Overclocked On Caffeine v.1.1

Devil May Cry 4

PC

Total Playtime: 18 hours 37

Okay, let's get the bad stuff out the way first: Devil May Cry 4 is an excellent game hampered by a handful of niggles, a couple of bigger flaws and one absolutely huge gaping issue that makes you wonder what in the hell they were thinking. It's like having the star of your hilarious and genuinely touching romantic comedy come out at the end and start talking about that time he buggered a goat to death while out of his tree on perscription medication, we're talking critical levels of 'no wait, what?' here.

Devil May Cry 4 switches focus from professional badass Dante to new kid Nero. Nero belongs to a church known as The Order of the Sword as... well, it's never entirely stated what he does, but it's safe to assume he's part of some kind of elite guard by the simple fact that he has a big sword, he likes slaughtering demons and gets to dress however the hell he wants and no one gives him any shit for it. Rank clearly has its privileges, and all that. The church is dedicated to the worship of Sparda, who, as you might recall, sealed the gates between the demonic world and our world oh so long ago. While in the middle of a sermon about The Saviour, a major figure in their doctrine, who should bust in, but Dante, fabled Son of Sparda. Rather than sitting around to discuss dogma, however, he quickly rips the other guards in attendance several new ones before capping the pontiff right between the eyes, which is where the game begins.

To be honest, the storyline, while fun, is merely a gigantic plot device to get you moving to the next slaughter. You never really have to think to hard about it, which is a good thing: the brevity of the premise - there is a church, they are secretly bad, you must stop them - is a blessing in an age where everyone wants to create an astounding visual narrative that pushes forward the boundaries of what can be done in a game, yadda yadda. Yes, Hideo Kojima, I'm looking in your direction. You're a great game designer, but if anyone sees you heading towards a typewriter, their first priority should be to break your fingers. That's not a spoiler about the church up there btw: a) it's a Devil May Cry game, plot twists are less shocking events, more addendum to the list of people you have to beat the crap out of and b) it's a church in a video game: that already means there's a better than 95% chance they're gonna be evil to begin with.

So then, to the flaws. Right off the bat, there's the difficulty. Even on the easier settings, the game cheerfully kicked your ass from hell to breakfast. DMC3 Special Edition had its difficulty settings re-jigged to be more in line with the Japanese original, and still put up a decent fight. This game, not so much. In a single sitting, I was able to rip my way through pretty much all of Dante's campaign with no problems at all. The only stumbling block ever came with the bosses, one of whom strays way too far into frustrating bullshit territory for my liking. The fact that you have to face him again right at the end filled me with no end of joy.

Then we have the music. It's no secret that I value the soundtrack to a game highly. Give me a good OST and you've won half the battle and coming off the back of DMC3, I had high hopes. Perhaps too high, as the soundtrack is, as a whole, meh. The battle themes are okay, but nothing special, the boss musics are so-so and the ambiant stage music... well, you don't really notice it, so I suppose it's doing its job admirably.

The one trick they really shouldn't have missed is with the enemies. We're on a next-gen platform here, the future has arrived and all that bollocks. Why then, can I never fight more than 5-6 enemies in a single area? The DMC series has always been about action, about kicking everyone's ass all the time. From the moment you hit start to the moment you shout 'goddamn it!' and turn the game off because you were just served an entrée of your own derrière, you're beating the unholy crap out of demons from one end of whatever island you're on this time to the other. In the transition to the almighty PCS360 (see what I did there?) Capcom should've similarly upped the ante, throwing us headfirst into armies of abominations with only a pointy bit of metal for defence, sitting back with its arms crossed and a smug smile and asking 'now what are you gonna do?'. The only time they ever do anything even remotely like that is with the Scarecrows, the absolute weakest enemies in the game, and by that point, you should be more than capable of handling them anyway. I don't want to see the series go the way of Dynasty Warriors, I just want to live the cutscenes, cutting down minions of whatever Dark One we're beating up ths week, feeling like the baddest mofo this side of Hokuto No Ken.

Finally, we've got the biggest issue with the game, and in this day and age, one that's downright unforgivable. The repetition. So you're playing as Nero. You get to stage 10, finish it and get to take over as Dante for the next chapter of the game. How do they reward this? By making you run through the game in reverse. Yes, they make you go through all the stages you just played as Nero, but this time, in reverse order! So, you've got the joy of facing the same stages and bosses - including that one fucking boss - and they're all exactly the same, except for the fact that you don't have Nero's Devil Arm to slam things into the ground with. Though when you consider Dante and Nero play very similarly, there's very minimal difference between the two halves of the game anyway. If the game had been done from two different perspectives with accordingly different storylines, that would've been fine, but no, you're doing the same thing, just the other way around. It's so brazen, you almost don't notice all the steals from the very first DMC game - Nero's battle theme is a tarted up version of the original's, several enemies are lifted lock, stock and barrel from the first game, and you can't tell me Trish's appearances aren't unintended. It's lazy, it's sloppy, and Capcom, of all people, should know better.

Compared to its immediate predecessor, DMC4 is a disappointment. The third game was a triumph, breathing new life into a franchise everyone assumed was kaput after a disastrous second game. Devil May Cry 3 is easily the pinnacle of the combo-carnage style of gameplay, and will be a hell of a hard game to topple. It's worth stating then that, on its own merits, Devil May Cry 4 is still leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else, and that even with these horrible flaws, it's still more than worth playing. The controls are as tight as you could hope, making stupidly long and impressive combos a joy to pull off. Being able to get SSS ranks on the all-important Style Meter has never been easier, and as early as the 1/4 mark of the game, I was regularly hitting the upper end of the gauge with ease. The graphics are solid, Capcom somehow able to remember the one thing everyone else has forgotten in the rush to show off their new graphical prowess - colour. The stages are often bright and vibrant, the sudden transition to a sunshine-flooded jungle after traipsing around a dark and foreboding castle a very nice touch. More importantly, new boy Nero isn't the Scrappy Doo clone everyone feared he would be. He comes across as a more serious version of Dante (not that that would be hard) with occasional bursts of cockiness, making him less of a blatant copy than you'd expect. It'll be interesting to see what happens to him next - my bet is on a spin-off with probable cameo in DMC5 - but it's clear we haven't seent he last of him. Just wish he had better taste in women, because his primary love interest, Kyrie gets absolutely no character development whatsoever beyond 'she gets kidnapped and she can sing' making me wonder why in the hell I was bothering to traipse after her bland ass the whole time.

Devil May Cry 4 is a solid entry to the series, and it's a testament to the game itself that it manages to be fun even in the face of it's glaring faults. If Capcom hadn't been quite so lazy, and if the third game had never been released, it would probably be the best in its field, but as it is, it sits very comfortably right up there with the best. It could've been better, but for what it is, it's as good as it gets.