D's for Never Dirty, MC's for Mostly Clean...
Character action games aren’t exactly my strong suit, but I’ve played them from time to time. However, outside of Bayonetta and two of the present day Ninja Gaiden titles, I’d struggle to name which ones. Ninja Theory’s recent reboot of Devil May Cry (or DmC as they’re calling it) is the most recent one.
I’ll be forthright and say that although I played the first game in the series, I hit a wall with it pretty early on and eventually returned it to the person I’d borrowed it from. I also have vague memories of playing the fourth game, but nothing really substantial. That could have very easily been the case for this one too.
Arguably, the controversy surrounding this game is what drew me to it, which I’ll get to later. The thing I want to get to first however, is that I’m blown away by just how much I like this game.
Even from the outside I remember the series is known for it’s sense of style, and this game really doesn’t let the series down in that regard. Although some of the early stages are so-so, the level design really steps it up before the mid-point, throwing out some really abstract settings with plenty of imagination and colour. It’s not just the graphics, either; the game eschews a conventionally created score in favour of an industrial and EBM styled soundtrack largely provided by Combichrist, and it suits the action real well. I’ve been playing a lot of games with headphones on lately, and this one was no exception.
The action is the crux of games in this genre, so it may be odd that I’m mentioning it second. While not quite at the level of Bayonetta (apologies, I may cite that game a lot here as it’s my most recent frame of reference), it certainly doesn’t disappoint. The most basic way of breaking it down is that the controls consist mainly of light and heavy strikes that can be combined together, with the triggers acting as modifiers. The latter part of what really switches it up: the left and right triggers activate Angel and Demon modes respectively, which alter the range and damage of your strikes as well as the behaviour of your ranged attacks and grant different bonuses for successful evades. Throughout the game you’ll encounter neutral enemies that can be harmed by either style, or fire and frost enemies that can only be harmed with the specific trigger held down.
You’ll fight them in spades, too. While there are some light platforming elements, DmC never strays far from the combat-heavy gameplay. Thankfully, it’s good enough in that area that it doesn’t become a chore. The game encourages you to work agressively, employ a range of attacks, and get hit as little as possible. Overall, it’s a deep enough and challenging system, but never goes to the point of being inaccessible. This definitely isn’t a game where you can repeat the same three-hit combos ad infinitum, and it’s all the more exhilarating for it.
Story-wise, DmC reboots the series with a younger and definitely more rough-edged Dante, with his past and relationship with his brother Vergil (introduced in the third game) taking a front seat. The overarching plot seems to borrow rather liberally from John Carpenter’s They Live, but why anyone would say this is a bad thing is beyond me. If anything it makes the plot more relatable and relatively easy to follow, when I’ve typically found most games in this genre to be incomprehensible from a narrative standpoint. The worst it ever does is occasionally sound juvenile, but more often than not continues to amuse at the same time.
Overall, the game itself took me upwards of ten hours or so to complete, and I’m still not done with it. There’s DLC due in early March and I don’t think I’ll be bored of it by then either. Like previous games in the series and genre, there are a range of collectables, difficulty modes and a generous level select that makes replaying portions of the game easy, and the twenty-plus stages don’t take so long that it’s inconceivable to fire one up for a quick half hour of play. In fact, I plan to do just that after I’m finished writing this.
While DmC seems to be getting heaps of critical praise layered upon it, the supposed outrage from ‘fans’ of the series has plagued development of the game since it was announced in 2010. Many of these people point to the series being handed to a western developer (and perhaps I should have prefaced this review by admitting that I absolutely hated Heavenly Sword), as well as the supposed dumbing down of the series. I kind of get where these people are coming from, as I levelled similar complaints against the 2008 Prince of Persia reboot, but I really think they’re wrong in this regard. Ninja Theory have delivered an accessible game that continues to be challenging, and not once is it the calculated “fuck you” that a contingent of Metacritic users are trying to paint it is. So with Ninja Theory proving the naysayers wrong in this regard, I’m left thinking to the true criticism stems around the interpretation of Dante himself.
The reimagining of Dante as a self-absorbed, trailer trash delinquent has been a point of contention ever since the new look was unveiled. While his journey comes across as hackneyed in the way he eventually finds his calling, there’s nothing here that suggests he’s lost any depth at all. So I’m left wondering if criticism of the redesign is purely a case of aesthetics.
On that front, it’s worth mentioning no one had a problem with the character design in DMC4 several years ago. Which I find amusing, because that was supposed to be a different protagonist entirely, despite him looking exactly like Dante. I’m really not exaggerating when I say I had no idea that was supposed to be a different guy until I read the summary of it on Wikipedia a while back. So, if true fans were completely placated by a different character that is indistinguishable from the previous one, I’m not sure complaining because this one doesn’t have white hair and a red trenchcoat really holds much merit.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, which I really don’t need 1,000 words for, I’ll say again that I think Ninja Theory have really knocked it out of the park with this one. There’s plenty here for fans of the series or the genre in general, and you have nothing to lose even if you’re not. Give it a chance, and I don’t think you’ll regret it; I certainly didn’t.