For those who have not been in the loop on the playstation side of things, let me inform you: the Devil May Cry series was a big part in changing the action gaming scene with its over the top action, beautiful environments, and fun (even if it was over the the top as well) dialogue. The first some think to be the best, as the second, most would prefer to forget, and the third, insanely difficult. I myself am fairly new to the full experience (played some on a friends, but never enough to truly know the game). So how will the fourth turn out on it’s debut run on next generation consoles and on an xbox platform?
The "Devil Bringer"
The game starts you out with an absolutely beautiful cut-scene with a well done tutorial woven right in at the end, and helping to set the pace for the entire game. It is going to act fast paced, with plenty of big combos, big-time style, and big-time blood. You play most of the game as the newcomer to the series Nero, who’s big weapon is the Devil Bringer, basically a grappling hook used to grab and throw things all over the place, cross holes, grab items and baddies that are just out of reach. He also has a special mechanic in his sword, the Red Queen. It "revs" up when using the left trigger at the correct time to increase the power of the following blows (it looks like a motorcycle handle, it injects a flammable liquid into the sword). Using these and other mechanics you are able to pull of insane combos on a room full of enemies. After a certain huge point in the game, you switch to the usual DMC protagonist Dante, who, while not having a grappling arm like the Devil Bringer, has plenty of moves up his sleeve to keep you more than entertained. I personally at first did not like him, but as I slowly dug into his deep set of moves and stringing together combos, liked him even more at the end. He has, besides the normal sword and his twin pistols, 4 different styles, which have different moves that you can change on the fly. The only problem I had was that there was some repetitiveness in the areas that were used, and at some points, the camera angles cause issues with seeing who you thought you hit, and who’s stabbing you in the back. There is also some kind of tacked on lame puzzle solving, but not enough to bother me to much.
Dante Being Himself
The game looks beautiful, a great showing on the 360. The cut-scenes are amazing, as good as anything else you will see, and gameplay moves and responds very well, as is needed with this type of combat system. The dialogue, will depend on the person if you like it. The games dialogue has an over the top feeling, especially after you get to Dante, who is as cocky and sarcastic as any character you have ever seen. The soundtrack works well, except when you are fighting (which is most of the time), which is some hard rock/metal screaming stuff that plays all the time. It didn’t bother me to much, but for some, it might just drive insane.
The replayability of the game depends on how good you get at it. Your first play-through, you could probably get by without learning to much of the combos and getting very good at stringing them together. Go up to any of the higher difficulties, and you need that, without it you will be slaughtered. Beating the game on higher difficulties will unlock all sorts of information, screenshots, and a bloody palace mode, which is just a survival mode.
Do yourself a favor though, before purchasing, try the demo. Play through the demo more than once, because you can just button mash your way through. Instead, try and figure out how to do some combos. Go on youtube or something of the sort also, to see what, after some practice, you can pull off. If it still doesn’t seem like your cup of tea, I understand. But figuring out how to string together the Devil Bringer with Neros sword strikes and pistol, like finishing off a whole room of enemies while in the air, bringing up one after another with the devil bringer, or how to pull of a combo blocking with Dante’s Royal Guard style, switching to Trickster to change your position real quick, throwing some nice sword strikes with Sword Master, and then finishing it off with some crazy gunplay with Gunslinger, all on one enemy, is an absolute blast. So try it, and don’t judge on first few minutes, the more I played it and understood, the more I liked it. If it wasn’t for the repetitiveness that came out, I would have loved it even more. In the end, its a big-time action game, huge on style.
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