FanBoycotted reboot of Devil May Cry series exceeds expectations.
Devil May Cry was a great success for Capcom when it released on Sony's Playstation 2 in 2001, a mixture of platforming, puzzle-solving and high speed action. As the sequels mounted up and the franchise grew, it became a little more ridiculous each time however.
Now, 10 years later on from the series' inception, we have a reborn Devil May Cry - a reboot of the series by Ninja Theory, a UK-based team who brought us the likes of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and Heavenly Sword.
DmC: Devil May Cry ditches its vague fantasy undertones in favour of a dark and thoroughly modern setting in the form of Limbo City, a sprawling city under the control of demon villain Mundus, who uses political manoeuvring, surveillance and debt in order to enforce his will and dominance over humans. The city has an ever-present sense of oppression as people go about their daily lives blissfully ignorant of their demonic overlord's machinations.
Other visuals in the game have also been overhauled. Dante himself is no longer a white haired, red jacket wearing j-pop character, he still wears his signature long coat, but the tone has been taken down to grittier depths with a dark jacket and black, messy haircut – altogether a more punk style look in contrast with Vergil's neat appearance, complete with stylish hat and using his sword as a cane. Demonic enemies look suitably messed up and have a disturbing quality to them, moving in unnatural fashions in most cases, but one of the really beautiful aspects of the game is limbo.
Limbo is the setting in which most of the combat action of DmC: Devil May Cry takes place as Dante will be pulled from the real world and into a gloriously distorted and messed up version of it. There are nice details such as the way buildings and other structures crumble and break into weird and wonderful parodies of themselves, and details such as the shadows of people back in the real world going about their daily business without any hint of what is happening between Dante and his demonic foes. A good example of this early on in the first mission has a large demon, known as a hunter demon, rip a fairground ferris wheel from its hinges and bowl it down a pier towards Dante. The camera then cuts to the real world to show a news report of a freak accident involving the fairground attraction inexplicably breaking off its hinges and wrecking the pier before cutting back to show Dante and the hunter demon battling in limbo.
The narrative in DmC: Devil May Cry has been given more attention this time around too, rather than just acting as an excuse for all the demon killing to take place. The story follows Dante and his twin brother Vergil as they combat the demonic forces in the city, backed up by a fresh addition to the series in the form of Kat, a medium who can handily communicate with Dante while he is in limbo and offer handy hints and advice.
The core gameplay in DmC: Devil May Cry remains a balance between melee combat and gun play. The combat system has been refined from a frantic mashing of the controller to timing your attacks for maximum efficiency, often being given a short visual cue during weapon strikes in order to signify when to trigger the next attack. As with previous instalments to the franchise, extra points are awarded to combo scores for variety. Dante can switch between his sword and two new weapons by simply holding the correct trigger, this can be done mid combo to avoid breaking up your rhythm and losing all those addictive style points. The two new weapons come in the form of a demonic axe that offers stronger attacks and shield breaking capability at the cost of reduced attack speed, and an angelic scythe that attacks faster than Dante's sword and is effective for crowd control situations. Combat is a joy overall.
Other offensive abilities awarded by each weapon such as pulling enemies towards you or pulling yourself to an enemy are also useful for keeping combos moving, but can render the twin pistols Ebony and Ivory a little obsolete until you've piled enough upgrade points into them, which are gained by collecting souls from vanquished enemies and spending them at shrines to increase the complexity of combos, and the damage that they deal.
The new combat system in place overall works very well, but it does fall down a little when it comes to the game's boss fights which do look impressive and feature battles against huge demons, but they fall into the age-old method of execution for hack-and-slash action of learning the boss' endlessly repeating pattern of attacks and striking at the allowed moments. This can draw boss fights out, make them a little tedious, and in general makes all the time you've spent perfecting your combos a little useless as you hammer in attacks at the given opportunity, rinse and repeat until the boss is defeated.
Towards its end, the game does lose a little pace and slows down the action to focus more on platforming and navigation and the plot twists towards the closing chapters are painfully predictable, but are still enjoyable to see through to the finish. Replayability of the game comes in the form of increased difficulty settings for the main campaign, the most ridiculous of which is hell and hell difficulty - where Dante is killed from a single hit, and from the challenge of going back to previous levels with new abilities in an effort to improve scores.
DmC: Devil May Cry is a great game that shows us a new and improved Dante. Limbo looks great and the characters are well voiced and animated throughout. The new combat system does a good job of making you feel like a badass while still being challenging, as some enemy types can't just be hacked to death but will require specific types of attack which keeps each engagement fresh and challenging. The game is not without its flaws however, combat would benefit greatly from the addition of a lock-on mechanic, the camera, which makes a valiant effort, does struggle to keep up with the high octane action sometimes which can also cause issues. Aside from that there are also minor problems with slight graphical issues, and the flow of combat can irritatingly be broken up in the early game by impromptu tutorials.
In conclusion, this game will divide fans of the series who want to stay true to its 'roots', but for those who felt the change was needed or that have perhaps never played a game from the series before, then this is certainly worth the effort. Ninja Theory have done a great job of updating Dante for a new audience, and have managed to make a game that is a great starting point for what will no doubt be a new era in the series.