For whatever reason, Capcom has never shown much love to the West when it comes to Monster Hunter. Sure we had Tri for the Wii and then there was the re-skinned Ultimate on the Wii U, but unless you're rocking a handheld, that's about it. We were even teased by Tencent's Monster Hunter Online using the beautiful CryEngine 3, but that's only getting a release in China. Fortunately though, we may not need to wait around for Capcom to do the right thing, as Canadian developer Tetrahedral Games, is working on something close enough.

It's called Canto and it's clearly heavily Monster Hunter inspired. You play a guy (or girl) facing off against huge monsters in a frontier setting, using twitch based combat to avoid attacks and chain them together for big damage. There isn't much to show of the game at the moment other than a trailer that was posted up back in February, but it gives a good idea of how things are progressing. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuemfDCN0OU']

Canto is a pretty game, with some lovely modelling/textures on the creature on show, and some of the little effects like the falling leaves in the background look great. Different weapon types are also on show, include a one handed hammer, sword and shield and even some throw-able grenades – that might be a little easier to use than barrel bombs.

While the focus is certainly the big monster, there are some smaller ones around to cause annoyance and get under you feet during tense moments, though they're easily dispatched it seems.

Find out more about Canto on the official site and keep up to date at Tetrahedral's Twitter.

Kitguru Says: I'll be keeping an eye on this one as Monster Hunter has needed a decent Western release on a powerful system for years. PC matchmaking and graphical options would be excellent. Here's hoping Tetrahedral drops that boss monster health bar though – it's not needed in a game like this. [Via IndieGames]

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