Devil May Cry is a longstanding franchise that traditionally has been a
Playstation exclusive is now out on the Xbox 360 to great surprise and
joy of the user base. Finally, a great hack and slash game for a new
group of people to try, but is it worth your 60 bucks?
The first thing to keep in mind is that Devil May Cry 4 is not just a
hack and slash game but also an action-adventure game set in a
fictional world. Unlike the previous games though, DMC4 may be
considered a departure from the series for multiple reasons, the
foremost being that you only play as Dante for less than half the game.
The game introduces a new character as well who is the main focus of
the story and the first half of the adventure, and since Dante is also
motivated by his actions, that would make him almost more important of
a character in the grand scheme of things.
Nero, the new character, is not a religious man. He and one of singers
at his church, Kyrie, have a little something going on. So naturally
the game starts off with Nero being late and Kyrie looking for him
while singing her piece during mass. Kind of typical; that being said,
Kyrie is also the sister of Credo, a member of "The Order" a nefarious
organization that you'll learn about over the course of the game, so I
won't give too much away here about it.
If you're a hardcore Devil May Cry fan and you're immediately
disappointed by the lack of Dante in the game you won't be upset for
long. Less than halfway through the opening cut-scene Dante drops in on
a church session that Nero and Kyrie are attending for seemingly no
other reason than to assassinate the pastor leading the mass, Sanctus.
Thus, the events set off by him turn the cogs of destruction and mayhem
that lead the course of the newest iteration of the franchise.
The playing style from experience players will have to be slightly
refined to match Nero, as he's the character you'll play for most of
the game. While not too dissimilar from Dante, there are a couple key
differences that make him a unique character. Both Nero and Dante have
gigantic disproportional swords, but Nero has a sword with a handle
that resembles a motorcycle allowing you to rev it up to make the blade
get red-hot to increase the damage with doing a move combo. This allows
you to do some really damaging moves if you time your button hits
right. Nero also has an arm called the "Devil Bringer," it looks and
acts like a demonic arm should. When doing combos with it you'll pull
off some extremely damaging combos that you can even pull off in boss
fights. Imagine picking the boss up and throwing him across the stage!
Other than those two differences though, the Devil May Cry formula
hasn't really undergone very many changes and retains the same basic
puzzle structures and fighting moves you've come to expect, and that's
not all a bad thing either. While the game has a variety of
environments you'll traverse, it's worth saying that this game looks
amazing. From the first cut-scene you watch up until the last one,
you'll be oohing and ahhing at the gorgeous videos and the extreme
attention to detail that is still rare in gaming today.
The loading times are minimal taking only a couple seconds to load each
area. However, the areas are small and sometimes you'll be wishing they
took a couple more seconds to load a bit of a bigger area since you'll
be hitting a load every few minutes it seems like. However since there
is no actual loading screen and it seems fairly instant, the only
legitimate annoyance would be the noise it makes when you enter and
exit an area. Talk about annoying!
The other annoying trend is also a major complaint with the entire
game. Once you get exactly halfway through the game (which takes only
about 5 hours) you're forced to switch to Dante. This wouldn't be so
bad if you didn't have to unlearn the "Devil Bringer" mechanic and
retrain your mind without any kind of intro to the character (which
would have been nice for newbies to the series like myself). However at
this point, you have to backtrack through the entire game, fight every
boss over again, and return to your starting point to finish the game.
This both is annoying and obvious filler which they don't even bother
to cover up.
While you're backtracking though, Dante acquires the most powerful
moves and equipment for your face-off with "The Savior" (again spoilers
I won't mention). Some of the equipment includes Pandora's box, which
is basically a super-weapon that you can pull out at will. Dante can
transform Pandora's box into about 2-6 of the 666 possible combinations.
Clocking in at just 10 hours of game play for the average player who's
never touched a Devil May Cry game before, it's the best hack and slash
adventure game you can buy right now for $6 an hour. It's not going to
change your mind if you hate the genre, and it's certainly not going to
be the most innovative title you've ever played. But while the replay
and the achievements might not be that fun or worthwhile, you'll want
to at least give this game a rental because of its phenomenal story and
genuinely interesting characters.
