883rd played so far
Genre: Action/Fighting
Platform: Playstation 3/Xbox 360/PC
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
So we’ve played the first and third Devil May Cry games before – the latter’s start in a store or (according to my four year old memory) pizza place standing out as an odd place to start. Beyond that, they’re the type of action battlers whose formula I’ve seen and enjoyed – again, Bayonetta draws so much from the same setting.
We’re playing the final game in the series that shows up on the list today, with the games after that being questionable in the fan community anyway – so I guess it’s good we end it here (even if the games had been out by the time this game was released).
Our Thoughts
I have to say that the Devil May Cry 4 intro/tutorial is one of the better that I think I’ve seen in this genre. On one hand, it’s a cinematic sequence of Nero, the game’s initial protagonist, fighting Dante, the main character of the series, in a large cathedral where Dante just murdered someone. On the other, it’s a tutorial that succinctly summarizes the different moves available to you during battle, gives you a chance to practice them and keeps them in their context. And then it sets up Nero as a contrast with Dante, hot headed, obnoxious and clearly unpolished. It’s a strong start in a way other games in the series don’t have.
The combat keeps feeling good like that, solid, with taking out large chunks of enemies working especially well. It looks like you can later play through the levels with other enemies – that feels like something that will create some nice variety. Still, you always feel powerful without overpowered, most single enemies not being as much as a threat as the sum of them is. The world itself is not as amazing. Like other games – God of War comes to a mind as I recently played Chains of Olympus – it’s mostly linear levels that lead you from fight to fight, without many diversions. Even when you get to a building you get to explore, it’s still fairly linear in your limits on where you can go each time. It really is just a vehicle to get from plot beat to plot beat and fight to fight. There are some semi-platformy/jumping puzzles – using RB+B to latch on and jump across places – that feel like it should be good, but I’ve found them go against me frequently, especially when ceiling spikes got introduced – I couldn’t find a consistent hold on point and really couldn’t get through the way I wanted.
Final Thoughts
It feels like Devil May Cry 4 provides a lot of what the series is known for – big fights and set pieces with some dramatic plots. It adds more replayability from the extra characters and added to that, seems to have several places in each level that you can’t get to until you get additional abilities. I would need to get past battle exhaustion – I just don’t find them as interesting – but there’s something here to play more with.