DMC may have a new coat of paint but this Devil May Cry reboot is far from a disappointment.
Dante's new look aside, DMC is amazing. It's a great game. One of the best released so far this year. And you know what? Dante's new look is cool. I said it. It's cool. Sure, it's not the same old Dante in some respects but in other ways he is very much like OG Dante.
Now, on to the game review.
DMC impressed me. I didn't know how it was going to turn out after Ninja Theory got a hold of it. I had not been a fan of their games in the past and I wasn't sure how much I was going to like this one. All things considered, DMC may have a new coat of paint but this Devil May Cry reboot is far from a disappointment.
As per the usual, the first thing that's noticed about this game are the graphics. This game looks great. Ninja Theory manipulated Unreal Engine 3 and delivered a very gorgeous 3D world to view as one plays. The environments in this game are freaking crazy! So many colors being utilized, so many varied areas, it was hard to look away from the screen. Character models looked great. Even the numerous on-screen enemies had pretty hi-poly models. The game ran at a consistent 30 frames per second on the Xbox 360 version and never hung or hickuped. There were a couple of instances later in the game where some textures failed to fade in appropriately but it wasn't often and never too much and only towards the final few missions.
The gameplay of course is what steals the show. DMC got rid of that pesky lock-on button from previous Devil May Crys and went with an auto-targeting mechanic. And it worked very well. In former titles I always found it annoying to have to target lock on an enemy because often Dante would target something I didn't want to attack or it would make the controls get wonky on me resulting in Dante performing a Stinger move instead of slinging his target up into the air. In DMC I rarely had an issue with the auto-targeting system. Dante almost always attacked the enemy I wanted to focus down, or if I changed my mind mid combo string Dante would also change and attack a new target. I found combat to be much less cumbersome than with previous titles. One might wonder how Dante performed his moves now because in other Devil May Crys Dante's move set depended on the targeting system and which direction he was facing. Well, in DMC, moves like the Stinger are now performed by pressing the analog stick in the direction of your enemy twice, quickly in a row, and then pressing the "Y" button. And as far as slinging you enemy into the air, the launcher attack is mapped to the "B" button now. Easy as Sunday morning.
Dante's signature sword, Rebellion, is very much present but so also are two new weapon types. Pressing and holding the left trigger puts Dante into angel mode which allows for quick, crowd control type weapons (one of them being a scythe); and holding in the right trigger puts Dante into demon mode which opens up heavy hitting, slow weapons (one being an axe). These weapon types being mapped to the triggers allows for instant and quick weapon changes in the middle of combat, which helps you gain tremendous stylish points from combat which factors into your ranking at the end of each mission. Everyone of the five melee weapons in this game feel very much different and offer tons of variations in attack styles. Also, holding each respective trigger while hitting the evade button (that's right, there's a dedicated dodge button, two of them in fact, each bumper button) allows Dante to perform a special evade type. The angel mode evade gives Dante a few more iFrames (invulnerability frames: frames of animation that occur within 1 second of time that the character model cannot be harmed in) and a significant distance boost compared to the normal evade, and the demon mode evade can be utilized when timed just before an enemies attack would hit Dante. Allowing Dante to not only completely evade the attack but also he gets a significant damage boost to his attacks for a few seconds. This gives DMC's combat tons of depth, which is good considering several enemies in the later half of the game are in no way hack'n'slash fodder.
The story in DMC is also pretty intriguing, depending on your feelings about corporations and conspiracies. It was neat to see what Ninja Theory portrayed as soda or music or night clubs or the mass media. The story pretty much follows Dante and his brother Vergil with this chick named Kat. They are out to see Mundus, the original villain of Devil May Cry, destroyed to free humanity. I wont say the story doesn't pan out in a predictable manner, but there is at least one event that's pretty surprising and had me saying holy crap. Character interactions are believable and so is the voice acting, which was all done very well.
Overall, DMC was an amazing game. It was fun and I had a really good time playing it. And even though Dante's look has, most likely, changed forever, it fits well into this new world that DMC creates for us and I'm excited to see what a sequel is going to look like.
Gameplay - 9.0
---The combat is as fluid as ever. To a friend of mine, I actually compared it to the precision Ninja Gaiden had. At least, I've not enjoyed a combat system as much as this since Ninja Gaiden on Xbox. And enemies typically don't attack off screen! So, that's dope! Sometimes they can... but it's not SO often.
Graphics - 9.0
---This game looks amazing and I challenge anyone who disagrees. It may not run at the series standard of 60fps, but 30fps is perfectly sufficient. Also, Dante's new look compliments the art style presented in this game. Deal with it if you don't like it.
Audio - 9.5
--- Audio is typically the easiest for me to give a score on because it's pretty simple. This game had cool music that matched the gameplay and the art style. This game had great voice actors that gave very believable performances with out poor or bad dialogue. I'll leave the swear words up to you. This game does have plenty of swearing, which is not typical of Devil May Cry, but again it fits with the art direction this game took... as unfortunate as the language may be.
Presentation - 9.0
It is what it is. This is very subjective. The game didn't have any qualms with itself about what it was trying to accomplish. As typical as the story may have been I was surprised by at least one event that took place and I actually did care about Dante, Kat, and Vergil... at least a little. The combat takes the cake though. It was a lot of fun and it did a great job of making you feel empowered and awesome at the same time.
Overall - 8.5
This was an amazing game. You may wonder how I score this game under a 9.0 when every other category was 9.0+. Well, I would've preferred that the game was at least time and a half longer. Playing on the nephilim difficulty (hard mode) the game took me about 10 hours to complete. And I can only imagine that on lower difficulties this time taken is much less. Also, I'm becoming much less impressed with games these days that don't utilize an open-world or free-roam style of gameplay. Level by level is old gen now. Let's take our games into the next dimension, huh? Also, there are some cheap environmental hazards that are an annoyance to have to avoid and some slightly (slightly) annoying platforming sequences.
Side notes: I played this game on the Xbox 360 and I started on the nephilim (hard) difficulty setting. So, you may experience some slight differences in combat if you play on a lower setting. But, I say screw it and challenge yourself! Also, I played the game with all the DLC available to me. By that I mean I was able to pick from a small variety of costumes for Dante from the get go. Of all the DLC, I recommend the costume pack because there's a really cool outfit only available through this DLC called "Dark Dante" and it's easily the coolest outfit I've ever seen on a character in a videogame. Also also, this costume DLC pack comes with Dante's outfit from Devil May Cry 3 more or less. So if you simply CAN NOT play as this new Dante then at least you can play as DMC3 Dante.