DMC: Devil May Cry gets a lot of flack that it doesn’t deserve. I’m not seeing why fans of the series would NOT like it. There’s a lot here that I think is pushing the series forward. Maybe I don’t know better; I’ve only played the first Devil May Cry and it has been a long time. Let’s see how this series has progressed.
I think the main gripe that DMC gets is the main character, Dante. I don’t remember much from Devil May Cry PS2, but I’m pretty sure he was a wise ass. In DMC, he’s still sassy. The new look was also mentioned by fans. Apparently he looks like an emo… I wouldn’t go that far, but it does fit his attitude. He looks like a smart ass, and that is what he is.
Look at this smart ass.
The story of the game is a reboot of the franchise, so no knowledge of the previous Devil May Cry games is required. Basically, you are Dante, and you fight demons. Pretty simple. One day you wake up and you are ripped into Limbo. You must fight some demons. You escape only with the help of a human, Kat. Kat is part of a “terrorist” group that is rebelling against the demons. The demons are led by Bob Barbas, a news anchor, who is also a demon. The rebellion is led by Vergil. Dante agrees to help out, in his own snarky way.
God’s work requires you to turn into a red, giant head.
There’s some interesting points in the story; I don’t want to spoil it for anybody, so I won’t go into detail. The characters are great. The animations make the characters come to life, and the voice acting is top notch. It’s to be expected from a Ninja Theory game.
That comb over. It’s glorious!
Story was fairly good, but what’s important is the combat. I absolutely loved the combat in this game. It gently introduced you to the combat. At first you are like “What!? Only one button to attack!?” But then it starts slowly introducing you to other moves, like launching enemies, and shooting them with your guns. Also, timing your button presses is important to creating combos.
My gun go off!
Pretty soon you are acquiring new weapons. Switching between these weapons is easy and seamless. Just attack normally if you want to attack normally (duh). For demon weapons, just hold down right trigger while attacking. Demon weapons attack more slowly, but do more damage. To attack with angel weapons, you hold down left trigger. Angel weapons don’t do as much damage, but they are quick, and have a greater area-of-effect damage. You also acquire more sub weapons for your angel, demon, and gun weapons. A quick click on the d-pad for the weapon you want to switch, changes it. You can see it in the above screenshot, in the bottom left. Yes, Ebony and Ivory are your first guns, so don’t fret because I posted a screen shot of a shotgun… it was just my most badass screenshot.
In this one, I’m being a badass, but it’s hard to tell…
At the end of each level, you get a rating based on style, time, and completion. As you string together combos, you get a combat rating. Watching your combo go from “D” to “SS” makes it all worth it. Completion is basically finding everything. There are collectibles, but it’s similar to Metroid. You will have to replay levels to collect everything. Luckily, the game makes it easy to do this, because you can do a level select, and pick whatever difficulty you want when you do it. Another thing I like about the game is that it has shorter levels. Most levels can be beaten in under a half an hour, which feels about right. It was nice to be able to come home after work, play one or two levels, and feel pretty satisfied.
That brings me to length. You can probably beat the game in under 10 hours. I clocked in at a little over nine. However, the collectibles give you reason to replay levels. If collectibles aren’t your thing, then DMC unlocks more difficulty settings. From the beginning, Human (easy), Devil Hunter (medium), and Nephilim (hard) are unlocked. I played on Devil Hunter and rarely died. It was too easy, and I recommend that if you are comfortable with Devil May Cry games, start on Nephilim. If you’ve played all the games, even this mode will be too easy for you. With that said, beating the game once will unlock Son of Sparta mode, which makes the enemies more difficult AND remixes the enemies. There’s three more difficulty settings to unlock, so there’s ample reason to replay the game. However, I feel that they should have just unlocked the four additional difficulty settings after the first play through to keep veterans of the series entertained. Replaying over and over like that could be tedious, but it also extends the game’s length. I know I’ll probably play through a couple times to collect everything and test out Son of Sparta mode. The other modes don’t appeal to me too much.
The audio in this game is great. There are satisfying sound effects for each slice of your blade, each contact made on an enemy, etc. The music is noteworthy. Heavy metal music will be playing as you’re slicing and dicing your way through hordes of demons. Its oddly cathartic.
The combat animations, as well as the cut scene animation, look awesome. The game runs at 60 fps on the PC, which is great. I highly suggest you buy it on the PC if you have a PC that can run it. It looks great as well. The level design of Limbo is awesome and interesting. Here’s some screenshots to speak for the game.
Here’s some interesting Graffiti.
Before entering Limbo
After entering Limbo
Corporate Limbo. The writing on the wall is Bob demanding stuff.
Overall, I really enjoyed the game. The story was decent enough to keep me interested. What really pulls everything together is the music, sound engineering, combat animations, the style rating, and the simple, but effective, controls. I highly recommend you buy this game. I bought it on Steam for 25 bucks, and I would have paid more for it. I’m looking forward to a few more play-throughs. And with that, I leave you with this:
That look on his face tells me that it’s porn… only porn.
