I've been a fan of the Devil May Cry series since the first game came out back in 2001. I remember reading about it that it was from the creators of "Resident Evil" which really caught my interest. I didnt have a PS2 back then so I used to mooch off at a friend's house just so I could get to play it. (Ah, the good ol' days)
Devil May Cry is a 3rd-person action game. You take the role of Dante, the son of the demon Dark Knight, Sparda. Dante is a half-demon, half-human, an offspring of a demon father and human mother. Dante is the bad-ass of bad-asses. Armed with his humongous sword "Rebellion" given to him by his father and his dual-pistols "Ebony and Ivory" that he wrought by his own hands, he faces the hordes of demons who have escaped from hell. Dante's day job is as a Demon-hunter, a Private Investigator of sorts, who looks into demonic problems and settles them in his own way (which is basically blowing them to kingdom come).
The DMC series has always had Dante in the lead role battling out the demons on his own (with a little help from a few friends like Trish, Lady or Lucia). But in DMC4 we're introduced to a new character Nero who is a soldier in some cult and he fights off demons. The unique thing about Nero is that his right hand is demonic, giving him some extra abilities. In this game, you play half the game as Nero and half the game as Dante.
The best part about this game is the amount of moves it has! Playing with Nero is not bad with his few moves similar to Dante's but its his Buster move that allows you to set off a very cinematic move with the press of just one button. Its a visual treat and gives a helluva blow. But my favorite has to be Dante just because his fighting styles are really versatile. I mean, they put a lotta effort into setting up his 4 unique styles, 3 long range weapons and 3 close range weapons. When you have them all at your expense, the combos really start stacking up and its just amazing to watch Dante go all postal on the demon's ass.
The story of DMC4 is pretty clichéd. Although, its different to the previous installments of DMC, they couldn't touch that slight dark and morbid feel of the previous games. The new protagonist is Nero and the game's story revolves mainly around him. He's got his cocky teenage attitude, his own love story, revenge, redemption etc.(why does every Japanese game have a teenage kid with an annoying cocky attitude?!) Yes, Dante still has a sense of humor (which thankfully isn't as annoying as DMC3) and his pun seems to be a breath of fresh air in this hurricane of bad voice acting. But the bright environments and less Gothic feeling makes the setting seem so out of place.
I put well over 20 hours into this game on the Demon Hunter difficulty. This has to be one of the longest games I've played in a while. You have to play the 1st half of the game as Nero, which is actually all the levels of the game, and then the other half as Dante where you go through all the levels backwards to where the game began. It really is a BIG game. But it was well worth it. The fighting system in my opinion is the best any 3rd-person action game has been able to make. The fluidity of the moves and how you chain them together without feeling rigid is a huge task that they've accomplished. It feels like an arcade game but its done with believable and realistic animation so it doesn't feel like its a cartoon or something.
This game is all about the fighting. Its fighting system is the most polished in any of the previous games. Everything feels just right once you get the hang of it. But everything other than the fighting is poorly done. The new enemies weren't really that interesting and seemed few in comparison to the expanse of the game. The OST seemed to work well with the fight sequences, but when I heard the same song by itself, it just seemed so bland. But that doesn't mean it didn't work well with the game. It always got me pumping to go against those hordes of demons with my rock music. It just felt right. But like I said, with a mediocre story and poor voice acting, the main purpose of playing the game just didn't give me enough motivation. All I had to look forward to was the insane moves I could pull of and just stacking up the combos was so fulfilling.
No comments:
Post a Comment