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GAMES!!!!

It’s sure felt like a long time ago now, but it’s only been about a month or so since I bought this and the rest of the PS2 Devil May Cry games (plus Soldier of Fortune, which has a blog entry still pending). I really loved Bayonetta, but did want to play the series that proceeded Bayonetta in the character action genre. For around 20 bucks, I was guaranteed at least two good games and would enjoy them. Yeah, I went into this purchase knowing DMC 2 was bad and still got it anyway. I’m an idiot.

The original Devil May Cry and Bayonetta are 9 years apart from each other. I expected there to be very little differences in style and execution, given both games had the same director Hideki Kamiya. Playing this game, turns out the difference is a lot bigger. And age has set in on top of that for this title.

To regurgitate what just about everybody knows, Devil May Cry was originally going to be Resident Evil 4 but was changed to its own game when they realized the style and mood was different than what you’d expect from an RE game. Putting that idea in mind, various things come to mind that are proof of ’s previous form. The castle the game takes place in is very much this game’s Mansion from the original Resident Evil. There is no camera control, but unlike the static cameras and pre rendered backgrounds, the view is dynamic. There are still hard cuts in camera view that can make things disorienting and throw off where you’re guiding Dante, but the camera will pan around for some nice views, or around enemies nice and slowly while you’re beating on them.

Speaking of which, the combat in this game…compared to more modern character action games, it doesn’t feel right. It isn’t horrible, but compared to how tight control in other action games are, age has definitely hurt this part of the game. And the contextual stick directions and button attack moves are a bit frustrating to get a hold of because of the lack of camera control. When it says to hold the control stick in the direction of Dante’s back, he could be facing towards you and you’d have to press the control stick forward. The side roll is the worst for me as there are times where Dante just jumps up when I felt like I had the stick pushed in the direction to make him roll.

Regardless of those problems, I found fighting enemies to still be kind of enjoyable. The animations themselves are good, and when you get into a nice groove of getting S rank combos, with the camera slowly panning around the fight, it looks cool to say the least. It may not be the most fun combat system in an , which I doubt was the problem for people back in 2001, but I felt it still had some qualities to it.

As far as everything else in the game, I enjoyed the dumb music, Dante’s character is really cool, and the story doesn’t give a fuck about what’s going down in the last few chapters, between this really sappy and hilariously bad scene and a fucking plane falling from the floor above where Dante Mundas and still able to let them fly of the island. The disregard for telling any sort of good story is actually hilarious instead of infuriating, because they barely build up anything early on that would make you care if something like this happened.

So, I liked Devil May Cry. It’s not the best game in the series, nor is it the best character action game, but I feel it plays well enough today. I was disappointed thinking that the game would’ve felt more similar to Bayonetta, but hey, that’s my fault. It’s a game from 2001. It’s still far better than the next game I’m gonna talk about.

I’ll admit straight up, I was a FUCKING IDIOT for playing this game, even knowing beforehand that this game was nowhere near the quality of the rest of the games in the series. Still not sure why I bought it. Maybe I’m not fond of omitting numbered entries from a series of games that I own, maybe I wanted to see for myself how bad it was, even though I’m fairly comfortable with let reviewers tell me when a game is bad and to stay away. Regardless, there’s not turning back now.

I played about three fourths of the first disc of DMC 2 (yep, remember, 2 disc game), and it was bad.

I was breezing through the game without frustration, something that should’ve been nice after getting frustrated at parts of Devil May Cry, but the opposite effect took place. Without that challenge, and the gun juggling being completely broken and boring, I did not have fun. Combat as whole was a lot worse, with the only cool move that they added being wall running. But one move isn’t enough. Everything about it…I said DMC 1 game play didn’t feel right in comparison to other action games. In comparison to that, this feels WAY WAY WRONG.

And it’s not just the game play either. The style doesn’t feel cool or super exciting. Especially Dante. Personality is almost nonexistent, and the new characters introduced (for what few characters there are) don’t do much to help. And the bad guy looks like he should be a Tekken fighter. And Dante seems to love jumping off of tall skyscrapers diving head first. A detail that would’ve been awesome had Dante not thrown his charisma out the window, but here it was an odd detail to notice. Probably because he does it in one of the demo reels that plays before Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne.

Like I said, I played about three fourths of the first disc before quitting, and because I was so close to the end, it was both soul crushing to quit and also a relief to quit at the same time. I had no interest in playing the second disc, especially since Lucia’s levels are pretty much Dante’s levels recycled. I’ll still keep the game, but I doubt I’ll ever play more of it. Again, I think it’s the numbered thing. This is why devs should just use subtitles instead of numbers to differentiate your game. Especially if it ends up being ridiculous like Final Fantasy.

Little aside, because this game is damn awesome, I somehow thought that after the disaster that was DMC 2 Capcom got Kamiya to help make Devil May Cry 3 not a crap game. Was surprised that it wasn’t, because the quality of this game, a game from 2005/2006 if you count the Special Edition (which I played) pretty much rivals my two other favorite character action games: Ninja Gaiden, and Bayonetta. This game is fucking awesome.

For one, it’s challenging, and the challenge is so well done that even when I get my ass kicked over and over again, I still want to get back in and try it again. The game has an actual level select, and for each difficulty you can play on, so you can always try levels over and over again should you want a better ranking at the end. And while you still have limited camera control, I felt that the contextual moves based on control stick direction felt much tighter than in DMC 1. In fact, EVERYTHING feels tighter than in DMC 1.

The game also starts off with a bang. For one, this cutscene plays, and then your first level has you IMMEDIATELY fighting. Tutorial windows will pop up occasionally between waves in order to briefly explain a concept, but you are given a taste of what the action is like right from the go. There will of course be moments of puzzle solving like in the other games, and those will be the game’s quiet moments so to speak. But when getting into a battle, the combat feels just so damn good. It’s sublime.

An excellent addition to this game is no doubt the Style moves. Dante has 4 upgradeable styles (plus two non upgradeable ones he receives later on). They’re designed for specific playing styles, be it swords, or guns, or dodging and so on. Since dodging is always cooler than blocking, and just fun to do, I pretty much stuck with the Trickster style the whole way through. The upgrades to that style are excellent too, as they’re great for during battle and out of battle, particularly the 3 dashes in a row when you want to get some place fast.

I mentioned the cutscene two paragraphs back, which I must say, is fucking amazing. And there’s more like it. And those scenes were motion captured. Craziness. I still get a kick out of that cutscene, or anything that has Dante being super stylish, just because it shows how much of a punk ass he is. He surfs on top of an enemy (which can be done as an actual move and is fun) while shooting both pistols, he shoots a cue ball with his gun and sends them all flying, he plants his feet on a rocket and starts surfing it, and then after getting his Devil Trigger starts free falling from the tower going crazy on a bunch of flying enemies…all before getting eaten by a devil whale. It’s stupid and over the top, and it’s so awesome.

Because I played the special edition, that meant that I had the rebalanced difficulty levels, which didn’t bother me as I had no context for it, normal was plenty challenging enough. Then there is the turbo mode, probably my favorite feature in the special edition. It boosts speed by 20%, and makes combat more fun, a tad bit more challenging, and the rest of the game just overall faster. Can’t really go back from that. And then there’s Virgil, who you unlock after beating the game with Dante. You pretty much play through the same levels but with a different character. Not a reskin though, as Virgil has his own set of styles. It’s interesting, but coming right off of playing as Dante, didn’t feel exactly right. Maybe after waiting a bit I’ll be ready to pick up as Virgil again without feeling disconnected.

Don’t really know what else to say. I fucking love this game. Go play it.

And the Rest

Geist

Was gonna get Eternal Darkness from Gamefly, but that looks like that’s never gonna happen. So I got Geist instead. Neat ideas, meh execution, and my save deleted itself as I was close to the end. More on it when it gets its own blog post.

Max Payne 3 Multiplayer

So last week after I posted my Max Payne blog I said I was going to be playing some multiplayer that afternoon. It did not take place that Saturday, because as it turns out getting a game of Max Payne 3 multiplayer is fucking busted. In the last few days I was able to try some of the multiplayer along with Ahmad and other people in the Giant Bomb PC community just to test it. When a match did get going, it was pretty fun. The shoot dodging worked rather well with multiple people, didn’t feel like there were any compromises, or atleast any that I could notice. If only those games could’ve gone on for longer and the process for starting a match wasn’t so broken. Disappointed about that.

Things Other Than Games

Not a whole lot of new developments. Work continues to be exhausting but it’s worth it for the paycheck. I’ve figured out what hard drive I’m gonna get for my computer, but I can’t buy it yet as I’m only taking 20% from my last paycheck towards the cost of this thing. The rest go into savings for college and stuff. And 20% of that covers just about half of the cost of the hard drive, so I’ll be able to buy it once I get my next check. It’s a 1TB western digital for 95 bucks on Amazon. And no shipping, too.

Today I’ll be heading to my friends house for some anime watching and other nonsense, as it has been for the last few months. I’ll be staying there for the night instead of leaving at 9:45, so all I can say is I hope things get ridiculous or weird real late at night. We’ll see I guess.

In Conclusion

Still not sure exactly what I’ll be writing about for next week. I have been playing a couple of Gamecube games, and I haven’t gotten around to playing more of Psychonauts and L.A. Noire in a while. Nowhere near finishing those two games, so I might as well start on those while I think of which order to write about the stuff I’ve been doing with gamecube games. Oh, and Asura’s Wrath shipped from Gamefly. Looking forward to finishing it.

Peace.