and how many segments of the map I discussed above are open to you. Some areas are great for herbs, others for minerals, and of course even different types of pelts from the beasts you slay. I found that the hides from these raptors were worth a bit of dosh too, so came back to this quest over and over (as you can with all the quests) to grind for their hides and anything else I could lay my hands on.

You see, a great deal of the satisfaction you get from the game comes from finding stuff, working out what it does, what it makes if you combine it with other stuff and what effect it would then have on anything you encounter in the field. Also, many of your kills can be turned into upgrades for your weapons or armour, which is essential if you want to progress through the five quests levels. To help you along, besides an armourer and shield crafter, in the village you also have access to people who will sell you lotions and potions, guide books on crafting and combining, and monster compendiums that discuss the tactics for taking down the bigger foes. Besides this, you even have a little farm filled with weird little cats who help you fish, mine, harvest and bug hunt. All of the items you find can be used or sold, and anything you buy and sell in the village gives you points to unlock even bigger parts of the farm.

Pretty soon I had upgraded my kit to include some cracking blue armour with great defensive statistics, I had improved my bow, my shield and dagger to what I thought were epic proportions, and made loads of big barrel bombs, sonic bombs, pitfall traps and goodness knows what other stuff. I thought I was ready to take on two great monsters, the Dune Sharks and the Giant Kut Kut, so I set boldly out from the village. Both wiped me out completely. I was staggered; I had been hacking and slashing my way merrily through the game and now I had hit a brick wall. What was I doing wrong? As I replayed and replayed the level, I eventually figured out what was missing - tactics. You see, the basic stuff at the start just sets you on the right road with regards to equipment, taking out minor foes, item gathering and so on, but then it throws you in at the deep end and forces you to use your brain.

This is common sense really, as any successful hunter will have a plan, usually involving stealth, wit and even a few funky devices to take down what would normally have him for lunch. The next time out against the Dune Sharks, I tried a few things out on them. Careful observation showed me I could wait by a rocky outcropping for them to swim through the sand and leap out at me, only to stun themselves against a rock. However, an easier method was to use a Sonic Bomb as they swam by, which gave them a fit, causing them to come quickly to the surface and flop about like a fish out of water. At this point you could nip in and hack away, then lather, rinse, repeat.

The Giant Kut Kut, the first real Wyvern, or dragon, you're going to come across, was a different matter altogether. I still had to hack at him, but I had to weaken him first and then keep myself alive long enough to take him out. The first thing I did was mark him with a paintball, so if he flew away I could see where he was going by looking at the map; the paintball acts as a bizarre tracking device. Next up, I had to lay a pitfall trap in an area I knew he would frequent from observing him. True to form, he fell into it and was temporarily trapped, giving me the opportunity to put a large barrel bomb by his head, setting it off from a safe distance. Thanks to the lack of a lock-on system I was able to do this quickly and efficiently. This knocked him for six, but he still had some fight left in him. Using careful dives and rolls to keep on his left side (as he always seems to swing his tail to the right) I hacked away at him. Eventually he was down and I was filled with a tremendous sense of relief and victory. It really was a buzz!

Needless to say, this began a series of quests where the beasts were far larger, required far more thought to take down and were also much more satisfying to kill, but the examples I've given illustrate what the game is and isn't. It isn't a straightforward hack and slash game, although chopping, parrying, thrusting rolling and diving are all done in combat. This is a game of hunting. You have to hunt down some serious nasties, and by hunt I mean you have to prepare before you dive in. You must carefully observe your prey from a safe distance. You must experiment and be prepared to fail a few times to rework your strategies. You must gather together all items and equipment you need and then you must lay your trap. The actual fights last only a few minutes - preparation is everything, which is what makes this game so different and so deep, so much so in fact that you can even scout through dino poo for seeds or fertiliser for your farm! There are hundreds of different things you can make, hundreds of items that can aid you or hinder your prey, and great ways to experiment with upgrading armour and weapons from fangs and hides collected from your fallen foes. There's no linear path through it and very little tutorial, but this is good, as it makes you explore your environment and learn for yourself what makes what and is effective against whom.

I admit for the first few quests the gameplay may put some gamers off, but some interest is clawed back the moment you step out onto the rolling plain by your campsite. The PSP's power really shines here; I found myself looking across a valley, over a river and into a mountain range in the distance. The scenery reflected very nicely off the water, clouds floated across the horizon and on the far shore vast herds of herbivores made their way majestically across the plain. As your quests progress and your work becomes more difficult, you are rewarded yet further by some magnificent views and some very tasty scenery. These include massive mountain ranges to scale, gloomy and cold caverns to explore, swampy marshland shrouded in mist and vast desert tundra with sand and dust blown from one end to the other.

However, the creatures you come across can be far more awe inspiring. When I saw my first giant herbivore munching the grass, I was well impressed. It was animated beautifully and its grey, stripy, scaly hide shone in the sun. The raptors that lurk about in packs vary in colour, the easier ones being blue and the ones with really expensive hides being white. These guys look sleek and shark like, reminding me of that famous hunting scene in Jurassic Park. What really made my eyes bug out of my head though, was when I saw one of the bigger wyverns for the first time. Although they're designed to be killed at a later stage in the game, quite often you'll see them flying from one area to another in earlier quests. I didn't know this until one landed right next me as I was checking a tree trunk for fungus. It was massive! One of its legs was the size of my character and as its cruel beady eyes lowered to my level, I could swear I smelt its rotten, carcass-ridden breath. Of course, at this stage of the game, all you can do is run.

There is a sprint option, and when sprinting normally you look like an athlete. However, when you sprint away from a wyvern such as I just described, it's a case of bulging eyes, knees up and whoosh, a really funny touch. The game is full of nice graphical fun like this. For example, when cooking your own meat, your guy sits down and happily turns a massive chicken leg on a spit over a fire, whistling a merry tune the whole time. Also, when you progress to a certain level you can employ small humanoid cats to cook for you in the kitchen of your house. While you sit there banging your table for food, the cats leap about behind you, singing a song and preparing your food.

So, musically it's a bit of a laugh too, what with feline tenors and some tuneful whistling, but there's a lot more to the sound than that. Besides a score that rises and falls depending on the danger you're in, you're also treated to some nice ambient effects, such as wind whistling through rocks, the splash of running water and the croaking of insects. The noise the monsters make all vary wildly too and when creeping from area to area, the monsters become immediately recognisable from their sounds, before you even spot them.

It's a vast relief that there's so much to do solo, as it's often very difficult to find friends who have a PSP and the same titles as you. However, if you can find some chums to team up with, the game becomes even more rewarding. You can go into the Guild Hall and sign up to go out on quests in groups. It's at this point that the game enters an entirely different dynamic, as you can have hunters dressed in different armour and carrying different weapons, each having a different role in the group. One can be the runner, using themselves as bait to draw the wyvern to the others, another can snipe from a long distance using a massively overpowered gun, and yet others can lay traps, steam in with different types of melee weapons or even just hang back and dispense healing items and cooling drinks. If you have the PSP wi-fi dongle you can even do this all online via your PC too! The game really is massive, and while solo stuff is superb fun, the excitement and exhilaration is tripled when playing with a bunch of like-minded hunters.

Although it has some issues, such as exacerbating loading times, initially slow and dull quests and a lack of a targeting system, Monster Hunter Freedom more than makes up for this in other areas. Continual play rewards you with more items, experimentation with your prizes make some great weapon upgrades and traps, and you're rewarded for taking your time and thinking about your approach instead of just steaming in, sword swinging. Combine this with some seriously impressive graphics, a great score and some laugh out loud comedy moments, and you have a game that it would be a shame to miss out on, simply because it's not as instantly accessible as most games tend to be; this is one game where perseverance and patience is very greatly rewarded.

Reviewed by Dave Wynn for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).