This post was supposed to go out last week, but I made the mistake of starting Ninja Theory's Devil May Cry reboot while I was at my girlfriend's house. I played for a few hours but didn't complete it, so my lady wouldn't let me take it home. She was too engrossed in the story and wanted to see how it ended, which, I think, says a lot about Ninja Theory's skill as storytellers. I returned to her house last weekend and together, on the grey Sunday afternoon, we polished off the rest of the game. It was a great shared experience. My girlfriend loves Devil May Cry, but by her own admission, doesn't do well with games of that level of intensity. So I played, she watched and we both got to share and discuss what turned out to be a pretty good coming of age story. It was nice.
But what about the game?
I have a theory. Odd numbered DmC games are the good ones. Even numbered ones less so. DmC 1 was incredible. DmC 2 was, for intangible reasons that I can't quite explain, a bit bland. DmC 3 brought back the swagger and the fun. DmC 4, with it's backtracking and Metal Gear 2 style character switch, was for me personally, a bit of a miss. It felt like the beginnings of a decent into self parody. My hopes weren't high for the fifth and it turns out that neither were those of Capcom, who decided to reboot the series. The news raised the ire of the series' vocal fanboys, who promptly went into meltdown when the mugshot of the new Dante was released. He was young, skinny, had a black eye and horror of horrors, black hair! The internet erupted into cries of 'emo kid'.
The reality is nothing of the sort. Arrogant, unflappable, sardonic and giving absolutely zero shits about what you think about him, the new Dante's personality is every inch the equal to that of the old. What really the sets him off though, is the updated wardrobe and the way he holds himself. He's rougher round the edges than the old Dante and has a sort of predatory swagger about the way he walks. The cumulative effect of all this takes Dante from preening J-Rock idol, to grimy punk rocker. He's a triumph of character writing, design and animation. And he couldn't be further from being an emo kid.
Of course, Ninja Theory are renowned masters of character creation and animation, but with DmC, under the guidance of Capcom, they've taken it to a whole new level. Dante is absolutely believable as a person. He is beautifully animated, from his facial expressions, to his walk, to that little stagger at the end of a 3-hit Rebellion combo that makes the sword look just slightly too heavy for him and gives away his untutored fighting style. But all this nuance isn't just reserved for Dante. Every single member of the main cast is given the same treatment, and have been modelled and animated just as beautifully.
I've got to give out a special mention for Kat too, a rare gaming supporting actress who isn't just there as a glamorous accessory or love interest. While she isn't a fighter, she's a capable guide to limbo, a witch and a hacker, and is instrumental to Dante's growth as a character. While she shows some leg, she's sensibly dressed in shorts and a hoodie, no less than what a typical twenty something would wear in the summer. She's pretty without being eroticised, and that's really refreshing.
The world of Limbo City has been lavished with just as much attention as the game's cast. And it's gorgeous. With so many games having a colour palette that seems to be made of primarily grey and brown, looking at DmC is a revelation. As befits a game so obviously themed around demon slaying, the main colour of Limbo City is red. Lots and lots of red. The whole game is filled with colour, the opening few levels especially. The aforementioned reds dominate, but have to battle hard for screen space with the yellows and oranges. They bathe some of the most imaginative levels I've seen in some time, including, and not limited to, a theme park that tries it's hardest to kill you, the upside down world in the reflection on a river, a place full of 24 hour news channel graphics and a psychedelic Rez inspired nightclub gauntlet. Everywhere you go, the levels deform in real time, they twist and wrench and stretch as death threats project on to walls while Mundus sends his minions to take you out. The whole thing is a visual treat.
Of course all of this would be worth nothing if the combat system wasn't up to scratch, and thankfully it's more than good enough. It's as simple or as complex as you want it to be. Accessible and deep at the same time. It's all based around a few select button inputs, but since you can switch between three different melee weapons and your guns on the fly, even when you're mid combo, it never feels shallow. Different weapons have different moves from the same inputs, and such is the ease of changing, that you'll find yourself pulling off savage multi hit combos using each weapon two or even three times. It's not as complex as Bayonetta, but on the flipside of that, you can create a satisfying amount of carnage without having to learn ten or fifteen different sets of button inputs.
I've loved playing the new DmC. So much so that I'm on my second playthrough. And thankfully, it's proved that my theory on the odd numbered games is right. It's stellar in nearly every aspect. Only the slightly low default difficulty and the occasionally grating hardcore thrash metal and neurofunk soundtrack let it down, and even then, it's not a deal breaker. I ramped the difficulty level up to Nephilim at about the halfway point and soundtrack eventually began to grow on me. DmC is the final piece of this generation's holy trinity of brawlers. It sits proudly alongside Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising as a shining example of the genre. You should play it, even if you're one of the fans who swore to never touch it after the release of the mugshot. Feel free to criticise it, but do it through the lens of having played it first. Otherwise, you don't know what you're talking about, and you're doing yourself a grave disservice by wilfully missing out on a genuinely great game just because of a preconceived notion of what the lead character should look like.
Devil May Cry as a series had started to get stale by the fourth entry, and when a franchise goes stale, it dies. While the concept is timeless, the aesthetic was based on a dated idea of Cool, and it just wasn't anymore. To paraphrase Neil Gaiman. Devil May Cry had to change or die, and Capcom made a decision.
I think they made the right one.
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