Okay. I figured Ninja Theory was going to fuck this all up to shit, but surprisingly it's their best work yet. Of course that isn't too hard considering the two previous games in their portfolio. But we're not here to talk about their abysmal previous attempts at games, we're here to talk about their Capcom sanctioned Devil May Cry reboot. I'm going to just get the important things out of the way, and get into details after.
-The good-
Combat
Environments
Graphics
-The bad-
Music
Characters
Story
The combat in this game is quite the departure from previous entries in the series, as it doesn't rely at all on locking onto enemies. Launchers are now dedicated to a single button, so you aren't forced to lock onto an enemy in order to launch them and initiate air combat. The stinger and trillion stabs also don't rely on locking on anymore. Instead you double tap forward to do a stinger, and continue attacking to preform trillion stabs. Holding the Left and right trigger grant access to angelic and demonic weapons respectively. These weapons can be switched at will to pull off some pretty incredible combos, though it takes so getting used to compared to more traditional combo building in other games.
The environments are impressive, colourful and often span large areas which you can grapple and platform through in between enemy encounters. Unfortunately all the combat takes place in limbo, which exists along side the real world in this game, and the wacky landscapes do tend to get tiresome after a while. This could have been alleviated by allowing at least some combat in the real world, but alas we are stuck battling it out in a place that looks like a mix between hell and Peewee Herman's fun house.
The graphics are also fairly good. The characters are well detailed and the bosses are grotesque. Limbo is colourful and has lots of cool hellish effects.
I realize music being good or bad is totally subjective, but this is just shit in my opinion. It consists primarily of people with gruff voices screaming to death metal beats. I could stand the music in previous DMC games, though I wouldn't listen to it by choice, but this is several increments too far on the nonsensical screaming scale.
The characters, oh the characters. Gone is our whimsical and stylish hero Dante. Instead we must spend twelve hours with some arrogant 18 year old twat who looks like an emo twilight reject but acts like a punk who just found out he can beat up people younger than him. Instead of stylishly and nonchalantly taunting his enemies before pummelling them, he usually gets into swearing matches and then clumsily kicks their asses. Even in the cutscenes he seems like he's always staying alive by pure luck, and not skill or sheet awesomeness.
The story? It's fucking boring. You never develop any kind of fondness for the people you're fighting for, nor animosity for your enemies. The dialog is an embarrassment, and sounds more like something you'd hear in a daytime soap opera then an adrenaline fuelled rollercoster ride. There is no awesomeness in the cutscenes, it just endlessly plods along towards an all too anticlimactic ending.
All in all its combat is the only thing that kept me playing. The story is utterly forgettable unless you like reminiscing about the shittier video game stories you've been exposed to over the years. The characters made me wish Capcom had stuck with Nero's story, and if that doesn't tell you that the new Dante is shit then I don't know what will.
If you're looking for a good action game filled with insanely bombastic cutscenes, competent and challenging combat mechanics, and a story that leaves you wanting more, then preorder Metal Gear Rising, 'cause you'll only find a temporary distraction in this latest Ninja Theory digital abortion.
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