MadCap's Game Reviews - "Devil May Cry"

I’ll go ahead and say it, I have never played the Devil May Cry games before doing these reviews.  I know, I know, a travesty (to varying degrees, as I have been told).  However, my youthful experiences with the Playstation systems were tenuous at best, mostly because I stuck on the gaming company I had come to know and love from childhood – Nintendo…at least until they started naming consoles after bodily fluids. But now that they are one of the only two names in gaming anymore – considering how Microsoft keeps shooting itself in the foot – that…wait, sorry, getting off topic here.  Devil May Cry, that was it.

 Thanks to an early Christmas gift from a friend (and thank you, good sir!), I was gifted with Devil May Cry HD Collection for the Xbox 360.  And, as of the time that I’m typing this, I have just completed the first game in the trilogy.  And, yes, I know there are four, but this collection only contains the three.  So I guess you all know what you have to look forward to for the next two weeks, right?

Regardless, to begin at the begin, we have Devil May Cry, an offering by Capcom.  Started as the original Resident Evil 4 (and boy does it show!), we are introduced to Dante.  He’s cocky, snarky and for all intents and purposes the very definition of awesome.  Running around in a red overcoat as he puts to use his two pistols – “Ebony” and “Ivory” – and his sword Force Edge.  Dante is the kind of guy who shrugs off being run through with a sword and being swallowed whole by a giant demonic pile of waste like it’s absolutely nothing and, likely due to his demonic heritage, it doesn’t even seem to do more than moderately inconvenience him.

The story begins with a brief text screen and narration, telling of a demon called Mundus who once tried to overtake the entire world.  However, a demon named Sparda “woke up to justice” and single-handedly defeated Mundus and his armies, sealing them away in the underworld.  And then, at some point years later, Sparda met a woman named Eva and they got married and had two children – Dante and Vergil.  However, this is Dante’s story, not Vergil’s…though that’s not to say that Vergil is completely out of the story…sort of.

Not many scares, but for moments like these, pack some extra undies...

But we actually pick up in the present at Dante’s shop “Devil May Cry”, where he is visited by a woman named Trish who plows her way through his front door on a motorcycle and proceeds to attack him.  But Dante, shrugging this all off, apparently finds that this was just a test by Trish who tells him of the return of Mundus from the underworld.  Dante, holding Mundus responsible for the deaths of his family, agrees to go out with her to Mallet Island to stop him.

Here we get to see the use of Dante’s guns and his sword against enemies like demon marionettes that begin to rise within the confines of the castle – oh, yes, the game takes place in and around the castle on Mallet Island.  Sound familiar? – and we get to see Dante’s skill in combat.  He’s an expert with a sword and apparently never needs to reload his pistols.  And not just his pistols, but any of the firearms he finds in the place from the shotgun all the way to the Nightmare-beta (which is the best Alien reference I have ever seen in a game).  Most enemies can easily be dispatched with just the pistols, though I found myself using the sword often enough for it to be relevant, particularly in some of the puzzles and in a certain boss fight that was one of the few to get repeated and yet not feel repetitive.

However, while the combat is just enough that I don’t feel that it gets repetitive, there is a major problem with the game that I have that damages it somewhat for me – the camera controls…or, really, the lack of camera controls.  It’s a problem I also have with the Resident Evil series as well.  While it’s also inexcusable there, Devil May Cry is admittedly a hack and slash, shoot ‘em up action game and when you can’t see enemies coming at you, you have no real way of launching a counter attack.  Which means you’re going to get hit, a lot, by things you can’t see and thus can’t react to.  This was also a problem in one of the later boss fights when I had to hit a sigil on the wall to access the enemy’s weak spot and that required hitting it with the sword.  However, no matter how much I pressed the left analog stick towards it and pressed attack, Dante would attempt to ram his sword through the boss and be completely ineffective whilst opening himself up to a demonic ass kicking.

And then, of course, there are the sections later in the game in the “Mirror World” where the view gets all wavy and distorted in certain areas.  Because what I really need when I already have trouble with the camera is to be able to see even less of what I need to in order to operate.  And on that note, why can’t I see anything? There are sections of this game that are just too dark and it’s damn near impossible to see anything, even in areas that are supposed to be very brightly lit.  The best part of this is that the game doesn’t even have a brightness control, just a screen that you can follow as a guide to set the settings on your TV.  And I did…

And no, it didn’t help.

But I will say, when this game is good, it absolutely glows.  As I said before, camera issues aside, the combat is pretty good if a little overpowered on your end (at least at the beginning).  Dante never runs out of ammo regardless of what gun you’re using, so it’s pretty much a case of “Press ‘X’ to Kick Ass”, and kick ass you do in a variety of ways from Dante’s trademark pistols to a grenade launcher to an experimental weapon created in the underworld (though, sadly, you don’t get to use that one that much before the end).  The sword combat is pretty good too, if that’s your bread and butter, and manages to be rather fun with various combos and special moves that can be purchased and put to use.

And the mentions of combat brings me to the Devil Trigger.  A handy little mode that makes Dante faster and stronger, as well as giving both sword and gun attacks a much welcomed boost in combat.  Of course, like most power up modes, it doesn’t last forever.  However, bringing it back is pretty much as simple as running around avoiding damage and repeatedly striking back against your enemies.  There are also Devil Stars that can be picked up and used to refill your Devil Trigger, which are definitely handy in a tight spot.

There are certain places where Dante can make a sacrifice of Red Orbs (received from defeating enemies) to the God of Time in order to receive power ups that take various forms, such a Yellow Orbs that allow the player to continue if they die (which, with save points, are pretty much worthless), Blue Orbs that increase your health meter, and Purple Orbs that can increase the number of sigils on your Devil Trigger mode.  There are also green stars that refill your health meter, holy water that can severely damage all enemies onscreen, and yellow stars that turn Dante invincible and make him faster and stronger for a brief time…

Yeah, I think you’re beginning to see where this game is awesome by this point, right?

"Jackpot."

Devil May Cry is actually a fantastic game if you can look past its few flaws.  The castle itself has a very creepy edge to it, and is very reminiscent – to me, at least – of the Castlevania series.  In fact, I can see quite a few places where DMC drew inspiration from that series, up to an including the final boss fight against Mundus, who attacks you in three forms much like Dracula did in Castlevania III (not to mention the inverted parts of the castle later on, very Symphony of the Night, though in a lesser capacity).  And there are, of course, little references to other game series in the story (like the aforementioned invincibility stars) and they’re all done well.  They’re references done right, just little nods and nothing more, and they all sync very well in the world we have them presented to us in.  The puzzles are sometimes complex, but not to the point of me wanting to pull my hair out by the roots, and it has probably one of the most awesome endings in video game history – escaping the crumbling castle on a World War I-style fighter plane.  How did it get there? How is it that the caverns you fly through are just big enough to maneuver through in order to escape?

Rule of Awesome, people. Rule of Awesome.

Seriously, if you can get the HD Collection, or even a copy of the original game on Playstation, I strongly recommend that you buy it and play it at least once.  It is more than worth it.

Devil May Cry is now available from Capcom.  The Devil May Cry HD Collection is available on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

This review is based on the Xbox 360 HD Collection. 

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin