DmC Devil May Cry: Two giant steps sideways.

I've had this one on the shelf for maybe close to a year. I wasn't sure if I just sort of fell out with spectacle fighters, or maybe I just got tired with this franchise. I'm not really sure.  But when this game came out I didn't have the pressing need to pick it up at launch. LONG after its release I bought it on a buy 2 get 1 used special, it sat on the shelf turned sideways to let me know I hadn't finished it (or even started) but that still didn't press me.

To this day I don't know why I put it off so long but in the span before Watch Dogs came out I took that opportunity to just breeze through the game on easy mode so I can at least say that I completed the story mode. If anything it would give me a taste for the game and see the story. First game I've played on easy in a long while.

DmC: DEVIL MAY CRY

Explaining the story of these games is always a headache but I am going to give it a shot. The game takes place in modern day setting in a demon controlled city called Limbo City. It appears to be functioning just like a regular town does, but it is completely controlled and manipulated by a demon called Mundus, who's power reaches to control even the president. Using a drug laden soda (that might be a Futurama reference) or through the constant prattling of a political pundit (who should have just been Bill O'Reily playing himself for as thinly veiled it is) the denizens of the city live their lives in a semi brainwashed state, completely under his control.

Outside the skirts of the city lives a young delinquent named Dante. He's arrogant, brash, and is constantly being hassled by demons who rip him into a parallel plane of limbo and try to kill him. So needless to say he's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Dante is rudely awoken one morning by a young girl named Kat. She warns him of danger and pleads for him to come with her, to meet her boss. She works for a group called "The order" and their sole purpose is wrench humanity free from demon control. Aggravated by the hassle of demons, Dante begrudgingly follows along.

So yeah. He's got a little teen pop douche in him. But after a level or two?
I didn't even notice it anymore. New Dante is alright in my book.

So let's get this out of way so you can start flaming me. At first, I didn't much care for his look, but you know what? I like the new Dante. Yeah, he sort of has that shitty popular pretty boy look are you see in movies these days but its a small trade off from the "Oh yeah! Party time bro! DUUUUDE!" doofball Dante we have had for the past few games (3 was specifically the worst). Part of the reason I liked Devil May Cry 4 so much is because a majority of the time you play the game as Nero, and not Dante. Sorry people, but Dante has always been a bit of "Bro-ish" douchehole.

So now we have skinny androgen Twilight version of Dante, and things were not off on the right foot because quite literally the first scene you see him he's completely naked. Thankfully they don't show anything, but come the fuck on. But outside of that intro and his look (which after a while I didn't even notice) he feels like a very different character. There is definitely an edge of youthful angst to the character, and he does have a bit of young adult fiction character growth to him. Angsty but reluctant hero. A bit of dick through the game but as he gets to know Kat, becomes more of a supportive team player. After a few levels I found it really hard not to like the guy.

Kat is a bit different to most of the girls in the DMC series. She is smart and  resourceful,
 but isn't the over sexualized bad ass fighter girl. She has her tricks but is still vulnerable.

What I thought was interesting was the portrayal of Dante's brother Virgil through the game. If you have played through the series in any capacity you know that Virgil is the primary antagonist to Dante. Not in this game, as he is Kat's boss. So while you never play as Virgil he is very much alongside you for the game and it provided an interesting new dynamic to the character.

So this version of Devil May Cry I would say is broken up into two different styles of play: Classic DMC, and Platformy DMC. When you are running along the map, villains and baddies will eventually pop up and all you need to do is wail on them till they drop. I find Devil May Cry to be the standard for good spectacle fighter combat and this installment is no exception. Everything moves quickly and at a smooth pace without feeling overwhelming and too difficult to follow. Bayonetta had this problem where the combat would start to move faster than you could react adding unnecessary difficulty.

Air juggling with pistols is still as satisfying as ever.

Combos are relatively easy to pull off so it accommodates the masher and those who know when to pause in the combo to switch up the move set. They added a very nice gesture in this for this very purpose actually, after a certain move Dante will hold and ending pose. When he does there is a faint but noticeable glimmer on his weapon, this is your timer for the break in the combo. Once I realized that It was easy to keep my timing every time.

I would actually say that it is improved in comparison to previous Devil May Cry games because of how the weapon system works. You get your pistols and sword to start the game, but as you play through you start to allocate Angel and Demon weapons. Typically you will only use one of them but you do have a few options. As you fight, you will find enemies with certain guards or weaknesses, and if you use the back triggers, you can flip to your angel or demon weapon on the fly. Typically the Angel weapons are fast moving, high combo/low damage weapons, and the Demon weapons are slow but heavy damaging weapons used to punch through guards. Switching between them is relatively easy and fun to do.

I quickly fell in love with using the scythe.

What I didn't like about this is these also function as your grappling hooks. These can be used to rip away an enemy shield, pull them enemy closer to you, or pull yourself up to the enemy. In combat these work fine, not as seamless as they should have felt but functional. However, they are also used on these incredibly arbitrary platforming sections you will have to do on each level. It works for the most part, but this is kind of a double edged sword.

When Dante is pulled into limbo, the level design will alter around him ripping apart the floor, buildings, and warping all the surfaces around him to random floating platforms that you will have to navigate. To do this, you need to grapple yourself onto ledges so you can use the other grapple to yank things in place. There are also sections of maps in the level where you have to do this to cross great chasms so you have to do them in midair quickly.  For a while, this was actually a pretty cool visual effect.

But then I started to notice that I am doing sometimes 2 or 3 times in a single level, and then again during the boss fight. Now, Bayonetta did something similar because that had boss fights where they were roughly the size of a planet, so you needed to fly around the enemy to get to its respective weak points. In DmC it feels like you are really only doing it to dodge one specific attack. Maybe this plays more of a factor when you are playing it on a different difficulty, but for what I played all the platforming seemed incredibly arbitrary and unnecessary. I find the floating platform to be shorthand for sloppy level design.

Which is a shame because the the level design for a number of stages is very very cool. There is one specific example where you need to breach an enemy stronghold, but its not actually the tower, its the tower's reflection in the lake. So Dante jumps in and hits limbo skyrocketing upwards into a inverse world. It was a very cool effect. There are handful of stages where they get lazy sending you through corridors, but for the most part all of the non-platformy sections are very cool.

I just felt like I was always having to do this. Stop it. I play these games
to wail on monsters and keep them in the air with guns. 

But aside from thinking it's sloppy level design, it just feels boring to do. There are occasional stretches where you have to make multiple jumps and pulls before you actually hit the ground. They are tedious and annoying, they aren't fun, and they just waste your time. You could easily make me run along a path with a jump here and there for the same effect. But instead it adds pointless trial and error game play forcing me to backtrack when I mess up.

I have always liked the music in this series. Always had a very kinda hard rock/industrial kind of vibe to it. Although when the game started, in the intro credits it straight up said "Music by Combichrist". Now, this initially gave me a bit of a negative reaction because all I know of their music is when their drummer did a "DJ set" before a Rammstein concert I attended. It sucked, because it was basically shitty dance and dumbstep mixes of actually good Rammstein songs while he played with his Ipod, and then occasionally threw his hands up in the air. It was fucking retarded, and so are "DJ sets". (So you dumbstep fans can eat all the boners.)

Thankfully from what I've heard, Combichrist as an actual band falls in line with what I have accepted to be a traditional Devil May Cry ambiance if you will. That hard, aggressive industrial tone in the background as you are wailing on an enemy with an over sized sword. I don't know if any of their "hits" were actually in the soundtrack, but it certainly felt right at home, and has got me thinking I should probably give Combichrist proper an actual chance.

And hey! Boss fights! What an crazy novelty this game has created! I play through a level and fight some baddies, then I fight a really big boss at the end where I have to learn an attack pattern and then wail on the enemy when his weakness is exposed. Instead of just fighting wave after wave of the same fodder enemies I have been wailing on for the entirety of the game.  This was really neat, maybe other games might pick up with wild and crazy idea at some point? It certainly feels right at home here and I would love to see more of it. (Seriously game devs, what the fuck is your problem with boss fights? Thank you DmC.)

I like that I didn't feel forced to use certain weapons during boss fights

So here is the deal. Ultimately, this game is still just another Devil May Cry. The story is familiar but still manages to feel new to an extent. Even though it's not, the game can feel a bit like a prequel to the entire franchise as a whole. The new Dante is an interesting bent to the character and if you are willing to look past the new look (or happen to like it), the game feels like a reasonable installment to the series. I had my fun with it but it didn't knock my socks off, which really is status quo for the series. I'd place it in the middle of the pack. Didn't love it as much as Devil May Cry 1 or 4, but it is certainly better than 2 and 3 were.

It's just another fun romp with Devil May Cry.  I am very much glad I didn't pay the full 60 dollars for it because it would have left me with a lukewarm experience. But at the preowned price of less than 20 bucks it was absolute worth the amount of entertainment it gave me. Honestly this is probably a great place to stop with this property, because even with the new look this old dog is running out of new tricks.

Game is at the perfect price for it right now if you've never played it, but aside from a new look doesn't bring much else to the table. It's worth a play.