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| Source // MobyGames |
It's not the devil that may cry when playing these games, but me. As time goes on and I notice more and more of my skills drip away from wherever I store them, playing a game like Devil May Cry generally results in sadness and disappointment.
Devil May Cry was new and different, and button-mashing wouldn't be anywhere near enough to see me through it. Devil May Cry 3 cranked up the style, and with it the difficulty, but it was technical problems that finally put an end to my (pathetic) run through its early missions. Once more, my skills just weren't up to scratch to make progress, let alone make progress in style.
Now it's time for Devil May Cry 4, a new entry for a new generation of consoles, and I'm playing it with a hand in need of rest for some mysterious (and maybe even wholly psychological) reason. My hand feels... off. A little weaker and a little slower than I know it to be, but it does work. Enough to grasp a PS3 controller and carve up some demons? Let's find out.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Fun Times
After twenty minutes of installation to the PlayStation 3 hard drive, where I was able to read up on the events of the previous 3 DMC games, we're ready to sit back and see what it means to be a stylish demon-slaying swordsman in high definition.
DMC4 opens with a musical number sung my Kyrie here, in a cathedral where everyone worships Sparda. She's hoping to be watched by love interest Nero, but he's been a little distracted by demons swarming the streets of the city.
As heartfelt lyrics echo through the hall, Nero slow-mo slices his way through figures you can't make heads or tails of. Gravity is defied, often, but he makes it into his seat in time for the ending. And then yet more hell breaks loose.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Crashing through the stained glass ceiling is Dante, who proceeds to kill a whole bunch of folks. Is he the bad guy now? We're just enjoying the whole praise-be-to-Sparda thing (well, Nero isn't, he's too cool for religion), and now a bunch of monks or something are being slaughtered by our hero. What's going on?
Cue a tutorial that pits you against Dante himself.
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| Source // PlayStation |
The controls are much the same as the earlier games. Triangle and Square swing your sword and shoot your guns, X jumps and dodges, and your moves carry across as well. You can launch your target into the air with a giant upward swing of your sword, before juggling them with an unending stream of bullets.
In this HD world DMC4 now finds itself in, it makes sure to show off, both in terms of smooth gameplay and fancy environments, and when you finish learning a few moves, it continues to show off with another ridiculously animated fight scene.
It's a shame you're not involved in any of them, but at this stage of the game, you are simply not cool enough to pull off all these moves, nor do you have the smug attitude necessary to survive. Dante isn't here for Nero, that much is true, but we definitely need to find out just why he is here in the first place. Perhaps it has something to do with all the demons tearing through the citizens outside...
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| Source // MobyGames |
Gameplay basically carries over. Rooms, be they courtyards or corridors, are filled with targets for you to dispatch in whatever ways you can manage. The more style you put into your attacks, the better your end of round score.
It's still a bit weird to me to be scored in this way, in a story-driven game, but it is a hallmark of DMC now, and it would feel even weirder to not have a rank at the end of each mission.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
Frustrations
If you've played one DMC game, you've played them all. I don't know how much of that is strictly true, but as you navigate the incredibly linear first sections of the game, you get the impression that you know what's going to happen and when.
Nero has a demonic right arm, and get's the ability to launch a ghostly hand out to grab onto enemies to pull them close, or to grab targets to swing over to the next corridor. So far, the route has been clear. You need to find the one other door the area has and walk through it into the next corridor or hall. Are there enemies here? Defeat them all before you're able to unlock the one other door the area has and then walk through it to the next bit.
It may look open from that screenshot, but DMC4 is closed off and clustered to me. You'll slide along the walls, you'll look like a pillock when the cinematic camera switches views. You can, in some places, control the camera with the right stick, so it's not a fully fixed camera, but it's mostly fixed.
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| Source // MobyGames |
From the cutscenes, I know that Nero is trying to track down Dante. But there is never a mention of where to go next. What happens instead is that you walk through a corridor to a door, and that leads to the next bit of the game, and at some point, there will be another door to go through to take you to the next bit.
I found myself running through town to a harbour. Is that because Dante was headed to the harbour? No. It's because we can have a harbour stage with a bridge that needs to be lowered, and can dump a load of enemies in each room between Nero and the controls. And then again on the way back.
Where does the harbour lead? Oh, you know, a mineshaft. We'll put more demons there. Oh, and, how about a jumping puzzle? In a fixed camera game? Are you mad? Yes, I am. Let's do it. So I clumsily work my way up a mineshaft using my demonic grab before the mineshaft emerges into a mining town with a portal to hell and a huge boss coming out of it.
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| Source // PlayStation |
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // PlayStation |
Why? What reason does Berial have to be here, right here and right now? None, save for the fact that this far into a DMC game should probably be a boss fight. So I have a boss fight. An incredibly dull, button-mashed boss fight.
I'm playing on the easiest mode I can play at, and once more have turned on automatic moves so that all my inputs are enhanced by the computer to make me look a little cooler. Nothing happens. I just wail away at this guy's back leg until he dies.
What happens after that? Oh, well, we'll just walk through some snow.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
I am struggling to follow what's going on here, and there really isn't anything to follow. No cutscene says I've got to go to a snowy bit next. There are no hints for Nero to latch onto for his next step. It is literally a case of walking through a map until there's a door, walking through the door, seeing what's next.
Obviously, after fighting some ice creatures, the next bit of DMC4 is a bridge to a fancy building, a cutscene involving an overly sexualized demon-killing woman, and then yet more nonsensical changes of scenery.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
And then there is this room. This fucking Torture Chamber. At the bottom, in the bit you see in this screenshot, are a handful of demons to fight. You must kill them all to unlock the staircase at the back which leads to a jumping puzzle at the ceiling, which happens to be absolutely covered in spikes.
You'd think a jumping puzzle would involve the jump button, but this one is more of a test of your skills with your demonic arm and its ability to grab things and zip you towards them. Only these targets disappear periodically, and you can't grab what isn't there, can you?
Failure to grab a target or land a jump - with a fixed camera, remember - sends you to the floor. The doors lock, another handful of enemies appear. Kill them and the staircase is open for you to try the jumping puzzle again.
I inched my way through a little more of the puzzle, but one panicked press of the jump button launched me into the spike-covered ceiling, which sends you crashing to the floor. Oh, look. More demons to kill...
Final Word
I was playing DMC4 for what felt like some time up until that point, but I dropped it faster than the temperature drops up here. You really want me to perform jumping puzzles with a fixed camera where all failure results in padding? For what purpose? To walk through another bloody door? It wasn't my only issue with DMC4, but it'll be the big one to remind me why I won't be playing it again any time soon.
Devil May Cry as a series means style. It's wacky and over the top, but no other game seems to be able to do what DMC does. God of War might have the button-mashing combat and carnage, but it's not oozing in style, it's plastered in blood. But why does DMC4 feel so damn weird? Why has it lost it's cool?
You've got a sword that you can rev up like a motorbike to make it deadlier. What a cool, stylish idea. Why, then, is it wielded by a boy I have no connection to, whose girlfriend is made of cardboard, and who wouldn't have a clue what to do if he ever found himself in a room with more than two doors?
Devil May Cry 4 may have the style, but it lacks the substance. I'm not doing anything other than going through the motions, and all the cool stuff that may happen takes place in a cutscene I have no control over. Yes, DMC3 had cool shit take place in cutscenes, but the soundtrack and the attitude carried through to the gameplay that followed, even when you're an incompetent player.
Here, DMC4 just exists. Yeah, it looks nice, it appears to run well, and it has just as many skills and ability upgrades and secret challenges as previous games, but is it a game to entice new fans? I don't think it is. It certainly doesn't come across as a series highlight, not that I've seen everything.
I was looking forward to playing DMC4, even knowing I'd be rubbish, but that's because I thought it would be something else. I thought it'd be cooler. It's not cool, and it's lacking something to make me care about any of it.
I'll watch it - because I sure don't have the skill to play it - but I'm not expecting a whole lot to come of it. The 1001 writeup mentions how repetitive it is, to the point of repeating the entire game in reverse as Dante. Would playing as Dante be enough to sway my views? Eh, probably not. I wouldn't be as stylish as he's presented anyway.
I suppose if you're a fan, this is more of the same, in HD. Is that enough for you? Is that even a fair assessment? I'm surprised by how much I did play of it, but am alarmed at what it did to get me to stop.
Fun Facts
A lot of work was put into making Nero appealing to both new and old players, partly as a result of the Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty outcry about Raiden being the main character instead of Snake.
Devil May Cry 4, developed by Capcom, first released in 2008.
Version played: PlayStation 3, 2008.