John Woo, Eat Your Heart Out
Every once in a while a game comes along that just kicks your ass. Maybe it’s a rehash that’s simply done better than its predecessors, maybe it’s a story or a character that just instantly inspires people, or maybe it’s some new idea that gets the perfect treatment.
Sometimes, it’s all three at once.
Sometimes a game grabs you around the throat, lifts you up into the air, and then proceeds to beat the snot out of you without even breaking a sweat. Devil May Cry is such a game. Imagine, if you will, a game where you play a total badass that knows he’s a total badass. Imagine that you are taking on a demon with all his minions not for the sake of good, but for the sake of revenge. Imagine that you’re armed with twin pistols, and you’ve got moves that would make the Wachowski brothers green with envy. Oh, and we can’t forget your enormous sword, perfect for beating and slashing the living bejesus out of anything that moves. Interested? If not you need to check your pulse, go grab the latest copy of Pokemon, and return to your high-pressure game of Windows Solitaire. Everyone else, come with me.
In Devil May Cry you play the part of Dante, the snappily dressed son of the Dark Knight Sparda who went from the side of evil to good in a war against demons years before. Apparently the demon lord that Sparda defeated is poised to enter the human world again, and Dante has a rather large chip on his shoulder as far as demons are concerned. You do what any son of a Dark Knight would do…you pick up your sword, holster your guns, and go out to layeth the smack down. In all seriousness the story is pretty cheesy and formulaic, but who cares? You can’t have a kung-fu movie without a plot like this, and those are equally as fun to watch as this is to play for pretty much the same reasons.
Where do I start? Devil May Cry is a no-holds-barred action game, where the point is to slash or shoot anything that moves. What sets it apart: the aim is to do it all as stylishly as possible. While you can simply do basic attacks over and over to (probably) clear a stage, you certainly won’t get more than a “D” ranking at the end. Why does that matter? Well, aside from the joy of getting a high ranking you also receive crystals that serve as money for buying power-ups, new weapons, and continues. To get a higher ranking you have to attack “stylishly,” and while that may sound silly it’s actually the entire point of the game and extremely entertaining to boot. Chaining together combos, alternating between pistols and swords, and jumping and rolling to avoid being hit are just some of the tools at your disposal to raise your score. The game tracks how you play with a little blurb at the top that changes to reflect the style of your playing with words like “Excellent,” “Awesome,” and so on. In later levels that style of playing becomes absolutely necessary as enemies and bosses become inhumanly fast and cunning.
Besides keeping you alive, the “stylish” method of playing is just plain fun to do and watch. You can pull off moves seen in some of the best action movies, and it’s a great feeling when you roll to the side, fire a few quick shots to pin down an enemy, then slash in for the kill with your sword. Devil May Cry is the first single-player game in recent memory where I actually started talking smack while playing even though no one else was around. If that’s not a ringing endorsement for the action I don’t know what is.
The levels are stylish (the word of the day as far as this game is concerned) and beautiful, giving the impression you are truly traversing an ancient castle where a demon makes his home. The game uses a Resident Evil style fixed camera that switches around based on where you are in a room, but Capcom greatly improved the concept by carefully picking where the camera went and where the switches occurred. They needed to do this so that the game would actually have the feel of an action movie, and they succeeded beautifully. One of the nicer graphical touches: when combat begins and throughout it’s duration, the camera shifts and focuses slightly, mimicking the modern shooting methods of action movies. It’s a bit tough to explain, but you’ll instantly understand what I mean when you play the game. The background appears to “shift” closer, and it’s a very cool effect when the depth of field changes.
The graphics could use a small bit of anti-aliasing, but I stopped noticing about thirty seconds into my first battle and haven’t really noticed it since. The game is just too hectic for something like that to even occur to you.
The overall theme for the music in Devil May Cry is pretty much metal-inspired. It’s not exactly memorable, but it swells up in combat and helps keep the blood running hot. All of the sound effects and ambient noises, on the other hand, are superb. Some of the enemy attack cries still manage to send a shiver down my back even after extended playing. The gunshot and sword slashing sounds are particularly satisfying.
Devil May Cry was one of the primary reasons I bought my Playstation 2. (It was Devil May Cry and Final Fantasy X, to be specific.) I played it briefly on a rented system, and within a week of taking everything back to Blockbuster I found myself in line with a Playstation 2 and my very own copy of the game. It is a mind bogglingly fun game that looks and plays like an action movie I wish they’d make. The only possible way I could not recommend this game would be if the player were a young child. It’s not just violent, violence is the point. Bring it.