Game Reviews for Devil May Cry 4 (360)
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Pretty darn good. While it doesn't reinvent the wheel so to speak, it does add some nice gameplay options, and excels in what it has always done best. A solid game.· Like · Go to review -
Let me start off by saying I've never been a DMC fan.
With that said, i don't mind this enstallment really. Its not a great game, but still okay enough to dable in. The cinematics are pretty dope and the action is pretty fun. It feels more like watching an episode of something with gameplay as a bonus. I actually don't mind that so much.
On to my few criticisms...
The control setup cramps the hell out of my hands. And for some reason, i can't have to buttons assigned to teh same thing. I find that odd.
Next, the gunplay is almost useless. It does such minimal damage. Its only required for a few boss battles. So why is that the main attack button by default?
But thats really it.
At best, I'd say rent it.· Like · Go to review -
I went into playing this game, having played the demo a few weeks before hand, with non-too-high hopes. Y'see, the amount of hype being forced out by Capcom and by other people about it made me very suspicious. I have played Devil May Cry on the PS2. I enjoyed it, alot, but I also read about the other two sequels that came out and the generic feeling was 'Meh' for those two. So, downloading the demo, as you do, and playing it, again as you do, I found out that very little has changed in the gameplay of it. Still a hack'n'slash, still a lot of monsters to cleave apart, although the huge boss on the demo got my attention. hey ho, only a demo, lets se what the full game is like.
Okay, story first off. you begin playing as Nero, some sort of Dante wannabe with a similar dress style with a different colour co-oridnation. He, apparently, is an orphan taken in by some family who is a part of some holy order worshipping the Big Benevolant Demon-turned-saviour Sparda (Anyone who misquotes 300 may die right now) and thusly Nero becomes part of the Order. The opening cutscenes show Nero running thru the streets of some fictional city, where he's atacked, for no reason, by demons wearing burlap sacks all over their bodies. A swift kicking and he's on his way to church. Must be sunday. Anyway...
There's some woman singing her bleeting heart out, looking at an empty space on a pew, in a church filled with people who wouldn't look too out of place in Assasins Creed. A bit more singing, looks again, and Nero, sticking out like a sore thumb on someone's foot, dressed in blue gard that he is, is sitting there, smirking (I think) with a pressie for Ms. Singing. After tat, a priest of some sorts with a F*CKING BIG HAT comes on a talks for a bit. Then, Dante (hooray) bursts thru the glass ceiling and shoots the prest in the face.
Points scored there.
NOW, you take control. A brief tutorial with Dante as your sparring partner, and then he buggers off, but not before:
a) Finding out about nero's demonic looking arm, and
b) Getting impaled, AGAIN, on his own sword to a wall....
Seriously. That was done before, but I see why they did it. Dante then buggers off and hell, well, doesn't 'break loose' more like coughs up some crap and spits it into the human world. So, off you go, hacking and shooting anything that moves. And it continues like that for... pretty much all of the game. Pretty much like DMC1.
You do pick up special abilities, like using your Demon hand to reach far off places and also use it to smash things into the floor. But it really only gives you another option to kill the bad guys, instead of 'Mash Y to slice them' or 'Mash X to shoot them'. You can also buy upgrades to your character, although you won't buy them all, that just involves a lot of sitting about in a chair, mashing the pad until your fingers bleed. The upgrades range from things Nero can do, Combos for Nero's sword, or special demon abilities. Again, pretty much what I did in DMC1.
It's not until you get to a boss battle where you actually face a challenge. The bosses are huge. And I mean HUGE. Not Shadow of the Collossus huge, but still, they make El Giagante in Resi Evil 4 look tiny. Of course, they all has a weak spot, but it's not apparently obvious, leading to a bit of experimentation, poking your blade up the monster's arse a few times to see if the health bar goes down in great quantities. So, you go thru this system for a few hours. I only came a cropper at a few points, where there are some very suprising bits of level desing that infuriated me in a good way.
But the game didn't really get fun for me until about roughly half the way thru. When Nero get's captured, thats the best way of saying it without spoilers, and you control Dante. Now we're talking. In comparison, Dante controlled similarly to Nero, but it was just more fun. Whereas Nero had his sword (that had a motor built into it... I DO NOT KNOW WHY) and a double barrelled pistol, Dante has His sword, his dual pistols and a shotgun. And four fighting styles. And they're actually fun. Alright, they only change what ONE BUTTON does in the game, but still, it's satisfying to turn your sword into a make shift buzzsaw, then switch style and watch Dante rape anything near him with his shotgun.
In true DMC1 fashion, in my experience anyway, Dante picks up weapons along the way, including some gauntlets and a briefcase (Yes, a briefcase). But to get these, Dante must fight, IN RESERVSE ORDER, the major demon bosses Nero had to fight. I mean, what the hell?! I killed two of them DEAD with Nero, I do not need to fight them again.
Now, the actual critisism. The game looks beautiful. I mean, really good. Voice sync is a little out, but damn, best capcom game I've seen on this generation of console. The fights look good too, if a little anime-ish, but that is DMC all over, not one for realism, so let that roll. Performing some of the combos and moves with either Nero or Dante looks spectacular and damn funny some times, epsecially when you're suplexing a demon, then drop kicking them in the face. If you switch your brain off, the gameplay is very enjoyable too. Vocals aren't too bad either, but they do sometimes continue Capcom's long running tradition of bad dialogue lines. But even so, the stuttering researcher in the game made me smirk. Or maybe it was just because he could stretch his outh out very wide. I dunno. Anyway. Big boss battles, points there, even if the bosses are reused.
The bad. Right, lets get the out now, unless you didn't get it thru the synopsis. DMC4 is unoriginal in how the game plays, and the things it uses. We're run thru hordes of demons before, slashing them all to bits, finding all those sodding orbs hidden in the wood of the chair that's against the wall. We've done it all before. The main difference is now you're not initially doing it with Dante. And that does help a little. Nero's changes in control to Dante do require a bit of change in tactics. for example, Nero can use his motor in the sword to power it up. but only when not in combat. So, you can't hack at someone while revving the blade, you have to stop, walk away, rev it, and go at them. Secondly, nice graphics, but when someone gets speared thru the fucking chest with a sword, I don't expect to see NO WOUND OR RIPPED CLOTHING when the blade is pulled out. We've got the technology to do stuff like that. I understand we're working with Demon-humans here, but still, their clothing isn't. As for the graphics, a big factor of that is the camera, which is a pain most times. You can control it in certain areas, but most of the time you can't. And it's an annoyance when youre running in one direction, the camera changs and your guy ends up running in a different direction because you aren't fucking psychic to know when the camera will change.
Another bad thing is, however awesome Dante's section is, it seems to damn short. I spend a night and 2 hours going thru nero's bit, got to Dante's, blasted thru it in two hours. Plus having to fight the same bosses as him made it feel like Capcom had given up on the creative side of things and just made Dante go thru what Nero did in reverse order. Story wise, it ain't bad. I mean, Nero is another 'I DO NOT CARE, WHINE WHINE BAD ASS EMO' guy in a japanese made game. He isn't a carbon copy of Dante, oh no. In this, he actually has a love story with Ms I LOVE TO SING, where Dante is the bad ass cool guy. The plot is believable in game terms, absurb in places but funny in others, about right for the whole setting of.. modern day... psudeo 17th century... future... venice? Seriously, where the hell is DMC set at? From the outset it looks like modern day, but when you're got lasers in a chateau, I feel like I'm in a time warp. Or back in Resident Evil. Either or.
Don't let the bad but you off, however. If you can handle it and just want to turn your brain off to play a game for a few hours, you can do much worse than DMC4. You looking for something deep, involving and something that won't make your fingers bleed, don't get this.· Like · Go to review
