When I first heard about Capcom developing a game based on Divine Comedy where Dante Alighieri is making mincemeat out of demons I rolled my eyes. “This is so stupid, why would anyone want this?” Then the demo of this weird game that was to be called Devil May Cry was added as a bonus to the PS2 release of the new entry in the super popular (and much loved by me) Resident Evil series – the Code Veronica X. I still remember the longstanding joke that most people who got that version spent more time playing the DMC demo than RE: CVX itself. The game became a forerunner for a new genre of action.
When DmC: Devil May Cry was announced people started rolling their eyes and hitting tables with their heads for more or less similar reasons. And yet, just like the last time, the results are pleasantly surprising.
Though, let’s start with the unpleasant things. After the fantastic Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, people were expecting Ninja Theory to deliver great characters, an engaging story, beautiful dialogues and maybe some good music. What we got is pretty shocking. Characters are disgusting, the story is far more stupid than They Live! which was a clear inspiration, dialogues seem to have been written by people with tourette’s and the music is terrible. Previous games had silly characters in silly situations, being cool, stylish and cocky. Every single character in DmC is the essence of teenage angst, of pointless anger and denial. And demons are always hiding behind all the most disgusting people, because obviously humans cannot be bad by themselves, it’s all demons’ fault. Oh and the soundtrack is just puking some anger, off game pace, in the background and in the best cases it doesn’t get in the way.
Yet, with all these faults, Ninja Theory managed to deliver in 2 other incredibly important elements. The locations are absolutely beautiful and inventive, which, I suppose, isn’t surprising for the studio. What is surprising is that the gameplay is genuinely good. I mean, there’s a belief that “western studios” can’t into mechanically good hack and slash. Yet, Ninja Theory clearly dedicated all of their efforts (at the expense of the story and the rest of the mentioned issues) to make the gameplay really good. DmC has a lot of really solid additions to the formula, borrowing from the wonderful Bayonetta. It made platforming actually interesting and fun. Added some new ideas and concepts to the game. And at the same time, didn’t lose too much of its legacy glory.
Though, there are problems here as well. Most notably, the combat is, for whatever reason, far more complicated in basics than it ever needed to be, You essentially have 4 different modes, and the game requires you to switch them because some enemies are simply immune to all but some of the modes. It could work if it was optional, but done as it is, it often ruins the pacing of combat and makes them far less fun then they could’ve been. Difficulty of the game is lower in general and it is unfortunate that it’s done far less elegantly than in Bayonetta. So, basically, hitting the almost constant SSS ranking is super easy this time around. And in addition to all this, a lot of actions, like switching weapons and modes, feels slower than in previous games which makes the combat in general feel slower paced.
Now, you might feel that every single pro for the game has a con, but it’s not really true. DMC works when the gameplay works, the rest will fall into place. And the gameplay in this game is good. Oh, and locations are fantastic and beautiful. And this is, somehow, enough to make DmC fun to play and replay. Not as much as Bayonetta, of course, but Ninja Theory did a great job with this game. At least, for a “western studio” -_-.