DMC: Devil May Cry

I mentioned at the tail end of the Sonic wrap-up that very few 90s characters, mascots and their ilk, have survived as long as Sonic has. Although much emphasis is put on the value of 'the brand' insofar as doing remakes and reboots, very few brands actually hold up for all that long. The "Devil May Cry" series is an oughts brand, which lasted for what ultimately looks like 12 years, with this being the final game - at least for now - and one I don't think was especially well received. It's also a reboot, because reasons. REbootsons.

As I warbled on about in the Sonic reviews, I do not have much affection for "early 3d" games. I've actually never played a resident evil game, nor a tomb raider game, or Legacy of Kain or a myriad of other series born from the experimentation of this era. I've never touched a DMC game until this one either, and I'm pretty sure if I go through the list of games released around then I skipped a lot of them.

And a lot of the ones I did play I wish I could go back and un-play.

DMC is, to my understanding of genre nomenclature, generally discussed as a 'spectacle fighter' and may in many ways be the beginning of that genre, though I think far more popular is the God of War series which probably diverges heavily in terms of gameplay. I wouldn't know, since spoilers I haven't played God of War either. That has less to do with disliking 2005 era 3d games (lol) and more to do with the fact I've never owned a Sony console. I borrowed a Playstation to beat FFT, FF7 and FF8 but that's about it.

I didn't really go into DMC expecting much; the game isn't exactly a critical success and to my understanding killed the franchise, though that might be a bit harsh. On the other hand I'd read the game does some pretty interesting things in terms of storytelling, so that's sort of unexpected...


As I said, DMC Devil May Cry is a reboot of the Devil May Cry series starring Dante who I don't remember having a last name. If he does have one, they don't seem to mention it very often. Dante is a rough and tumble youth, who fights demons and does ladies, and he's kind of a punk. I say "kind of" because in spite of his sort of emo appearance he is actually pretty reasonable in most of the cutscenes and willing to show some patience

More of a poser, really. It's not that bad. I think he kinda blends reluctance with heroism through vengeance effectively, making for a character who isn't the perfect bad ass, but at least sells himself enough that his other more reasonable parts balance him out.

Dante has magical powers which mostly seem to rotate around making weapons appear in his hands. He also hacky slashy with the best of them, but he doesn't really feel especially magical in that regard, other than the fact he jumps real high. This connects to two of the three gameplay components of DMC: Brutal spectacle hack n slash combat, and ... Extremely meticulous and sluggish platforming.

The combat is good, maybe even great, but it lacks a certain something. Enemies on normal attack pretty slowly, but damage can't be healed and you don't have a very big pool of health, so you end up playing very defensively. In the mid-game you pick up an ability that allows regeneration, but it's hours in and as such you've already learned those habits. This makes for a pretty intense fights, but it can also feel pretty unfun to make a pair of mistakes and lose half a health bar.

Mostly, it's enjoyable, but the camera and the linking of the health bar to other elements of the game means you effectively have a very shallow pool til you know how to navigate said elements.

And those elements are 3d platforming. The 3d platforming is very Sonic; you fall off things a lot as you're gauging the distance, figuring out the string of buttons to get to a place, so forth. The health bar suffers a hit each time you do this, which is fantastic, and a really great mechanic that makes the whole game feel very well put together. And not at all a glaring example of why this game didn't review that well. And by that, I was surprised to find out DMC did review very well and "only" sold 1.2 million copies and ... I really don't understand the video game market...

The big issue with the platforming ties to one of the other issues... Well, maybe the biggest, maybe the smallest. Dante starts the game with two attacks buttons which expands to three. So all the face buttons are gone. You also get a dodge roll on RB, that's fine... Then you get two modifier buttons which switch your weapon... Oh and then those modify your shoot to a grappling hook. Two different grappling hooks. Then you have a double jump and an airdash, which use the same string, except the airdash uses the one modifier trigger button. But not the other one!

Basically, the control scheme is very complicated, and often you're meant to juggle several presses with different modifiers, and each little mistake instantly eats a chunk of health you can't instantly get back. I like the idea of switching from combat to Dante's crazy platforming, but leaping over bottomless chasms in upside down worlds is visually cool at the expense of being not very expressive. Your position and the combination of moves to get from A to B to C can be a bit tricky. You get it most of the time, but 'most of the time' still means you take a hit here or there, and healing isn't common.

The game's story sort of takes place in "Limbo" which is ... I guess a parallel reality where you can only partially interact with the real world. You fight demons in limbo, and so you spend most of your time there. As a partial reality, the game is incredibly willing to put you in some pretty damn surreal environments built of a dreamlike state of the game's real world. This gives the game incredible visual creativity, when it wants to be, and much of the visuals are really excellent. There's some real, legitimate art going on in the design work, and the fact you can run around hacking up demons on that art is fantastic.

The third element of the game is cutscenes and more cutscenes. I'm not exactly complaining. There's also the wonderful 'hold walk and talk' cutscenes, the ones where you pretend to play but really characters just talk. The game's story is a reboot, but it's mostly social satire, commenting on commercialism and modern media and the like. I mean, the primary antagonist of the game is actually the head of a financial company. As well as being a demon. So a demonic financial company, as though there's another kind.

If I had one complaint about the story, which actually ended up kinda reminding me of Saint's Row, is that it blames all the woes of the world on demons. Whether it's being especially on the nose, or just lazy, I don't know. It just ends up feeling kinda small. But beyond that, it's mostly tongue in cheek, filled with swearing and visually creative enough you don't mind so much. Some of the banter is really juvenile, but somehow the demon hunter just screaming 'Fuck you!' at a ten meter long slug of a succubus hits the mark.

As for downsides, well, the biggest one besides the irritation of losing chunks to trial and erroring the weird platforming is that frankly the camera is terrible. On normal difficulty the game isn't especially hard, but doing any of the harder stuff and I lose interest in the game quickly. Enemies have a variety of abilities that either force you to use angel or demon weapons, or just pan around to look for them, or react with one of the two grappling hooks. Frankly, the game's focus isn't nearly as context sensitive as you'd like it to be, and sometimes you turn just to have Dante whip the grappling hook around and do nothing. Then get piled on.

Also, the game recommends several hard counters to various enemy abilities, but trying to mentally catalogue and use those hard counters is just unpleasant if you're not trying to master the game. Meanwhile much of the game is fine if you're willing to dodge and grapple around, so that's not necessarily a negative, but it's a questionable design to have so many buttons. It gives the game a fantastic skill ceiling, but I'm not sure 95% of the audience is going that far.

Anyway, all in all I'd say I recommend DMC. The camera issues crop up from time to time, but most of the combat is built around scoring you for never getting hit, so the game isn't so much hard as tense, since you're encouraged to play perfectly. There's a couple weird issues here and there, but mostly, it was good solid fun.