Devil May Cry 4 – From a DMC Veteran

By Shadow Wave

©2008 Ben Cadwallader

Capcom’s fourth Devil May Cry game is finally out on Xbox 360 and PS3. Does it live up to the quality of the first and third game? Or does it fall down into the pits of hell like the second game? Well the game certainly is great, but it does have some major issues which cripple the player with the moments of “why?” or “not again!”

The game brings new life to genre with a additional character named Nero; who has a demonic arm that lets him do many cool things which players have never experienced from playing as Dante. With the new good inclusion, also comes repetition, and a lot of it. Want to know more? read on.

The main focus of the game is aimed at our new character to play with, Nero. He’s a member of a demonic cult: The Order of the Sword. Who’s girlfriend, Kryie is also a follower. The current ceremony is interrupted by the surprise visit of Dante, who assassinates their leader. This in turn leads Nero to find and investigate the reason of his assassination and the true meaning of The Order of the Sword.

The Gameplay of Devil May Cry 4, has not changed at all from previous titles in how it’s played. But, with Nero, there are not many similar moves, so even veterans may have to relearn how to play. Nero’s main force of attack is by using his Devil Arm, commonly referred to as The Devil Bringer. This is basically a powerful grab and throw tool. The arm has the ability to grab enemies from afar and bring them close to you, or visa versa.

Once enemies are close you can then initiate a grab or throw depending on the enemy. which he will grab the enemy and perform quite a damaging and unique attack. The most fun part of this, is once combined with some moves such as Air Hike (double jump) you can string together many, many air combo’s as all these grab moves can be performed in the air as well!

Each grab will lift you back up in the air, and once the enemy hits the ground, you just pull them back up with your arm, and repeat! The main fun of the arm is using it against bosses. Each boss at some stage of the fight will give up for a minute and take a rest, this is your queue to run up and perform a really awesome attack similar to those found in God of War, but without the button pressing so, you can actually enjoy watching these sequences. Better yet, these grabs are completely optional and each boss can be beaten without it.

The main issue with the arm, is that even though it is a single player game, it is overpowered regardless. During normal fights the arm fares pretty well against most foes and doesn’t make the game seem too easy. But against bosses, I found myself using the arm for every part of the fight.

As I mentioned above, the arm can be used to stay in the air and pull yourself towards enemies. In each boss fight, all I did was stay in the air and perform the standard mid-air sword swing. This avoided 80% of attacks from Bosses, and proceeded to make each boss dead within 2 minutes. While that was cool to beat them so easy, it felt quite cheap compared to previous games which were much more difficult.

Besides the Devil Bringer, Nero comes with a sword named the Red Queen. Capcom have tried to make the sword a bit more interesting by adding a EX Gauge to the sword. This is basically portrayed as revving up your sword. Revving up your sword makes all your attacks look a lot cooler and do a bit more damage. But once again, it does not beat the power of the Devil Bringer.

Anyway you rev your sword by pressing the Left Trigger, you can rev it to light up 3 blocks next to the EX gauge. Each block corresponds to 1 attack. Which in my opinion makes the feature quite pointless. It takes about 10 seconds to rev the gauge up, but you lose all the effort in 3 attacks. But never fear, revving it manually may be a chore but, you can also raise the gauge in a lesser known way.

When attacking if you can hit the Left Trigger at the same time as your sword connects with a enemy, you will automatically gain one block on your EX gauge. If you can keep this up, you can string many of these together to perform a much stronger attack, but you have to be extremely precise. Later on you can acquire an ability to fill your gauge not by one, but up the whole way. Once this ability is acquired then the EX gauge truly becomes quite helpful.

Nero also packs a Revolver gun named the Blue Rose. Unfortunately, fans of the previous games may be totally let down as firing one standard gun hardly measures close to the coolness of Dante’s Dual Hand Guns. It can do two things, shoot rapidly. Or you if you purchase the ability, you can Charge your gun for a stronger attack. I found myself not using Nero’s gun very often, I mainly used in boss fights while they were running around in the distance.

Once players adjust to Nero they will find playing him very enjoyable, the pace in fighting is a beat more steady than compared to playing as Dante in previous titles. Which for some may be good, and some may not. The difficulty of this games standard mode (Human) is much more forgiving than previous titles, newcomers to the series will not have much of a hard time here. Whereas Veterans of the game will find it very easy. I completed the game without basically using a single item and I never died.

Veterans or players of the old games may notice some strange things here, which may get on their nerves. In previous titles as Dante, you would travel around and collect new weapons and abilities. But for the case of Nero, you will find this doesn’t happen. Besides the first thing you acquire, most things you collect serve as a measure to complete puzzles rather than giving you a cool new arsenal.

Then a few hours in you will finally come to what you think is a new weapon to muck around with, but it terms out just to be a ability that many players would be wondering why wasn’t it there earlier. While disappointed this new ability is exciting enough to be forgiving that it was not a fully fledged weapon.

About halfway through the game is when things start to turn bad. By this time, you have already seen about 90% of the environments you will explore for the second half. The brighter side to this, is you play as Dante! Dante is back as a playable character, and plays almost the same as when you saw him in Devil May Cry 3, but looking much more awesome in every way.

Dante has his 4 play styles to use in battle, Gunslinger, Royal Guard, Trickster and Sword Master. Each with their own unique abilites. This time each style can be switched to on the fly. So having to pick a specific path to follow is not a issue. Dante has his Shotgun and the famous Ebony and Ivory dual handguns to shoot foes down with. Dante also has his standard Rebellion Sword also which has basically the same moves that we have seen before. These new additions get placed on the controller to where Nero’s character specific moves were.

The sudden game play change may be a slight hinder at the beginning. Getting used to a new character with very different game play mechanics can be a bit hard for people new to the series. But for veterans you’ll be back in the fight after 5 minutes. Dante can be seen as a harder character to play as, as some of the cool features Nero had are gone, specifically the Devil Bringer that most players would have come to rely on. You can no longer can you pull enemies towards you, or pull off strenuous combo’s in the air safe from harm. You have to rely on getting his moves down pat in your brain.

You can’t help but feel cheapened when playing as Dante. It’s basically as if Capcom cut the game in half, and treated you to a expansion pack. Dante will basically backtrack through every area Nero went through. Even though your having a lot of fun with Dante’s new cool moves.

You wonder why they couldn’t add at least one new Dante specific area which is new. But alas they do not. As all these environments you have already been through you will cruise through Dante’s sections quite quickly compared to Nero’s. Meaning the 2nd half of the game is a lot shorter than the first. Even most of the bosses you fight as Dante, Nero has already fought.

Dante’s best part however, is they bring the game back to it’s roots, Dante will be collecting new weapons and abilities throughout his playable time. This will give everyone who wanted to find some new weapons the stuff they crave. You will find some new and some old weapons, that will give players all they need to enjoy the game while playing as Dante.

Boss battles are quite unique for each fight, which is a main focus of the Devil May Cry series, in design and the way you fight them. Although none require you to think too heavily about how to kill them. They are always fun to fight. But, be prepared to fight most of the bosses in the game 3 times, which does get a bit repetitive. Because their strategy does not change at all.

Players collect Red Orbs that you find after each kill to purchase healing items and a few other goodies that keep your character alive. At the end of each mission, you will earn Proud Souls, the amount you get is determined by the ranking you receive for the complete mission. These Souls are what is spent to buy new moves and abilities. Expect to play through the game a few times to have every move available to your character. You can refund your souls at any time, should you decide you want to try out some new abilities so experimenting is a welcome part of the experience.

Players can expect to come across a standard set of environments seen in most of the series and some new unique ones such as a Snow area, and a Forrest.

Single Player can last between 8-15 hours depending on the player which is quite acceptable in today’s standards. And has 6 difficulties to play in, beware some are difficulties almost impossible!

Devil May Cry’s fantastic cut scenes are as good as ever, violent and action packed, expect to watch a some of these a few times as they are so well done. And are definitely going to get your adrenaline pumping for the fight to come. I don’t want to spoil any of these cut scenes so we’ll leave it at this: Brilliance.

Graphically Devil May Cry 4 shines, mainly due to having 60 FPS, the game runs totally smooth, and it’s very noticeable and appreciated. Nothing is missed in it’s animation and just looks so much more alive on your Television. The game has some shadow issues. most notably in the Forest area. Quite often shadows will be completely jagged or have lines through. your characters shadow will often be clearly blocky and it’s very noticeable when you are not fighting. Thankfully 60 FPS, makes any slight problem forgivable.

The musical score in the game is almost identical to previous games, Heavy Metal aimed for the adrenaline rush, whether that being a good or a bad thing is up to the individual. I believe it’s a bit too similar for my liking. Sound effects in game are not fantastic but by no means bad. The sound and music quality is raised a lot in cut scenes.

Whether your new to the series or a veteran, you’ll be welcome to find the game is very enjoyable and will fill you’re thrust for something different that a shooter or for the wait for the upcoming Ninja Gaiden 2. While Devil May Cry 4 has it’s issues, these can surely be overlooked to what is a very enjoyable game with a lot of replayability. It’s a great game that should not be skipped this year!

8.75/10

©2008 Ben Cadwallader

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