DmC: Devil May Cry Review for the PS3 and Xbox360

     Let's get this out of the way immediately: This is a straight review of the game. I'm not going to address the controversy behind the game, what a good or bad fan is, etc. I'm going to be talking about the game as it relates to the franchise and what this game brings to the table.

So, this party, is it crazy-good or just plain crazy?

     Well, it's a little of both to be honest. It's kind of hard to talk about the game in one light or the other with how well it straddles the middle-ground. You can't like it without something about it holding you back and you can't hate it without recognizing that it deserves some modicum of credit for being a good effort and just down-right fun. I'm going to give you my take on each aspect that I think is worth discussing, but before that, let's get some bullet-points out of the way.


- Ninja Theory is the studio behind this entry in the Devil May Cry series, not the team regularly responsible for it's subsequent releases
- This is a reboot of the franchise with the goal of strengthening the story and mythos behind the series by giving it a new spin while taking a different approach to the combat, one that's more inclusive of a broader audience.
- DmC has a story revolving around demon's running the world with mankind trapped in a walking coma, being told how to act and think and it's up to Dante and Vergil to stop them.


Combat feels good, but...

     Combat is the main aspect that worried me the most about Team Ninja's involvement with the Devil May Cry series. It's lacked polish or diversity in their past titles and I didn't think they were a good fit for this, especially when the first trailer seemed to be championing a slower, simpler pace of combat. Well, even keeping up with everything released about the game and playing the demo couldn't really prepare me for how much they were able to balance and prep this game for release. It's good, better than I thought it'd be anyway. It's a treat to play and you feel like a badass real quick. The animations of Dante's attacks are kinetic and stylish with a camera that's eager to emphasize the power behind your attacks and add bountiful flourishes upon every enemy you finish off. It's quick and engaging enough to get a real guttural sensation out of finishing a fight.
     There's a good amount of variation among the weapons you have access to within the game amounting to 2 demonic and angelic weapons, 1 neutral arm, and 3 guns, totaling out at 8 weapons in all. Contrary to the way weapons worked in other Devil May Cry games, in DmC, weapons are made for interacting with each other through combos as opposed to being utitlized for specific purposes on their own. For example, you can't really do anything with the demonic axe, Arbiter, on its own. Every strike knocks enemies away and out of your range as well as having animations that lock you down for long periods of time, leaving you incredibly vulnerable to attacks mid-combo. The idea is to start a combo with a quicker weapon like your neutral sword, Rebellion, and chain Arbiter's slower strikes within the bounds of one of Rebellion's natural combos. Further pushing the aspect of all weapons being intended to interact with each other is that all weapons can be switched and swapped in the middle of combat and a mechanic exists within the system that allows a weapon's latter pause combo sequence to be accessed by using another weapon. With Arbiter, it's strongest strike is the final hit of its pause combo (button, button, rest (weapon flashes), button). The problem is that the first two strikes send enemies away and you're really slow getting to that third hit. If you use Rebellion's pause combo (button x 2, rest, button x 3) which is pretty quick, you can switch to Arbiter on the pause (rest) of the combo and the next attack will be Arbiter's third strike from its respective pause combo. You can line up some really satisfying tricks using this method and man, it feels really good.
     Another way the combat's changed is how you gain access to your armory in battle. You no longer swap weapons with the tap of a button, it works more like a modifier where you hold down a shoulder button to change out what you want to use. Rebellion is nothing held down, demonic weapons are used by holding the right trigger down, and angelic weapons with the left. When either of these are held, you also gain access to a grapple instead of your guns. Demon grapple pulls enemies and objects towards you and angel grapple pulls you to enemies and objects. The grapple mechanic serves a purpose of keeping the fight within grasp without having to run at enemies that happen to be across the level, especially when it was you that launched them over there. It also makes for a fun platforming mechanic.
     There are a lot of possibilities with the combat within DmC and it has a number of good ideas. It's easy for new players to drop in and learn and everyone feels like a pro in no time. There are even tricks a seasoned player could do that a casual player couldn't, the game has some level of depth that one could argue takes time to learn and nail down. Unfortunately, casualized gameplay doesn't always pay off for everybody in the long run.

     It seems that issues that came up while redesigning combat either went unaddressed or a solution was made that in turn caused another issue. For one example, the issue that arises with the grappling system is that it opens the door to extreme exploitation in combat; you can stay in the air infinitely and pick enemies off one by one. There's nothing enemies can do to combat this, you can keep scooping them up from the floor and whack them around in the air until they're defeated. It takes no skill and robs to game of any challenging element it has otherwise. So to combat this, they added enemies that you can't combo through regular means because they block, they're heavy, they teleport, they have invincible attacks, or they can only be hurt/affected by demon or angel weapons exclusively. What this means is you can only hurt enemies through the use of specific strategies which makes what's supposed to be a creativity-based combat game into a straight-forward, mind-numbing frustration. For all the effort they put into keeping flow of combat and combo creativity at the forefront at all times, it was ripped to shreds by inserting enemies specifically meant to stop exploitation, indirectly stopping all flow.
     The enemies that can only be hurt by exclusive means, while providing variety amongst enemies to combat, generally harm the experience overall by turning certain encounters into a chore. First, I'm on both sides of the spectrum when it comes to blue enemies being hurt by blue, angelic weapons and red enemies being hurt by red, demonic weapons. It's first and foremost unintuitive to an extreme degree. It's not at once natural to attack ice-based enemies with ice-based weapons, nor is it the same with fire despite the old adage, "Fight fire with fire." And with a game like Devil May Cry, it's important to cater to a player's intuitive responses with such little time to think given the chaotic nature in its brand of combat. But, it's also a lot of work to react in opposite terms with everything thrown at you in DmC so it strikes me that the decision was made to be that way as the lesser of two evils in terms of what would aid the player most in the heat of battle. What's most unfortunate about this, besides the fact that there are certain color-coded enemies that don't actually have a weakness or specification to either weapon set given their appearance, is that it undermines the core combat system they've created with their weapons. As stated previously, these weapons were made with the apparent intent to be used in an intimate way with one another, not on their own. What these enemies do is highlight the weakness of the combat system by forcing the player to utilize weapons that put the player in a dangerous position. Demon weapons can barely combo and you're forced into animations that keep you open to danger with no hope of last-second avoidance and angel weapons can't interrupt enemies from states of semi-invulnerable rage barring a well-timed counter while dealing abysmal amounts of damage. And the topper is that, not only does it force the exclusion of 6 other weapons, it puts work into getting the player to ignore the neutral weapons, Rebellion and any guns you've collected, by putting them in situations where knowledge of their abilities and uses is utterly pointless.
     For the sake of brevity, the last two issues I want to cover is the lack of true manual targeting and low frame-rate. The lack of a manual, locking targeting mechanic in DmC can hurt. When you add in all the enemies that need to be carefully approached in such a unique manner, a good number more than previously involved in past Devil May Cry games, it really sucks when your intended attacks go elsewhere. You get opened up, lose your combo, sometimes you die. Technically, if you center the camera on an enemy, it will lock to the correct one but that requires more work than it should and once more breaks your flow of combat. Another thing the camera will do is whip around and follow an enemy you haven't even been attacking or considering at any point in the battle which causes plenty of headaches. Needless to say, I prefer the camera of Devil May Cry 3 and 4 to DmC's, although had they implemented a manual targeting system, it wouldn't be an issue in the first place. As for the frame-rate, it's supposed to be locked to 30 frames per second and it's not, at least on the PS3, and it shows. I can't react to anything reliably in DmC, everything comes out too slow or not at all. It's a common occurrence for me to experience dropped combos and missed inputs in the heat of battle. It also turns anything they wanted to be a precise science in the game to being just barely reliable and that's not what you want in a serious action game.
    

Who wrote this exactly?

      Above all else, Ninja Theory was brought onto this project for their reputation with story and characters in their previous efforts. Capcom wanted a new, focused take on their franchise's world and I don't think that really worked out here. Not surprising though being that this is essentially Ninja Theory's first go at crafting an entire world on their own. Beforehand, there's always been a guiding force from outside the studio to make sure things were well-written, directed, and acted. This is the first time the training wheels have been taken off and it shows. Everything about the writing is fairly unoriginal and without impact. They don't setup their characters very well or make you authentically care about any events that occur. A main character could die and you wouldn't notice. There are inconsistencies everywhere, characters change from moment to moment or have so little to add at any given time, it's almost as though they never had a role in the story to begin with.
     What it boils down to is a general plot that was essentially lifted form John Carpenter's They Live and is peppered with a bunch of unfitting scenes that only take place because I imagine some writer has an idea for the "perfect" film with all these quintessential moments that arise throughout the story but never really got around to the whole story part. I assume they believed that the individual moments were good enough to solely lift any project above mediocrity and into the realm of genius.
     I wish I could go into depth about it but it would require so many spoilers that I don't think it's worth going into any farther than I already have. Basically, the story is at best average and without any real personality. It can't offend anyone and it can't compel anyone because it has no context with which to do so. Things just happen, without reason or motivation. This is the polar opposite of what anyone would've wanted for Devil May Cry. And the worst part is that it's hardly even entertaining...

And then there's what's left

     What's left is how the game sounds and looks. Music is essentially a standard fare of industrial metal (Provided by Combichrist) with some dubstep (Provided by Noisia). I personally found the rock to be motivating, at least when non-specific lyrics or a lack thereof was present. Noisia's tracks, while they made the club sections of the game feel authentic, annoyed me and made every boss fight feel like a footnote, which is unfortunate given how lackluster the boss battles are to begin with. While I don't think Combichrist's lyrics were much to write home about, there was plenty of energy to be found with every track they supplied and they went well with the new atmosphere Ninja Theory was pushing.
     Speaking of atmosphere, the environments in DmC were stunning, moody, and brimming with character. I thought the structure of the levels was inventive with the dynamic environment tearing itself apart and sealing itself shut. It made for a great time exploring levels for collectibles and secret areas. It's the one truly unique thing about this game that I don't really feel I've experienced anywhere else. And despite Unreal Engine not being used for the most practical and functional of reasons, it did help certain levels really take my breath away.
     Unfortunately, for all DmC has to offer, it's a pretty short game. My first playthrough on Nephilim (Hard) difficulty was about five minutes shy of seven hours. I wasn't rushing, I went at a pretty slow pace exploring what I could and I even got stuck (as in didn't sail straight through) in a couple areas. Thankfully, the game's addictive enough that you'll want to go through it a few times more, perhaps on the more challenging settings as you unlock them.

Anything else?    

     One more thing I'd like to say that I noticed about the game's mechanics, you know how people complain about enemies attacking from off-screen in action games? Well in DmC, if an enemy goes off-screen, they settle into an idle animation... I just want to say I think it's dumb and you can exploit the living hell out of it. Having a hard time with some of the enemies? Just turn the camera around and whack away! Ambush enemies! Work on one at a time! Pretend they're not even there and they'll be more than willing to follow suit! Ugh...

Final word

     DmC is a great effort. It tries to put its own spin on what we've been conditioned to believing a Devil May Cry game is and it succeeds with taking the game in a new direction without completely losing its identity along the way and that's something Team Ninja deserves credit for. Tackling a franchise that has been above the rest for some time and started a wave of innovation within the entire genre of action games is likely a difficult beast to take on all while trying to infuse it with your own identity and innovations as a studio that's continually wanted an opportunity to carve out a name for themselves within this genre. I think the product here is commendable. So first, as a fan of action games and Devil May Cry in particular, thank you Ninja Theory for creating a product that shows a huge amount of good-willed effort. As a passionate, dedicated gamer, that effort is certainly not lost on me.
     That being said, I think the focus on repurposing Devil May Cry's combat for a wider audience was ultimately DmC's downfall. While fun and entertaining, it can only hold one's attention for so long. I would've liked to see more attention being given to the combat being flexible and holding up more reliably in battle, especially after seeing what came from focusing on building a "deeper, grounded" take on the Devil May Cry universe and its characters. Since we didn't get the awesome story we were promised, it would've been great to at least get some killer combat out of the deal. There's plenty to salvage from what you have here to make an even better game though, and I'd be thoroughly interested in giving it a go. And I strongly urge anyone else interested in DmC to give a try as well. No one's saying you have buy it but I think it's in everyone's best interest to play this game at least once, from start to finish.

Rent it.

DmC: Devil May Cry was developed by Ninja Theory and published by Capcom for the Xbox360, PS3, and PC. Played over 30 hours on Nephilim, Son of Sparda, and Heaven or Hell difficulties. Review is based on the PS3 version.