What's To Cry About?

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.

A Scattergun shot of a post.

A lot can happen in a week, HMV went into administration, I completed Bayonetta, and discovered that I'd been taking the virtually unlimited memory in my 360 for granted. Somewhere amongst that I should really make room for my impressions of the Wii-U too.

After a lot of years of badgering from my recent guest blogger, I decided to start Persona 4 on Monday. This required the not inconsiderable action of connecting my PS2 up, since it's space on the component input on my TV was taken by the Xbox when I got Rocksmith to cure the game's lag. Cables duly swapped, I blew out all the dust and fired up the PS2. I'd forgotten how loud it was. Although it is 11 years old now. The game starts and tells me I have no room on the memory card.

Well this is novel.

I swapped it for another and that turned out to be full too. So I swapped it for the third. Also full. With 250gb of memory in the 360, this is an issue I haven't come up against in a long time. Saving stuff nowadays is pretty much fire and forget. How did I squeeze the saves from almost seventy PS2 games into a paltry 24mb? Cue a bit of cursing and then an hour spent cross referencing saves and booting games to see which of the duplicate saves were further along before deleting them and copying from one card to another to free up enough space for a save on Persona.

While doing this I found myself playing SSX 3. Completely by accident.

Persona 4 got started on Tuesday. It's a slow burner, and frankly it looks like ass compared to a lot of late PS2 games, but that really doesn't matter. It's beginning to draw me in. I'm looking forward to continuing it. I did promise I was going to start it after completing Bayonetta.

After slightly fewer years of badgering from my recent guest blogger, I finally got round t0 Bayonetta around a week ago. I used to wax lyrical about Devil May Cry and I knew that Bayonetta would be right up my street. Frankly I don't know what took me so long.

It's extremely Japanese, with all the high camp, overlong cutscenes, nonsensical story, miscellaneous quirks and badass fighting systems that come with the label. It's saddened me to see the proportion of Japanese games that I own on the 360 shrink so much compared to the last generation. Bayonetta is a great reminder of just how good Japanese games can be. The game was difficult, even on normal and when I first started, the high camp, overlong cutscenes, nonsensical story and miscellaneous quirks grated. Eventually though, I stopped caring and let myself get swept along in the silliness of it all. Bayonetta is a great character, hypersexualised yes, but assertive and strong at the same time. She's a woman that's always on top of any situation, whether she's staring down a huge boss, riding a missile in a great Space Harrier tribute or sliding a motorbike under a lorry in my personal favourite section of the game, the Outrun inspired, Afterburner soundtracked Route 666.

The real star of the show was the combat though, balanced, nuanced,  precise, yet hyperkinetic, showy and over the top. If I died it was because it was my own bloody fault rather than the fault of the game. It's never cheap, but it is busy. You need to keep track of everything, but there is no attack that cannot be dodged. If you're properly dialled in, you can't be touched.

The game is chock full of Sega references, and I wonder, with Nintendo publishing the sequel as a Wii-U exclusive, what Platinum Games are going to pull out of Nintendo's past to play with. One thing is for certain though, Bayonetta 2 on the Wii - U is going to be interesting.

I suppose this brings me neatly onto the Wii - U, which I had the good fortune to experience over christmas.

First impressions were:

1: It's small. Really small. Around half the volume of my 360.

2: The Gamepad is going to take some getting used to.

3: Oh, I get it now. It's like a giant, superpowered DS

We were playing five player Nintendoland, and I have to say, it was a whole lot of fun. A bit like Mario Party without the hateful boardgame segment. The fact that it was so much fun isn't really all that surprising. Nintendo excel at local multiplayer. Of all the games companies out there today, Nintendo is the only one that doesn't seem to have lost sight of how great getting your mates together around the TV can be. The two best games were variations on hide and seek, Mario Chase and Luigi's ghost mansion, where the player with the Gamepad used the screen to get away from the other players or sneak up on them. Getting one over on your mates without them seeing where you came from is a great feeling.

My only gripes are that there aren't any analogue triggers on the Gamepad and that the touchscreen could have a higher resolution and could be multi touch. But really, these are small issues that won't matter. Even though I've only spent time with one game, I think the Wii - U will shape up to be a really great machine, if the developers can step up to the challenge that the gamepad presents. I'd hate to see it loaded down with shovelware like the Wii was.

And finally, something to get off my chest.

I'll admit to the HMV issue hitting me by surprise, and to having a vested interest. It saddens me to think that they might go under. I have fond memories of the place. If you know me, you'll know my first album was What's the Story, Morning Glory? by Oasis, it was on cassette, but the first actual CD I bought with my own money was Feeder's Echo Park, and I bought it from HMV. While I was at college, HMV was pretty much the sole provider of the soundtrack to my life. A significant proportion of the sixtyish PS1 games I own came from there too. The internet was a pretty new thing back then, I think I was still on Dial Up, and it hadn't begun to eat into HMV's sales in the way that eventually sent it into administration. 

After a few years in the wilderness in a rubbish job, I accidentally wound up working for HMV, and I felt like I belonged there. I left last year, but my offices still join to those of my old spot at HMV and I see my old colleagues there all the time, and now I worry for them. Whether you were bothered by the news or you thought HMV had it coming because they were rubbish / too expensive / too corporate, don't forget that real people with bills and houses and children will be losing their jobs if a buyer isn't found. I don't like ending on a downer, but we all know losing your job through no fault of your own is a horrible thing. Nobody likes going to the jobcentre. Let's not wish it on the thousands of people who work for HMV.