Devil May Cry Review

 I should have been the one to fill your dark soul with LIGHT!

Well this came out of nowhere, didn't it? In a week that has rather suddenly become a week of reviews, I get to cover a title I've been trying to complete for a long while now and just decided to sit down and 'get her done', so to speak. To be clear, it isn't by design that I completed the reviews for three games in a row, that's just how thing's have shaped up. And what a spread of games they are! An action adventure openworld faux-RPG game that never ends, a disgraced and redeemed openworld first person sci-fi RPG I didn't want to end, and now a hack-n-slash legend-in-the-making: How do I fall on the first Devil May Cry game? You'll have to find out once I'm done telling you the bizarre story about how I came to this franchise in the first place. Sharing time!

So as any kid in the age when I grew up, most of my experience playing games were done around the houses of those I knew who had game's consoles. I never controlled what I played, I just enjoyed whatever was there and spent more time dedicated to the hardware than the people around me because I guess I've always been a recluse like that, huh. And in doing so there were a few games that stuck out in my head. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the original Star Wars Battlefront and, of course, that one weird hack-and-slash game that I remember playing at my cousin's house. God knows what it's name was, or even what the story was about, I just remember being fascinated and that I couldn't beat it. I remember two distinct aspects of the game, even now. I remember combat areas being enclosed with doors who's locks were a giant ghostly face that would shatter when you beat everything in the area (I think it was a face, although that might be my memories of Fable diluting the memory pool. ) and this one later area mission. This mission wherein you were constantly having your life drained and I had no idea how to stop it. Despite this being a late area in the game, you could visit areas from other levels and I remember running all the way back to the start of the game to figure it out- powered by the fact I remember some type of 'ultimate' state you could 'trigger' that allows health regeneration when in effect. Also, for some reason whenever I think of the game I remember a DVD copy of 'The Devil Wears Prada'.

Now unfortunately I also remember the map consisting of high reaching European streets, which is the reason why I've been searching all this time without any luck. But upon starting Devil May Cry for the first time some years back, I've been struck with the feeling I'm onto something special. In fact, I'm willing to bet that the game I'm looking for is none other than Devil May Cry 2, often referred to as people's least favourite in the franchise. But as a stickler for consistency and lore I have to start where it all begins, with Devil May Cry 1, you know- so that I can properly come to respect the world of this game before I wrap up my investigations. Although... although I have already purchased the entire franchise... so I guess I might as well give the other games a shake as well... damn, has this turned into a series retrospective? Bugger.

Welp, might as well get to it. Devil May Cry: the blueprint that launched a thousand of Hack-n-slash games! Actually, it might have been the franchise that killed the hack-n-slash genre because we don't get a great many competing franchises these days and those we do typically spawn from this franchise. Bayonetta is directed by the man who started the DMC franchise, and Final Fantasy XVI boasts the talents of a Devil May Cry design alumni who calls the new game his 'personal masterpiece' based on all his years working on the DMC games. It's almost as though Devil May Cry defined the genre so much that no one else is confidant enough to try and make their own franchise in the space anymore. And it all started with this first outing, so what could it have to show me?

Well when we hear about what people love about these games, one of the loudest refrains I always hear pertains to fans love for the style and personality of it's main lead- Dante. Dante and his too-cool-for-school, white haired bad-ass antics that sent countless hearts a flutter across his prolonged career of impromptu demon hunting. Which means that, alongside the combat, is certainly something to look out for. Because you know, there are some games that really do hold up all these years later in those special regards. Discounting graphical achievement, some games have that style or performance that remains timeless and fantastic all these years later. To this day the cinematic achievement of Metal Gear Solid  stands firm, the clever gross-out irreverence of Conker's Bad Fur Day still draws a chuckle, does the charismatic wit of Dante still twinkle with that same charm?

No, good lord no. When we first see Dante, running his demon extermination service 'Devil May Cry', he boasts the 'pretence' of the aloof 'I'm so cool you couldn't hurt me even if you wanted to' hero- and to be fair the things he actually does are extremely cool. The man juggles a motorbike in the air through the power of firing his twin pistols, he gets impaled through the chest with a massive sword and simply gets up and walks it off. Twice! But the backbone which would cement the style of these actions, the performance of the voice actor and the lines he has to read... not great. (It's not going to be until Devil May Cry 3 that we get the voice of Dante people know and love.) Right away, I can see how the team try. Behind the janky action sequences and silly cutscene action, I see them attempting to have Dante seem cool as he whips out his dual pistols and remarks "Let's get to work", but I just don't feel it. And that might be due to the way that his breaks of seriousness are filled with either utter nonsense or abject cringe. We'll get to the latter in due time, but for now I'll give you a small taste of the early game nonsense. "You were the first one to know about my Avengence." Your what? Avengence? Who in the- that's even more ridiculous than Revengence! I know it's kind of Japanese en vouge to revive long depreciated words but... that ain't it. I'm sorry.

Thankfully the cutscenes and performances in Devil May Cry is not what keeps people coming through the door. That would be the actual gameplay and layout of the world you traverse on Dante's journey to 'Avengence' his Brother and Mother who were apparently slain by some vague bad-guy called Mundus or something. The game itself takes place in a sprawling castle/mansion through which you'll explore mission-by-mission as you uncover it's secrets. In one of the cooler early uses of this design style, you'll find yourself walking over the same bits of castle in each mission as you become familiar with the layout, uncovering new pathways and crannies in places where you've been before. It's a little like Castlevania in that regard, except that exploration is explicitly linear. Still, the game has you become familiar with your playspace in a way that engenders those some types of 'familiarity cues' when playing through Resident Evil or Symphony of the Night; most games get too 'ambitious' to shoot for that, I still appreciate it. 

Of course, any DMC game is defined by it's combat, and here I have to admit that even in it's early form, DMC has impressed me. The combat tool kit is quiet basic with your melee weapon attached to one button and your dodge with another. Locking onto a target allows the use of move specific movement options, special attacks and your sidearm attack for 'peppering damage'. A lot of the heart of DMC combat depends on giving the player the tool kit to look stylish as they blast through their enemies, and this game handles that beautifully. The range of attack options, gradually unlocked through the spending of blood orbs, is neat enough for the average player to get to know all of them. You have the lunge homing attack, the launch attack, some variant types of attack for Devil Trigger and the ability to juggle enemies in the air with your twin pistol attack should you need to. The 'Style' meter which constantly assess the quality of your combo is a very neat addition as it's strict rules really teach you how to play. You learn how to read enemies and dodge so as not to break your combo, how to absolute not touch the analog stick in the middle of a bout, that you have so many attack moves that double as movement options, and as you learn to start pulling S-Rank combos, the smooth rhythm of combat settles in and the breadth of combat possibility becomes second nature. It's a very simple system by the standards of today but it just works so well.

Devil Trigger is the special state you can build up by landing attacks and activating with a touch of a button once you're got enough 'devil juice'. It's essentially your typical buff mode; attacks hit harder, certainly faster, and certain special attacks morph into pretty powerful 'devil attacks'. Your jump in the air and shoot move (a fine way to stay off the ground when action down there is getting dicey) can morph into becoming a flying winged demon shooting lightning from his hands. It all depends on the primary weapon you have equipped and the abilities you've purchased for that weapon between missions. However, I found that it was difficult, given the brief nature of the game, to really develop both of the weapons you unlock in the story, so despite the fact they have quite unique move sets, I ended up sticking to the sword rather than the fire fists. I figure this system is built more for follow-up playthroughs on higher difficulties. Oh, and Devil Trigger provides a stream of constant health regeneration, so that should be a plus in anyone's book, right?

The challenge of Devil May Cry comes in the variety of it's enemy pool, and for the length of the game DMC has a healthy amount of enemies to throw your way. Puppets to Grim Reapers to animalistic mask monsters- and they've all got quirks to their attack style and movement which makes them interesting to tackle. And frustrating for some of the tankier ones later on. They aren't just sword fodder I'm glad to say, and some even gave me a serious run for my money and straight killed me off when I wasn't paying attention. Of course, the actual programmed enemies are only one fourth of the challenge that this game has to offer; another fourth being the reoccurring bosses you'll become very familiar with throughout DMC.

All of the boss cast here are like old friends- annoying friends you really wish wouldn't keep turning up to parties they weren't invited to. In some ways it fits the nature of the world layout to fight every boss at least three times before they sod off for good, but on the otherhand I really do wish these reoccurring bosses changed up their approach a little more for each fight. It's like they learn one new trick for each fight and the new trick is never really all that different from what they were doing last time so whatever trick you learnt for fighting them then (running around Nightmare, rolling around Neo Angelo's slashes, Just straight blasting Griffon to pieces with your guns) still works wonders no matter when you fight them. Still, they're decent enough stop gaps, and at least the Neo Angelo fights felt fast enough to be a genuine challenge.

And the remaining half of the difficulty? That damn accursed camera! Devil May Cry makes use of the fixed camera angles that were all the rage back in this day, but unlike similar titles like Resident Evil and it's ilk, DMC doesn't appear to have designed the fixed camera angles with the enemies that would spawn in those rooms in mind. You'll have fights where travelling to one edge of the room gives you a bizarre corner angle that blinds you to everything else present in the area because some designer was too busy thinking about how to direct you to parkour rather than how you'll keep alive from the actual fight. And the final Neo Angelo brawl takes place in a room that is inexplicably split down the middle in camera coverage, there's a very real possibility he can teleport to a corner of the room you literally can't see and spam projectiles at you- the dick. And don't even get me started on platforming with badly fixed camera angles- hell incarnate.

Yes, let's put our woes to rest and instead pull back to the narrative itself- wow, is it confused. I get the sense when playing this game that the scenario writer was a big fan of a bunch of different western myths and cultures but had never taken the time to formally study a single one- a position I'm very familiar with in the reverse. You'll be bombarded with various ill-fitting names and objects from jumbled together mythologies without any connecting rhyme or reason to their placement. Dante and Vergil, from the Divine Comedy, bare no resemblance to their name sakes in even the most analytical sense. The Philosopher's Stone is a key to the underworld? The caduceus of Hermes Trismegistus unlocks a... mirror dimension? A lot of things are just 'keys' that sound cool because they've got the name of some Greek god haphazardly slapped ontop for no discernible reason, such is the result of slap-dash world design.

That lack of narrative purpose bleeds into the script and story, which are nigh on non-existent. I get the sense that a certain love for film was central in visualising this project, but not from the place of studied mastery like with Hideo Kojima three years prior to this game, but from more of a hobbyist- 'I bet I could make something like this' angle. (Again, painfully familiar.) Information is teased and withheld for underwhelming late game reveals with bad lines. "You remind me of my mother", being an especially silly moment. It's not until the final encounter with Mundus, however, that I was hit with the unavoidable rays of weaponised cringe that this game was hiding beneath it's cool-guy faux-exterior. Dante is coolest with his mouth shut in the middle of gameplay, when he was faced with back-to-back 'emotional' scenes... well let's just say it doesn't go... great.

Man, what am I talking about! Is there any scene as legendary as the moment when Dante screams "I should have been the one to fill your dark soul with LIGHT!" topped off with the classic voice crack and echo effect? I feel like 'lost-in-translation' is to blame for the flat composition of most of these lines, but come on, what am I going to do: listen to some Japanese dub of Devil May Cry? Dante is American, I think, so that's the language I'll here the man speak in! Even if he hits me with such lines like "Trish, Devil's never cry... These tears, they're a gift only humans have!" I swear it's like the lyric sheet for an Evanescence song got jumbled up with the DMC script in the late game. And you know, Devil's may never cry but I was absolutely red-eyed by the end of this game. It took hours for me to stop crying from how bad everything is. "The sky is fair, it'll always be above everybody's head, no different." WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? WHO TOLD DANTE TO WAX PHILOSPHICAL? Some of the greatest and worst dialogue lines ever devised by man- I don't know if DMC 3 can top this masterpiece of narrative cohesion!

Summary

Devil May Cry is a classic franchise in the industry, responsible for marking out the face of hack-and-slash games as we know them today. And when the gameplay is in front of me I absolutely know why. The simply intuitive nature of combat, empowered by stylish flair and just the right amount of freedom plays smoother than any other game around it could have dreamed of at the time. When the gameplay gives way to cutscenes, however, I'm left wondering how this story ever got a follow-up at all. Iconic, classic, baffling, cringe-worthy: Devil May Cry is a lot of things all at once. Honestly, I don't really know if I'd recommend this game to anyone who is a lover of this genre of gaming. Newcomers would certainly find something approachable yet challenging here, but hack-and-slash veterans might find the breadth of gameplay choice somewhat frustrating. It's a great place for the genre to begin at, but I'm just not sure if DMC has that same 'ageless appeal' as some other series might. It's not as well aged as Baldur's Gate, although not as badly aged as the original 'Hitman'. At the very least, you must watch the cutscenes on Youtube because they are ridiculously stupid. All in all I enjoyed my brief romp, and DMC gets itself a C+ Grade for it's troubles. Historically significant and still has a little kick to it, there are far worse ways to expand your repertoire of gaming knowledge than delving into the DMC rabbit hole.