Devil May Cry 4

Devil May Cry 4 : An action-adventure game where players control one of two practically identical clones of each other and slaughter an army of demon by way of using your giant sword to fling them in the air and either jumping in the air to slice them some more or juggling them in the air with bullets from your gun.

Story : Peaceful Sunday mass at the nearby sacred order of monks is interrupted by longtime Devil May Cry protagonist Dante, who murders their leader in cold blood and proceeds to engage new protagonist Nero in a clash of epic, unrealistic proportions (even unrealistic by the game’s standards, as none of your in-game fights will ever look as dramatic as the cutscene battles). Fueled by blind loyalty to his guild, the same guild that is using his girlfriend to threaten him to do the job (?), Nero goes on a quest to right this wrong. Obviously, we find out the order was really a demon-worshipping cult, the leader isn’t really dead, they have some plan involving giant demons to take over the world, and that Nero and Dante must now help each other out to right this wrong. I can’t in good conscience apologize for spoiling the plot since it’s not a very good plot to begin with, and I do wish that this game didn’t take so many parts of the story as seriously as it does. The best parts of the storyline for me are when the main characters are scoffing in the face of the assorted monster clichés, like the giant four-legged Satan figure early on or the mad scientist. But when the game tries to take a serious tone and add any semblance of emotional weight, such as anything involving Nero’s girlfriend in distress, it embarrasses itself. In essence, it cramps the style that the game works its ass off to build.

Other than the new gameplay mechanic, I wonder if there really was a point to adding a new main character. Nero and Dante look the same – same white hair, same buckle-laden trench coat, same teenage pretty boy looks, same big sword and handgun combination, same perchant for one-liners…except for Nero’s gimmick arm and weakness for his virgin lover, you could swap one for the other and odds are even the most diehard fans wouldn’t know the difference. Maybe that’s the reasoning – the developers thought a new character would allow them to reinvent the series and even be creative with the direction of existing characters, but at the same time they were so scared to death of alienating their core fanbase that they practically cloned Dante in designing their new hero out of fear that something as simple as say, a new hairstyle with a regular hair colour, would cause fans to protest on their message boards.

Maybe they felt that Devil May Cry 3 scared fans away with its punishing difficulty, despite how it was that same difficulty that made Devil May Cry 3 so distinct. Sure you were going to die a lot, but at the same time, making progress became its own reward. When you beat a level, you beat it because you felt like you were getting better at the game. Very few games nowadays can match that kind of design. DMC4’s default difficulty settings are more forgiving on newcomers than in the past, though hardcore fans and people who love using Youtube to brag about their skills will be happy to know that all the harder unlockable difficulty settings are here. You know the ones: “Son of Sparda”, “Dante Must Die”, “Hell or Hell”, “Your Balls Are Mine”, and so forth.

But what I do hope scares people away from Devil May Cry 4 is the assortment of bad design calls throughout the game that seemed to exist for the sake of artificially lengthening the game. There are areas where falling into a bottomless pit result in being forced to battle a large group of enemies in an enclosed space before attempting to navigate said pit again. The problem is that in part of this pit, platforms disappear and reappear in an unforeseeable pattern, and the only way to navigate this area is to learn the pattern through trial and error and thus, have to fall down a lot. In an end-game sequence, players must roll a die to move a board game piece across a set of tiles, and where the piece lands will determine whether or not the player battles newly-spawned enemies or not. The actual tile set this piece moves around is a circle and the only way to advance is if the piece lands on a green circle. After landing on said circle, the player fights a boss character and the process must be repeated seven more consecutive times before reaching the end of the level. While the game has largely tough and entertaining boss fights, the player will have to engage all the bosses three times throughout the length of the story mode.

You may have heard about this one already but in case you haven’t; you’ll play through the first half of the game as Nero. In the second half, you’ll play as Dante, and Dante must backtrack through all of the areas that you explored as Nero, fighting all the bosses that Nero already fought and even dealing with a particular enemy that randomly spawns out of nowhere and can trap you in an enclosed area where the only means of escape is to fight all of the enemies inside. Like many, many games of this generation, Devil May Cry 4 seems to have fallen victim to the rising costs, both in time, money and resources, of making a game for the current generation, as well as the seemingly unfair, unrealistic expectations of video game publications, their reviews and the public that has been affected by these reviews. There’s perhaps enough in-game architecture, enemies, design ideas and so forth to create a smooth game that would’ve been about 4-5 hours long, but game magazines tend to brandish a 4-5 hour long game as a ripoff, a rent-only title that isn’t worth your money, and hence Capcom felt the need to find every cheap method possible short of a fetch quest to stretch this game out into a more tedious, unenjoyable 15 hours.

It’s a pity, because I would’ve given Devil May Cry 4 a higher recommendation if only it turned out to be that 4-5 hour game. The gameplay mechanics are tight and the levels are mostly well-designed (not to mention visually stunning). On top of that, the one gimmick I mentioned earlier about Nero is actually a fun gimmick; the so-called “Devil Arm” is essentially a grab button that either pulls enemies towards you or vice-versa, and in the context of a game that’s primarily about killing enemies, this seemingly small mechanic helps to speed up the process at which death is dolled out - proof that sometimes the smallest and most subtle addition can make a tiring gameplay concept feel fresh. Had Devil May Cry 4 been released as that 4-5 hour adrenaline rush, then I would definitely have felt more inclined to replay it over and over again, inversely getting more playtime out of the experience and thus more of my money’s worth and would’ve been able to produce a glowing recommendation. But because of the need to produce a longer game, Capcom wound up releasing a game that isn’t quite worth your $60 and is best left for the Youtube fanatics who look to post their Bloody Palace high scores or whatnot.

Pros : If the memory of Devil May Cry 3 is still fresh in your head, then you’re in luck, as Dante controls exactly like he did in that game.

Cons : If you never played Devil May Cry 3, you might be a little SOL when the time comes to play as Dante.

3 Stars