DmC: a new Devil May Cry

[Candescence]

I didn't think you would get the game and play it through after all of the hate you've shown for it. When can we expect your review?

Maybe after it actually comes out and when I pirate the PC version.

 

Seriously, though, I'm not paying Ninja Theory or Capcom a fucking dime over this game, not after the sheer disgusting arrogance on both sides, especially towards their own fanbase. It's also fairly evident that this game, compared to its predecessors, is severely dumbed down experience with a crappy control scheme, and features a terrible narrative and a terrible main character. I don't even need to play it to figure out it's not even remotely in the league of DMC3 and Bayonetta.

 

The best analogy to use with this game is that it's like taking Street Fighter and designing it like Mortal Kombat. It just doesn't work.

 

Review scores in general are severely over-inflated nowadays anyway. Anything less than 6 is very rare, especially with overly-hyped games.

Edited January 10, 2013 by Masaru Daimon

[Remy]

Your street fighter analogy is bunk as is calling the control scheme "crappy". Hate all the presentation in the world, and the characters and the narrative, those are matters of taste, but making the game out to be some horrid unplayable mess when it has a perfectly fine, nay, good control scheme- at least judging from the demo which I doubt you've even played- is just some severely shaky arguing.

 

And if you want a fighting game analogy for DmC, MvC3 fits the bill a lot better than mortal combat. Their mantras are basically the same. Make it easy to do cool shit

 

The ridiculous storm around this game really annoys me.

[Lady Soniko]

Holy shit One Ok Rock did music for this game!?

 

Sold.

[Carbo]

No, the soundtrack is done by Noisia and Combichrist who are a complete far cry from One Ok Rock. The music is only used for this Japanese trailer which is pretty different from everything else shown so far including the game itself.

[Candescence]

Your street fighter analogy is bunk as is calling the control scheme "crappy". Hate all the presentation in the world, and the characters and the narrative, those are matters of taste, but making the game out to be some horrid unplayable mess when it has a perfectly fine, nay, good control scheme- at least judging from the demo which I doubt you've even played- is just some severely shaky arguing.

 

And if you wanr a fighting game analogy for DmC, MvC3 fits the bill a lot better than mortal combat. Their mantras are basically the same. Make it easy to do cool shit

 

The ridiculous storm around this game really annoys me.

 

 

To be perfectly honest, I didn't really come up with the analogy myself, and I guess I didn't explain it nearly as well as I thought I did. I'll just dig up a post over from the TvTropes forums that explains the analogy much, much better:

 

Here's an analogy I would like to make, and I don't think I've made it before, that I'm hoping more than fighting game players will understand. Take the Street Fighter series. It's had a six button layout since II and hasn't changed. There have been mechanics added over the years like parries and focus attacks, but it's always had six attack buttons, and you blocked by moving away from the opponent.

 

Now imagine if suddenly the newest Street Fighter game implemented a block button instead of holding back, made another button a launcher, and put emphasis on air combos. Imagine if there were dial-a-combos added in like from Mortal Kombat three, where you just had to get the order of button presses right instead of getting the timing right. I think nearly all the Street Fighter fans in the world would end up feeling really pissed off about these changes.

 

And that's how this new DMC game feels to me. The old games' controls were a part of what they were; locking on with R1 and using the control stick to modify your moves. It worked really well. Changing those controls so much, it shouldn't even be a DMC game. It just doesn't feel like DMC to me. And I've tried to avoid complaining about this, but the 30 fps really does feel so much worse after playing the other games at 60 fps. Everything feels slower. And no lock on means I have a hard time targeting the enemies I want to. I want to pull the shields off the cherubs and attack them before I attack the chainsaw guys, but I can't tell who I'm going to attack because of no lock on indicator.

 

The old games were great because they already could appeal to casuals and hardcore players. Even if you're bad at the game, 1, 3, and 4 always felt satisfying to play because the controls and gameplay was just that good. Dying just mde you want to try harder and get better, and for those who were good at it you could experiment with the combat and create stylish combos. The new game claims to do that too, but I just cannot feel it.

 

I've played the demo in and out now, and I get so little satisfaction out of it. The weapons feel weak, the enemies aren't threatening, the boss gets boring real quick, and to top it all off I find the narrative completely pretentious, several elements rather gross, and I don't like the music much either. I think the most fun I could possibly get out of this game is if I was playing the PC version with 60 fps on the hardest difficulty.

 

Hell, why not dig up other gameplay-based critiques while I'm at it:

 

So I played through the demo again, on its highest difficulty, just so I could make sure I knew what I was talking about when I criticize this game.

 

I found that there's just no intensity even when it should be hard. The enemies sometimes will just stand around and do nothing. Even when I'm losing, it never feels like its a challenge. The most difficult enemy are those angel demons and the cupids, but they end up feeling more like annoyances, and they're actually really easy to take down. You just have to keep angel pulling them and stay in the air. The chainsaw enemies are a cakewalk if you can just launch them, and really easy to avoid by jumping and staying in the air when they go invincible. And even when they are invincible they are easy to parry. Hell, the red and blue shield demons are even easy to take care of on the hard difficulty. There just isn't any challenge.

 

This counts for the boss fight too. I quite literally have the whole fight down to a very basic formula and can go through an SSS rank no damage run on that level. On Son of Sparda mode. All you need to do is parry her arm swipe, hit her head with this combo (Rebellion YY into Arbiter Y), use demon pull on her, use Arbiter's YY, pause, Y combo. Avoid her other attacks until she does the arm swipe again and just repeat this over and over and you can get at least S rank in no time. I think the only other thing I found is that I hit one of her hands with Arbiter's air Y and it caused some kind of stun which got me a lot of points.

 

But seriously, the bosses we've seen so far look so easy. The bosses and the enemies just feel so non-threatening, there's no urgency to any of the battles. Two of the bosses being immobile does not help at all either. Just compare the fight with poison to the fight with Cerberus in 3, or with Phantom in 1. You have to be on your toes at all times with them, there's rarely ever a moment to slack off. With Poison though I keep finding myself just waiting for her to attack so I can hit her weak spot, and the damn cinematics not only break the flow of gameplay but they sometimes even interrupt a combo and prevent you from getting your stylish rank up. And it just feels repetitive. And the only thing I've seen a reviewer mention about the bosses is that there isn't many of them.

 

Maybe the combat mechanics can be seen as innovative, maybe the moves you can do can be seen as decent and cool to look at, but the fact is that this game's combat is just plain boring when compared to the intensity of the past games. It does not meet the standards set by its peers, it is at best as good as Dante's Inferno or God of War, probably better. It may have DMC's brand, but it'll never have its fire.

 

I can only see this game coming even close to the old games' intensity on Dante Must Die with all the weapons obtained.

Since everyone's posting demo impressions again...

 

I feel like Ninja Theory did a good job on the gameplay, but it could be so much more. The lack of lock-on makes a huge scar in the gameplay for reasons already stated before, but what really kills any chance of the gameplay being better than its predecessors is the artificial, fake difficulty:

 

The chainsaw guys are really easy to avoid, granted you're far away from them or aware of how far they get when attacking nothing; what makes them LOOK hard is that they spend most of the time being nearly unflinchable once they touch the ground, so it's impossible to do a nice ground combo with them. The screaming angels have, as any other enemy in this f'ing game, an enormous delay between them calling the attacks and attacking, but when they DO start the attack it's nearly unavoidable, so the trick is timing your dodges with their screaming, and that's simply lame; it feels like you're dodging the call, not the attack itself. That's also the case with the laser-shooting cherubins. The blue and orange enemies are immune to anything but weapons their color, so the effort Ninja Theory put on making possible for the average Joe to create varied combos is thrown to the sea since all variety is sacrificed with those enemies; also note that the blue ones are the only enemies in the demo whose attacks are little delayed. No impressions on the boss since I've only fought her once and never want to do that again, it's way too boring.

 

That description on IGN about Tyrant suggests that he needs "heavy weapons" to be defeated, so it looks like the whole game will be littered with those fake-difficult enemies. The previous games also had its share of semi-immune enemies like Blitz (any time you melee him you get hurt and stunned in the process), but at least Blitz IS supposed to be That One Mook, and it's a difficult enemy on ALL aspects. I doubt this Tyrant is anything like Blitz, and it only increases my fear of having more enemies like him.

 

To be fair, I think the reason journalism is drooling over the combat system is that they simply aren't aware of advanced combos on DMC 3 and DMC 4 and just found the possibilities in this game, in which it's much easier to stay on the air and stuff. So what I get is that they simply don't know DMC. Of course that doesn't excuse them for praising the script...

[TrueBlue]

Maybe after it actually comes out and when I pirate the PC version.

 

Seriously, though, I'm not paying Ninja Theory or Capcom a fucking dime over this game, not after the sheer disgusting arrogance on both sides, especially towards their own fanbase. It's also fairly evident that this game, compared to its predecessors, is severely dumbed down experience with a crappy control scheme, and features a terrible narrative and a terrible main character. I don't even need to play it to figure out it's not even remotely in the league of DMC3 and Bayonetta.

 

The best analogy to use with this game is that it's like taking Street Fighter and designing it like Mortal Kombat. It just doesn't work.

 

Review scores in general are severely over-inflated nowadays anyway. Anything less than 6 is very rare, especially with overly-hyped games.

You wouldn't actually pirate this would you? 

[Urban Flow]

Your street fighter analogy is bunk as is calling the control scheme "crappy". Hate all the presentation in the world, and the characters and the narrative, those are matters of taste, but making the game out to be some horrid unplayable mess when it has a perfectly fine, nay, good control scheme- at least judging from the demo which I doubt you've even played- is just some severely shaky arguing.

 

And if you wanr a fighting game analogy for DmC, MvC3 fits the bill a lot better than mortal combat. Their mantras are basically the same. Make it easy to do cool shit

 

The ridiculous storm around this game really annoys me.

Edited January 11, 2013 by Urban Flow

[Balding Spider]

So the ending for this game got leaked, has anyone seen it yet?

You can probably guess it. Just think of the dumbest most forced twist imaginable.

[Nix]

So the ending for this game got leaked, has anyone seen it yet?

You can probably guess it. Just think of the dumbest most forced twist imaginable.

 

Accompanied by one of the most boring looking boss fights imaginable.  Complete with several gameplay interrupting cutscenes.

Edited January 11, 2013 by Pinkamina

[Balding Spider]

Accompanied by one of the most boring looking boss fights imaginable.  Complete with several gameplay interrupting cutscenes.

What the hell was Ninja Theory thinking when they threw that in, FFS.

[Nix]

So this is a thing apparently:

 

http://www.capcom.co.jp/dmc/info/dlc/costume.html

 

I'm going to cry now.

[Balding Spider]

The actual fuck...?

Edited January 11, 2013 by BeelzeBummer

[Remy]

Accompanied by one of the most boring looking boss fights imaginable.  Complete with several gameplay interrupting cutscenes.

Just keeping with tradition

 

[SIXTH-RATE SOMA]

So this is a thing apparently:

 

http://www.capcom.co.jp/dmc/info/dlc/costume.html

 

I'm going to cry now.

 

BAWWWW HIS HAIR'S WHITE AGAIN ALL THE ARTISTIC INTEGRITY IS WASTED >:U

 

Just keeping with tradition

 

 

...so? That's not exactly a tradition worth upkeeping, comrade.

Edited January 11, 2013 by Sixth-Rate Soma

[Remy]

...so? That's not exactly a tradition worth upkeeping, comrade.

I agree. But the whole "OMG NINJA THEROY IS RUINING THE SERIES BY ADDING --------------THIS---------------" thing with this game really grinds my gears. DMC is not a perfect, infallible series and DMC4 is a dogshit, obnoxious, repetitive, terribly designed turd of a rehash created by numbskulls who wouldn't know fun if it slapped them with a fucking trout. Seriously the only decent thing about that game was uncle Dante. That's it. And in my opinion that's not enough to carry you through shitty levels, twice, loaded with repeated bosses, unimaginative and just plain frustrating enemy design

 

And It's not like DMC hasn't had a tradition of awful redesigns, either. I remember the shitstorm about belt bra male stripper DMC3 dante.... which every seems to have forgotton now they're holding him up as resident good character design.

 

I really wonder what the reaction to DMC1's shooter stage would be if it were in this game instead of that one, hahaha. 

[Sean]

I don't even like Dante's DMC3 outfit. As soon as I beat the game I permanently switched to the DMC1 one, because that's where he looked the coolest and always will (save for maybe Uncle "Boromir" Dante).

[Nix]

I agree. But the whole "OMG NINJA THEROY IS RUINING THE SERIES BY ADDING --------------THIS---------------" thing with this game really grinds my gears. DMC is not a perfect, infallible series and DMC4 is a dogshit, obnoxious, repetitive, terribly designed turd of a rehash created by numbskulls who wouldn't know fun if it slapped them with a fucking trout.

 

And It's not like DMC hasn't had a tradition of awful redesigned. I remember the shitstorm about belt bra male stripper DMC3 dante.... which every seems to have forgotton now they're holding him up as resident good character design.

 

I really wonder what the reaction to DMC1's shooter stage would be if it were in this game instead of that one, hahaha. 

 

Devil May Cry 3 at least had a pretty good final boss if you ask me.  It was fun and challenging and practically the whole game was built up to that final confrontation.  It was incredibly satisfying on all fronts. I also kind of like DMC4 despite them being horribly lazy with Dante's half of the game, but that's another topic.

 

DmC's final boss on the other hand looks incredibly weak in comparison.  The conflict comes out of nowhere and it just doesn't look like a satisfying conclusion to the game.

 

As for Dante's design, I don't particularly hate his redesign anymore, it took some getting used to to be sure.  But that costume is just...

Edited January 11, 2013 by Pinkamina

[Conando]

Apparently it's part of some downloadable costume pack. I don't know who that appeals to, it's goofy as hell. There are apparently other skins that unlockable by beating the game, though.

[Urban Flow]

Hey gonna be very blunt who here is actually looking forward to this game besides myself?

[Candescence]

Best video comment of that leaked ending:

 

Where the fuck are the dinosaurs? Nobody opened the door, got on the floor, or did any walking of said dinosaur.

Total shit. Preorder canceled.

 

But in all seriousness, that was a terrible, terrible ending. A forced and utterly pointless twist we could've seen a mile away, the worst final boss fight I have ever seen in an action game (the sub-par gameplay in general does not help), bad acting, and stupid dialogue, and not even funny-stupid, just stupid. While there's obviously missing context, I doubt that really helps.

 

And I'm pretty sure that scene from DMC4 wasn't so much the 'final boss' as it was a breather after the actual final boss worked into the ending.The scene as a whole was pretty neat, especially when Nero crushed the Savior's face with his Devil Bringer.

 

Also, Vergil makes a valid point - after getting rid of the demons, there NEEDS to be some kind of authority to avoid society descending into chaos straight away, because people need resources, security and stability. Vergil has the support system needed to do so, but Dante disagrees because of "freedom".

 

It would've worked so much better if Dante allowed Vergil to go with his plan, but swears that if he ever loses his way and becomes as bad and controlling as Mundus and humans, he'll kill Vergil himself, resulting in Vergil agreeing to those terms, vowing that he won't lose his way, and Dante becomes a mercenary or something.

 

Instead, we get "You are Dante, nothing more, nothing less", and a blatant sequel hook. And Ninja Theory calls this 'Shakespherian'. Ugh.

 

Seriously, that was terrible. Far, far worse than anything in the series outside of DMC2.

 

Also, watching the video, I'm reminded that none of the attacks have any "oomph". Especially the Stinger. None of the attacks look or sound like they have any actual strength or weight behind them.

Edited January 11, 2013 by Masaru Daimon

[Remy]

Yah I'm aware that's the cutscenes around the boss fight and not the actual bossfight. The reason for that is because it's impossible to find video of the actual fight due to how brain dead fucking boring it is. Has no one played DMC4?

 

 

Seriously. If you think virgil in dmc is "the worst fight ever" you have no idea

 

Devil May Cry 3 at least had a pretty good final boss if you ask me.  It was fun and challenging and practically the whole game was built up to that final confrontation.  It was incredibly satisfying on all fronts. I also kind of like DMC4 despite them being horribly lazy with Dante's half of the game, but that's another topic.

Yes, indeed it did. among the many things DMC3 did right is definitely the last boss. 

 

[Candescence]

Well, yeah, the actual playable part isn't terrible challenging, but that's what I meant when I said it was a 'breather'.

 

 

 

Alright, I've actually bothered to play the demo. Both the level and the boss. Note that this was on Devil Hunter, I wanted to get a proper idea of the difficulty on lower levels.

 

Firstly, the gameplay feels slow and stiff, especially the dodging. After the fantastic fluidity of Bayonetta, this just feels ridiculously jarring to me. The controls, even when I remapped them (the default controls are ungodly bad, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the controls list), are horrible to work with, especially the dedicated angel/devil buttons. The lack of lock-on is also rather lame, too, it just doesn't feel right without it. I keep wondering why the hell the "special attack" button (which is basically the dedicated launcher button) even exists, there's much better ways of doing the exact same thing, with more functionality to boot. There's also a very limited amount of attack combos you can perform, but I've found that, basically, Arbiter basically wrecks everything on the ground, and the scythe wrecks anything airbone that doesn't have a shield, and keeps you airbone as long as you have something to hit with it. There's literally no effort involved staying airborne, either. And the guns are, for the most part, kinda useless. When I can spam Arbiter and get a great style score, there's something wrong, here.

 

I don't need to say much about the enemies, they're lame, entirely uninspired, don't attack very often, and the only reason they actually hit me was because I was trying to get used to the godawful controls.

 

The grab moves are basically the Devil Bringer without the versatility, basically used for pulling or getting to another position. Also, platforming is a fucking bore.

 

Also, Limbo? I just realized, it's not nearly as neat as I thought. Hell, when I was actually playing it, I was quickly realizing it was the most garish and horribly bloomy environment I have ever seen, and I wanted to just get away from it. I laughed when the first 'walls closing in' part was entirely scripted and the walls didn't move until you actually went to the spot the game wanted you to. What a fucking joke.

 

Now, the boss. Erm... Not sure what I can say here. Poison was an utter joke. Spam Artiber, dodge the swipes, tear off the tubes, rinse, repeat. That's about it! I was still wrestling with the controls, and wondering how the fuck you're supposed to parry her attacks (because the game certainly doesn't tell you, though the execution is fairly obvious in hindsight, I know how to do it now), which is probably the only real reasons I actually took damage.

 

I'll probably try it on the harder difficulties later. But basically, the game simply isn't fun or challenging in a good way, and I kept having to wrestle with the controls all the way through. And I cannot fathom the need to hold down a button just to use a single weapon - he Angel/Devil system is absolute garbage and can't hold a candle to the Style system from 3/4. And I seriously miss the lock-on button in this game, I didn't mind so much in Bayonetta (though it did have one, but it didn't need it), but its absence in this game worsens the experience here.

 

So far, this game isn't entirely abysmal, but I really didn't enjoy it one bit. The whole things feels like I've been playing a crappy version of Nero.

 

No, wait, there is one thing about this game that sucks the most: the music. It's terrible and entirely forgettable. The only thing I remember is the terrible dubstep from the Poison fight, vaugely.

Edited January 11, 2013 by Masaru Daimon

[Remy]

No, wait, there is one thing about this game that sucks the most: the music. It's terrible and entirely forgettable. The only thing I remember is the terrible dubstep from the Poison fight, vaugely.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLBAFJWbd30

 

terrible and unforgettable. because it plays in every single fight 

 

 

 

I keep wondering why the hell the "special attack" button (which is basically the dedicated launcher button) even exists, there's much better ways of doing the exact same thing, with more functionality to boot.

If there is a better and easier way to do something than pressing one button to do it, I'd like to see it. Seriously, that's literally the best way to do something possible. You press a button and it happens. 

 

I'd also like to know what extra functionality you can add to the launcher that would require the launcher to not be on one button. Like surely whatever extra functionality you'd have by it not being on the button could be regulated.

 

Also regarding the controls, I have no idea what you remapped and why, considering they're basically action game standard, apart from the triggers thing. 

 

 

 

The grab moves are basically the Devil Bringer without the versatility, basically used for pulling or getting to another position. Also, platforming is a fucking bore.

Versatility? oh you mean the ridiculous "press one button and watch nero kill an enemy for you" throws and finishers they added the last time they tried to make DMC "casual"

 

You know what? being able to choose whether you push or pull is an improvement on DMC4, where the game would decide at random which direction whatever you grabbed was going based on it's enemy type.

 

And regarding the platforming, at least when you mis time a grapple you don't get dumped into a pit to fight mooks (DMC4, "Torture Room") or perhaps when you lose you footing you don't get dumped into another pit to fight mooks (DMC4, jungle floating platforms sections) Playing DmC and having the platforming be over quickly is a godsend.

 

I'd respond to the rest but a lot of what you wrote can be applied to the entire series or is just nitpicking... and I don't care enough about this game to ge into nitpicking without having played it. Xcom calls :<

[Carbo]

You know speaking as someone who really dislikes the game it's kind of laughable how much "no u" this entire thread is generating and this isn't even accounting to a bunch of other places who at least acknowledge most flaws that seem to be considered subjective all of a sudden.

[Detective Shadzter]

Just pre-ordered this with some of my Birthday money on Xbox 360 online at HMV with the 3 DLC codes and HMV exclusive OST CD. I went to my local store this afternoon, but there was nothing on their computer about the pre-order bonuses on their website, so I've ordered it online.