Devil May cry 4, the lastest in the tales of demon hunter Dante, impressed the crap out of me!
But that's enough of the past, let's focus on the present! DMC4 is a phenomenal achievement in brawler style gameplay. The pace of the game is always fast, stringing together combos is relatively easy and makes for awesome battles, the boss battles are also quite the achievement in there own way too.
Now for the break down, easy way to start it.. graphics. There's nothing exactly "new and amazing" in the graphics for DMC4, though it still has an amazing landscape. The forests shadows are realistic, the bushes and trees look great, though most is just there for show and off the beaten path. One of the main graphics I thought were good was Dante and Nero. They made them both look great, Nero the spunky new young hunter, and Dante the beaten down older of the two. The stubble on Dante's face was actually the first thing to grab my attention, heh.
As far as the gameplay goes, it's top notch. Brawler games are my favorite, and this game delivers what I wanted from it. When you aren't being trapped in by 5 or 6 monsters, you're only walking a bit before the next attack or cutscene. Though that may seem bland, the gameplay gets it right. Every mission something new pops out to try and kill you, with different move sets, but of course.. brings all the little guys from the previous levels to play with. So you're never bored in the fights. But alas, the best of the gameplay.. the boss fights. Well in my opinion anyways. All of them are HUGE, although most of it is just using the same combo, if you string together all the right things you do some pretty cool little specials, especially with Nero's neat little arm.
But of course, none of this would be all that good without a story now would it? Luckly for us, the story is good. Really good in fact. The story is basically divided in half, two 11 missions sets (or one 10 and one 11.. there's either 21 or 22 missions in it.. heh). You start off as Nero, running around being a cocky little ******* like Dante. But, they don't know eachother just yet. Then in a thrilling turn of effects (in the opening cutscenes I may add....) dante busts in, kills some folks, fights Nero (the tutorial is fighting him), and saunters off. Leaving you confused as all s**t... Luckly the story unfolds pretty fast, running into Dante almost every level after this (and not fighting him again for awhile). But after a major twist.. involving the capture of Nero (that's all ya get! no spoilers!), the controls switch over to Dante, you get all your skill points and stuff back to invest into Dante's moves, and then you take off and try and solve some mysterious demon stuff.
Of course, no good game is without it's faults... DMC4's only real flaw I've seen so far is.. well let me put it this way. After kicking 3 huge demonic butts, well.. let's just say you'll see them again as Dante. But Dante doesn't let things escape. The only real saving grace for this flaw, is that when you do finally kill them, you unlock the really awesome new swords and guns. I was never attatched to Redemption, Dante's sword, so when I unlocked Gilgamesh, the friggin' awesome hand to hand combat gloves and boots, powered with that same motor thingy in Nero's sword.
With an awesome story, good twists, plenty of weapons and options, plus two very likeable main characters, and of course Dante's usual hot friends, it's hard to not love this game's charm. Either new or old to the series, I'm sure this is bound to please most people. There's always those few with.. different tastes.. in games. *cringe* It's worth the full price tag, and if you don't think so then at least rent the bloody thing!
9/10