DmC: Devil May Cry

[SephirothX]

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.

I picked up on that too, regarding the demo. The demo makes Dante look a lot worse than he actually is, like to the point where it almost feels bait-and-switch styled. I dunno, I guess I'm in the minority who thought the story and voice acting was pretty awful. I know I'm being harder on the game than a lot of people are, as well, but I still did find things about the game I liked. I'm curious, what did you think about the bosses? I thought most of them were pretty lame and dull aside from Bob Bargas, and I was disappointed that Mundus basically turned into a really easy fusion of The Savior from DMC4 and Mega-Agent Smith from The Path of Neo.

I knew the Vergil plot twist was coming at the end, but the way they did it was pretty lame I thought. They didn't really plant many (if any) seeds for that twist at all, so when he actually did that heel turn it felt pretty out of nowhere and basically amounted to Vergil going "I'm evil too Dante, didnt you know!?"

--EDIT (because I wanted to add something in) --

So the sales figures for DmC's first week in the UK are out. DmC took the #1 spot in the UK charts (which isn't a huge surprise as it was the only release in the UK last week). However, it apparently only sold a little over a third 1/3rd of what DMC4 sold (DMC4 was released first week of February 08). UK/Europe's obviously a weaker market than the US, but something similar might happen if we find out the North American sales.

So if you liked the game - hooray, you're #1 over in the UK! If you arent happy with the game (for whatever reasons), well, there's a reason to be happy too.

[Scrustle]

I picked up on that too, regarding the demo. The demo makes Dante look a lot worse than he actually is, like to the point where it almost feels bait-and-switch styled. I dunno, I guess I'm in the minority who thought the story and voice acting was pretty awful. I know I'm being harder on the game than a lot of people are, as well, but I still did find things about the game I liked. I'm curious, what did you think about the bosses? I thought most of them were pretty lame and dull aside from Bob Bargas, and I was disappointed that Mundus basically turned into a really easy fusion of The Savior from DMC4 and Mega-Agent Smith from The Path of Neo.

I knew the Vergil plot twist was coming at the end, but the way they did it was pretty lame I thought. They didn't really plant many (if any) seeds for that twist at all, so when he actually did that heel turn it felt pretty out of nowhere and basically amounted to Vergil going "I'm evil too Dante, didnt you know!?"

Apart from the visuals of the Bob Barbas boss fight I don't think I was as impressed as other people seemed to be. He was kind of predictable and his attacks seemed kind of... uninspired. Just mostly glowy stuff coming at you which you had to avoid. I think they could have done more. I was also kind of half expecting there to be more to the fight after I destroyed his holographic form. Like that was just a projection of the demon and I had to destroy it to fight the real thing. That never came though.

The Succubus fight was pretty good. Apart from her shouting profanities at an embarrassing level (I actually turned my TV down) I thought it was kind of cool. The way you had to keep mobile during the fight to stay away from the acid vomit floors and the second stage where you have to push her down in to the turbine were interesting.

Mundus' Spawn was a pretty standard fight. Didn't really feel like a boss, but more like a sub-boss that would show up in normal fights, apart from the bits where you pulled out Lilith. Visually it was very disgusting though. They managed to put that across better than in most other games.

I agree Mundus himself was a bit disappointing. His fight was like an easier and less interesting version of the Succubus fight. All you had to do was dodge the slow obvious attacks and whittle down his health until it's gone. I expected more.

Vergil was pretty cool though. It was interesting to fight a boss who was very fast and mobile. It made him more unpredictable and you had to react fast. I didn't really get how I was supposed to kill him though. I guessed that you just attack him using Devil Trigger while he was recovering health, and that did work, but I had already tried that earlier in the fight and it didn't seem to. Didn't know what was going on.

I don't think his turn was completely out of nowhere though. Before then he had already expressed how he felt he was different and somewhat better than humans, and that Kat was just a resource. There was something about him that felt kind of distant too, and it seems in line with his character that he would only be friendly to people because he wanted to get something out of them. It wasn't that he just suddenly turned evil out of nowhere, he had been brewing it up for a long time and waiting to tell people. But it could have been done a lot better than it was though, and I probably would have had more of a problem with it if I wasn't aware that there was a good chance it was coming.

[SephirothX]

Vergil was pretty cool though. It was interesting to fight a boss who was very fast and mobile. It made him more unpredictable and you had to react fast. I didn't really get how I was supposed to kill him though. I guessed that you just attack him using Devil Trigger while he was recovering health, and that did work, but I had already tried that earlier in the fight and it didn't seem to. Didn't know what was going on.

I'm mixed on whether or not I liked the Vergil fight. It's almost identical to the first time you fight him in DMC3, honestly. They gave him a different Devil Trigger, but 90% of the stuff was right from DMC3. I'm torn on whether or not I liked it because I do enjoy fighting Vergil, but I was let down by how little NT added onto the fight.

Also, I had issues finishing off Vergil too. I would DT when he was recovering his health and the first 2 or 3 times I tried attack him it wouldn't work, but the forth time magically did.

[IsolateMutate]

I just can't seem to wrap my goddamn head around this game. I won't judge it properly until I've played it myself, but the vibe I'm getting from all the reviews is "Well, on its own it's a solid game, but the lack of a lock-on system and the amount of awful dialogue that is present kinda drags it down". Despite this being the case for pretty much EVERY review I've read, it still seems to get 9's and 8.5's when it really sounds like more of a 7.5 kinda deal.

I don't know, I'm just really kinda confused. Anyone care to shine a light on this stuff?

[Sir Legendhead]

Anyone care to shine a light on this stuff?

Generally speaking, it seems like gaming publications (including websites) have to give out high scores on a somewhat consistent basis, simply because not doing so would be bad for the industry. And of course they're going to choose high profile games to do this with because it sends a message that gaming is still awesome. It's more complicated than that of course, and I'm no expert, etc. etc. yadda yadda yadda.

[SephirothX]

I just can't seem to wrap my goddamn head around this game. I won't judge it properly until I've played it myself, but the vibe I'm getting from all the reviews is "Well, on its own it's a solid game, but the lack of a lock-on system and the amount of awful dialogue that is present kinda drags it down". Despite this being the case for pretty much EVERY review I've read, it still seems to get 9's and 8.5's when it really sounds like more of a 7.5 kinda deal.

I don't know, I'm just really kinda confused. Anyone care to shine a light on this stuff?

It's honestly more of a 6.5-7.5 title if you ask me. It has some redeeming values but it also has some god awful aspects of it too.

I'm not going to say Capcom bought out reviews or anything stupid like that (but to be fair after the Lauren Wainwright incident I think game reviews lost their right to be immune to that complaint for a while), but the game is just a bit on the over-hyped side. I kind of think reviewers are giving Ninja Theory some sympathy votes because of the initial backlash the reboot got or because Enslaved flopped or something silly like that.

The game has some pretty fun gameplay, but its admittedly a bit inferior to the previous games and they do some stupid things to pad out the amount of enemies you fight. The story in my opinion is rehashed garbage and does nothing you've never seen before and its easily the worst story Ninja Theory has put out in one of their games. The story plays things a little too straight and not tongue-in-cheek enough considering what the premise of the whole thing is, and the story thinks it's a lot more clever than it actually is.

---

On an unrelated note, something I'm noticing in reviews for the game are people saying you shouldn't compare it to the other DMC games and look at it as a standalone. I kind of think logic is bullshit to excuse the game for some of its faults. If I buy a game that has "Devil May Cry" on the box, I expect the product to be "Devil May Cry".

[Scrustle]

I never found the lack of a lock-on a problem. It would have been better if it did have it, but I never found myself getting blind-sided because the camera was pointing in the wrong direction or anything like that. Being able to grab and pull yourself towards enemies kind of made that a non-issue. The biggest complaint I have about the combat is that the control input for the Stinger move (and the equivalents for other weapons) was kind of clunky, and didn't always go in the direction I wanted it to. If there was a lock-on system then that wouldn't have been a problem. But for the most part your attacks do a pretty good job of going in the direction you want them to just by pointing the stick towards the enemy you want. It's not like it's aiming attacks at enemies to your side when you want to point forward or anything like that.

The writing for the game isn't necessarily bad. It's understandable and presented well. It's just that the story itself isn't that interesting, and Dante isn't a particularly likeable character. Those things are distinct from the writing as a whole. They never seemed to bother me though, since the vast majority of the time you spend is slicing things up. They don't try to put a huge focus on story like they did with Enslaved. I actually thought the story in Enslaved was actually pretty poor though, but that's a different topic.

I agree with most of the reviews out there. They seem to be mostly right on the money, although I think some of the scores are a little high. I personally wouldn't rate it at 9. It's more an 8, maybe an 8.5 for me.

[umberhulk]

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.

They really didn't.

[SephirothX]

They really didn't.

If you couldn't get a laugh out of the Lucifer cutscene in DMC4 you clearly just have no sense of humor. I'm going to wager a guess that you don't like the 80s TMNT cartoon either.

[Arttemis]

"I crave pizza no longer. I crave pizza no longer."

[JEKKI]

playing on the PC, 3 stages in so far and the game is quite fun!!

Vergil tho... freakin nerds and fedoras man...

[Hector Garfria]

@8:30 they reused code from enslaved, literally copy-pasted, for DmC

[Arttemis]

Not surprised at all. That combat system...

[Scrustle]

...And? They're both games made by the same studio using the same engine, one directly after the other. If they can re-appropriate some stuff then surely that's the logical thing to do.

People wouldn't have a problem if they found if the Elder Scrolls games, some Bioware games, or PoP '08 and Assassin's Creed had similar code.

Criticising a game because of how it's coded is pretty damn petty if you ask me. The specific code mentioned is pretty insignificant too, and has nothing to do with the combat engine. The calculations going on under the surface are completely irrelevant. What matters is how it plays.

[SephirothX]

As a programmer in my day job, yeah, complaining about recycled code is a tad petty.

---

Unrelated, I know people don't always find VGChartz reliable but they have first week global sales available. Apparently DmC total only sold 545k globally its first week. (The numbers they have seem to match up with the widely reported Japan numbers too).

To mock something stupid Capcom said about DmC's FPS... it has the look of 545k sales but the feel of a million sales.

Anyways it looks like DmC is lagging well behind DMC4 sales wise, and its second week UK sales already plummeted back behind BLOPS, Fifa, and the usual suspects. With Dead Space, Aliens, and Revengeance around the corner there's actually an outside chance this game won't even sell a million units.

[Arttemis]

I doubt anyone really gives two shits about that code.

Regarding sales... they changed the look and combat hoping it would appeal to a wider audience, but failed, and upset many of the fans who wanted the technical action gameplay. Great job, Capcom. What I'm wondering is how well would a Ninja Theory game have sold if it wasn't trying to ape on another series, but instead was an original story of Enslaved caliber, had DmC's combat, and the same marketing campaign?

[Kyosuke_Nanbu]

http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/28/dmc-lo...turns-3369615/

It didn't just drop, it plummeted, Capcom's been silent on US sales, that tells me they can't be very good at all.

Odd because the word of mouth has been positive and the game came out when there was no competition, either way this might mean NT going out of business and that's a lot of people on the street.

[The Defenestrator]

Frankly, I'm more curious about everything around the game than the game itself. (Hyper macho stuff like DMC and God Of War puts me to sleep.) I thought the cosmetic changes were a total self-inflicted wound on Ninja Theory's part but the ensuing sturm und drang was ridiculous.

Is it true that there's a female character in the game who it's insinuated was raped or molested? Given the Tomb Raider brouhaha, I'm surprised that is hasn't been mentioned more.

I hope Capcom had some lowered expectations. I kind of thought that the Japanese-ness of the series was part of the appeal so moving it to a Western developer was a risky move. Making arbitrary changes to (I assume) establish their own identity as developers was maybe not a great first move.

[Steven Hansen]

This thread feels more like a 6.25, tops. I'd go as low as 4.75, depending.

[SephirothX]

http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/28/dmc-lo...turns-3369615/

It didn't just drop, it plummeted, Capcom's been silent on US sales, that tells me they can't be very good at all.

Odd because the word of mouth has been positive and the game came out when there was no competition, either way this might mean NT going out of business and that's a lot of people on the street.

VGChartz appears to have the US sales data for DmC's first week (take that with salt if you want), it sold 283k in the US for its first week (DMC4 had 374k for its first US week, for comparison).

Frankly, I'm more curious about everything around the game than the game itself. (Hyper macho stuff like DMC and God Of War puts me to sleep.) I thought the cosmetic changes were a total self-inflicted wound on Ninja Theory's part but the ensuing sturm und drang was ridiculous.

Is it true that there's a female character in the game who it's insinuated was raped or molested? Given the Tomb Raider brouhaha, I'm surprised that is hasn't been mentioned more.

I hope Capcom had some lowered expectations. I kind of thought that the Japanese-ness of the series was part of the appeal so moving it to a Western developer was a risky move. Making arbitrary changes to (I assume) establish their own identity as developers was maybe not a great first move.

Yeah, it's strongly implied that Kat was raped/molested by demons in her one moment of backstory/characterization in the game. I was somewhat surprised that it's not been talked about either, because like you said - Tomb Raider brouhaha.