DmC: Devil May Cry

[Dooshkin]

Played through the demo a couple times already, just because the combat is so crazy. Which is what I play these games for, anyway. Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 is my favorite action game (still sore about the lack of blood and gore the 360 version had), and in that light, you probably get why I find the mid-air combos and the over-stylized attacks so satisfying.

The control scheme felt really clumsy and unintuitive until about halfway through my second playthrough (of the demo). Then it just kinda clicked. Suddenly everything about it felt natural.

Hopefully the higher difficulty levels will give it a proper DMC challenge.

As for the grappling mechanics, I like having the two options. Say you've got 3 grounded enemies and one airborne enemy above them. You can either pull the flying enemy away from the crowd to keep yourself from getting surrounded, or pull yourself up to the bugger, kill him, and use a powerful attack to drop down on the enemies below.

Can't wait to play the full version and see how it is.

[Hector Garfria]

[SephirothX]

I rented it last night and put about five hours into the game.

The plot so far is almost entirely ripped off from They Live, with little bits of The Matrix and DMC's origin story sprinkled in. The only thing separating DmC from They Live is that the characters in DmC are extremely paper thin and boring. The gameplay is pretty decent, actually. However the gameplay gets pretty clunky the deeper you try to go into it, the lack of a proper lock on system gets pretty problematic since Dante very inconsistently sticks with the target you want to attack, and since there are enemies that require specific weapons in order to hurt them it actually kind of discourages you from experimenting with the full arsenal of weapons you have. Oh, and you cant use your guns when using a demon or angel weapon. The voice acting is also god awful.

Oh, and avoid the PS3 version at all costs. The shadow effects are cringe-worthy bad, I'm having issues with inconsistent framerates, and the audio loves to pop in and out when new tracks or audio clips are introduced.

[Sir Legendhead]

I wish they had cut out the middle man and simply made a They Live game. I know for a fact Roddy Piper is available because he did a show in Nashville just last Saturday night. And Keith David? Yeah, I hear he does video games as well.

The idea is, dare I say it...epic. It wins, even. Just imagine playing that fistfight scene. Holy shit.

[SephirothX]

Yeah, it would be better off being a straight up They Live game honestly. The story right now just feels like a bad fan-fiction.

[Sir Legendhead]

There's always hope. The Warriors is a game people like and that came out what, twenty years after the film? A They Live game could still become a reality. Might be derailing a bit here but to be honest, I wasn't really into DMC to begin with. The older ones were alright though I guess.

[SephirothX]

Well maybe someone will make a Roddy Piper mod for the PC version.

Honestly the best way to describe DmC is "the best boring game you'll play". It has pretty much all of the same flaws as the older DMC games, doesn't really bring in anything new, and the only difference between DmC and the older games are that there's no self-aware campy humor to pad out the boring story parts.

[Arttemis]

Of course the gameplay is alright. They took their existing simplistic formula and Capcom put their budget and experience behind them. That dual trigger system is useable, but that doesn't mean it's NOT a step backwards in usability. The whole pull-reel emphasis goes against so many tenets that made the technical gameplay appealing, making jump canceling, for example, completely redundant and unnecessary. The pin-to-air combat mechanics take the allure away from the whole prospect of aerials.

It's not that the game isn't 'good' (though this kind of loose mechanics bores me to tears), it's that the niche technicality is foregone in favor of a technically inferior one - using the namesake for the purpose of better sales.






Also, holy fuck. I'd kill for those two to do voice work in an official They Live game.

[SephirothX]

The main issue with the gameplay is that it gets clunky the deeper you try to go into it. There's a bit of a lag when switching between Rebellion/Angel/Demon weapons, so you can't really put together very diverse combos because if you try to switch up a weapon mid-combo you're probably just going to drop the combo entirely because of the lag there is between switching weapons.

I also don't like that you can't use your guns at all when you have a demon or angel weapon equipped.

[SephirothX]

So I beat this game last night. Have to say, the last 3 levels were pretty disappointing.

In general it's kind of funny that this game was supposed to reinvent the franchise, yet DmC has almost all the same flaws as the old games.

[Arttemis]

The main issue is the simplified, clunky, no-lock-on, and laggy mechanics weren't problems I had with the previous games, so I'd say it had a lot more going against it than 'the same flaws as the old games'.

[SephirothX]

The main issue is the simplified, clunky, no-lock-on, and laggy mechanics weren't problems I had with the previous games, so I'd say it had a lot more going against it than 'the same flaws as the old games'.

The gameplay gets clunky the deeper you go into it, yes, but honestly I did find the gameplay fun for the most part even though it was inferior to the DMC3/4 system. But it still has the same issues in regards to character development, bad story, pacing, etc. And one issue that the other games had that DmC still has is that the later you go into the game the more the enemies become more tedious and bullshit.

DmC does fix a few things - there isn't any backtracking at all and there aren't any recycled bosses (well, unless you count Vergil being a recycled DMC3 boss). However DmC also introduces a few other problems - it recycles basic enemies a lot (for example: oh look, this is the same enemy as before EXCEPT ON FIRE), and in general the story & characters are plain and boring now.

[Arttemis]

I thought the story of DMC3 was essentially prefect. Dante begins apathetic, realizes his family problems aren't so unique, he relates to Lady, and decides to address the issues at hand directly and becomes more human in a social sense. And it was all choreographed amazingly. It was above and beyond what I'd ever expect in an action game where the story generally serves as a motivating excuse to continue playing kickass gameplay.

The backtracking in 4 was annoying, but in 3, the character's direction is always linear, with the world shifting around you instead of having to retread identical ground backwards. I thought that was genius design, essentially because it was hardly literal 'back tracking'.

The repetitive bosses in 4 were annoying (three times!?), but again, DMC3 did it better in that refighting the bosses was a straight up Mega Man allusion to Wiley's castle. You only have to complete a circle on the boss-soul tablet, and you choose which ones to fight. More unique bosses is great, though, so that's cool for DmC, I guess.

I couldn't finish GoW, Dante's Inferno, or Heavenly Sword because the gameplay bored me beyond description. The dual-trigger system is a step backward in controls, but it's the sloppy, wonky, simplified, wide-arcing mechanics of DmC earn it a rank among those games in my eyes.

I'll stop harping about it. I had written a thinly veiled jab at the mainstream homogenization of niche elements in Resident Evil, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age, but I figured I'm already a broken record here and don't need to further stir the pot.

[umberhulk]

The gameplay gets clunky the deeper you go into it, yes, but honestly I did find the gameplay fun for the most part even though it was inferior to the DMC3/4 system. But it still has the same issues in regards to character development, bad story, pacing, etc. And one issue that the other games had that DmC still has is that the later you go into the game the more the enemies become more tedious and bullshit.

DmC does fix a few things - there isn't any backtracking at all and there aren't any recycled bosses (well, unless you count Vergil being a recycled DMC3 boss). However DmC also introduces a few other problems - it recycles basic enemies a lot (for example: oh look, this is the same enemy as before EXCEPT ON FIRE), and in general the story & characters are plain and boring now.

they were always

[SephirothX]

they were always

The difference I meant to say was that the characters in the classic games had a nice Saturday morning cartoon feel to them that you could at least get a laugh out of. DmC's characters don't even provide that, sadly. Honestly there was only one moment in DmC where Dante did anything that really made me laugh at all, and that required an assist from Vergil to make it funny.

The repetitive bosses in 4 were annoying (three times!?), but again, DMC3 did it better in that refighting the bosses was a straight up Mega Man allusion to Wiley's castle. You only have to complete a circle on the boss-soul tablet, and you choose which ones to fight. More unique bosses is great, though, so that's cool for DmC, I guess.

DmC only has a handful of bosses, and most of them are pretty uninspired. The first level boss is pretty basic. The Succubus (fuck you lady from the demo) is simple and easy. Lillith is repetitive as hell, Mundus is almost the same as The Savior from DMC4 & teeters dangerously close to being nothing but glorified QTEs, and Vergil is almost entirely copy/pasted from the first fight w/ him in DMC3.

The only boss who really stood out and I enjoyed was Bob Bargas. I would say Vergil was fun to fight too, but the build up to that fight isn't done well at all and it's a fight I've done three times already in a different game.

[Pixielated]

Yeah, it would be better off being a straight up They Live game honestly. The story right now just feels like a bad fan-fiction.

So its a Devil May Cry game then.

Old Dante was a relic of 80's and 90's action movies. This is par for course.

[SephirothX]

So its a Devil May Cry game then.

Old Dante was a relic of 80's and 90's action movies. This is par for course.

Well, opinions.

At least old Dante did some stuff that made him memorable. Chris Carter said it best, New Dante is almost painfully generic and he's way too much of a play it safe western game hero. I mean, if that's your thing then that's great for you. But there isn't much at all, to me, that sets New Dante apart from Nathan Drake, Cole, Nathan Hale, Call of Duty Protagonist #7, etc.

[Pixielated]

He spouted cheesy (sometimes mistranslated) one-liners and was otherwise melancholy and dumb - and that's only if we include the anime, in which he's also kind of a dick.

He was built on Willis, Stallone, Arnold and also Michelangelo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Seeing him as anything more is looking through rose-tinted glasses. He had his charm, but Capcom is trying to get new people into these games and not all of them grew up on Terminator 2, Die Hard or first generation TMNT.

The way you're looking at "classic" DMC is not unlike the way some people still look at A Link to the Past with love and frown on Ocarina of Time. Same franchise, similar flow and different gameplay structure. I didn't care all that much for OOT or LTTP and yet Majora's Mask, Wind Waker and Link's Awakening went on to become my favorites in the series for deviating from the framework of most of their predecessors. And Wind Waker didn't even stump anyone on puzzles.

What I played of the demo gave me a Zelda-style boss rather than yet another slash-and-dodge encounter and a more interactive world where the platforming didn't suck. People used to call DMC "Symphony of the Night in 3D" and yet it had no real exploration or intuitive puzzle solving to speak of. If Link and Dante were asked to fix something, Link would check his tool belt and Dante would just hit it with his sword like he was Fix-It Felix. That's a Dante/Kratos puzzle.

DmC stands on its own and has something to offer. You still have MGR Revengence and Bayonetta 2 on the horizon, so its not like you're being starved of what you want.

[SephirothX]

He spouted cheesy (sometimes mistranslated) one-liners and was otherwise melancholy and dumb - and that's only if we include the anime, in which he's also kind of a dick.

He was built on Willis, Stallone, Arnold and also Michelangelo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Seeing him as anything more is looking through rose-tinted glasses. He had his charm, but Capcom is trying to get new people into these games and not all of them grew up on Terminator 2, Die Hard or first generation TMNT.

The way you're looking at "classic" DMC is not unlike the way some people still look at A Link to the Past with love and frown on Ocarina of Time. Same franchise, similar flow and different gameplay structure. I didn't care all that much for OOT or LTTP and yet Majora's Mask, Wind Waker and Link's Awakening went on to become my favorites in the series for deviating from the framework of most of their predecessors. And Wind Waker didn't even stump anyone on puzzles.

What I played of the demo gave me a Zelda-style boss rather than yet another slash-and-dodge encounter and a more interactive world where the platforming didn't suck. People used to call DMC "Symphony of the Night in 3D" and yet it had no real exploration or intuitive puzzle solving to speak of. If Link and Dante were asked to fix something, Link would check his tool belt and Dante would just hit it with his sword like he was Fix-It Felix. That's a Dante/Kratos puzzle.

DmC stands on its own and has something to offer. You still have MGR Revengence and Bayonetta 2 on the horizon, so its not like you're being starved of what you want.

Classic Dante was only really a one-liner machine if you only played DMC1. In DMC3 and 4 he did a lot more crazy antics than just spouting cheesy one liners. He went and did really cheesy not-one-liner things to boot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oskw8aGIFk0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK6UaPnRYcc

http://youtu.be/YfL1s-W2ZbE?t=4m54s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQLRXCEXHtU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpME4riPI1k

I still stand by my original claim, DmC Dante is pretty much normal Dante except without all of the funny one-liners and cheesy actions - which just makes him melancholy and dumb... which is what I was already saying. Nobody is calling classic DMC Shakespeare or anything like that, but at least it was memorable for things. The old games had a lot of stupid humor, but there's a difference between funny stupid and stupid stupid.

I'm still not saying DmC was bad. It's gameplay is still pretty decent. It's just everything around it is boring and kind of dumb. If DmC would have thrown in the silly self-aware tongue-and-cheek nature into it, the entire thing would have probably been a bit more entertaining.

[Scrustle]

I just finished the game and it's fantastic. It may be slightly less complex than previous DMC games, but it still has a lot of complexity to it. That's kind of be expected from a reboot though. Some stuff has to go. But the game is hardly lacking, and complexity doesn't necessarily mean quality either. In terms of gameplay it executed what it was going for very well, I think. Combat and controls were very fluid, satisfying, and deep. Very intense and very enjoyable. There isn't much more that you could ask for.

Although I prefer old Dante I don't dislike the new Dante either. At first I hated him because he just came across as nothing more than a foul mouthed and massively arrogant disrespectful dick. After playing all the way through the story I don't really feel like that any more. He's still a dick, and I prefer old Dante's ridiculous and silly one-liners to new Dante's "fuck you" attitude, but he's at least got a little depth to him. He's not just a prick to absolutely everyone all the time and I didn't find myself actually hating him. He didn't come off as arrogant by the end and his "fuck you" attitude was almost always only directed at people who deserved it. You could kind of see him let his guard down and be more sympathetic to other characters slowly as the game progressed. I'd rather he had a wider vocabulary though. But the demo pretty much shows him at his worst throughout the game. If Ninja Theory wanted people to like the new Dante, they couldn't have picked a worse point from the game to do it.

The writing of the game isn't bad though. Despite how shallow most of the characters were and how straight forward the plot was, it was presented really well. Cutscenes and their animation were great and lines were delivered well. I wasn't such a fan of the "shakey cam-ness" of them though. The plot twist at the end was pretty cool too. Even though it didn't surprise me, as it shouldn't to anyone with at least a little experience with the series, it was kind of cool. I didn't really see it coming, but when it did it made perfect sense.

Oh, and it's better than They Live. That movie is terrible and utterly stupid, and not in a good way. DmC is far more intelligent in comparison.