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Devil May Cry 4
2008/02/08
The devil must have wailed his lungs out. Even for the darkest master, the third part of the Devil May Cry saga was an onerous task, and he destroyed his controller in a fit of rage with his searing hot breath, he tossed his PlayStation 2 into the eternal stream of the river Styx, and he consigned his television to the ninth circle of Hell. And all of this because of Devil May Cry Part 3. The level of difficulty of this third Dante-esque adventure may have lost even more players, because even the first level was a tough test which only the fastest fingers and the sharpest gamers survived. Devil May Cry 4 is by contrast somewhat milder, with a level of difficulty which is once again bearable for earth-bound players, although this can be raised a little further for the more daring amongst us. A fair compromise.
But you will first need a little patience on the PlayStation 3. The game takes a legendary twenty minutes to install all of its data on the hard disk – which reminds you of the good old days of the C64, in your rented student’s room at the end of the ‘80s. You can spend the time that it takes to load to read up on the epic story of the previous three parts – this is all related in an enclosed tome as your loading indicator stubbornly inches forward. The official Capcom blog suggests that you make yourself a sandwich while the installation completes – there is also enough time for an entire three-course meal. Xbox 360 users can simply smile gently at such capers, as they are spared this installation nightmare.
Fortunately, you only have to go through this procedure once. Afterwards, the game loads quite quickly and you are then rapidly back on track. You are soon standing with newcomer Nero in a stunningly-detailed environment and beating demons back into the abyss from which they slithered. You can step into this subtly thought out slugfest with an oversized sword, pistols and a hand armed with demonic power. The pistols are not very effective, but are nonetheless recommended for distance attacks, the sword can despatch more than one opponent at a time, while the blue-lit hand is particularly effective, but only for paralyzing a single enemy. As it is, the best methods are a mix of all of these attack types, and you can improve your desired style points by using complex combos and thus upgrade your character. This action-adventure is at heart a jump’n’run with the mentality of a munchkin, running back and forth here and there to get your hands on more combos, more upgrades, more of everything. The combos obviously are the key, and only once you can perform the series of keys in your sleep will you become a true lover of the series. Everyone else can however make good headway with the basics.
So is everything as it was? Yes, somehow. On the positive side you can say that the series has remained true to itself, and will keep any fan content. The game mechanisms have not undergone any great change, and it is possible to clear your opponents from your way with targeted shots from your rattling pistols and a tidy sword strike, as has already been done numerous times in previous instalments of Devil May Cry. But that is also a certain negative point. The game seems rather stale compared to the high points of last year, and lacking in fresh ideas. That may not cause any further damage to the sequence of the series, but over time you will begin to ask yourself why you will find new features in other series, while Devil May Cry has barely any changes – especially as Capcom already knows from Resident Evil 4 that a recognized franchise with a new face may be overlooked if it doesn’t keep a bit of its old values. However, other things also weigh negatively upon the game and reduce game play enjoyment. The first is the camera, which is sometimes static, sometimes movable – it is baffling why anyone would want to make this differentiation, allowing the camera to be turned at some points, while in certain places, the viewing angle cannot be altered a single millimetre. Also, it is impossible to save within a mission – it is not possible to take a break within a level, otherwise you have to start again from the beginning. These are things which are simply not Next-Gen, and leave a rather flat aftertaste.
However the game provides stunningly depicted stages with beautiful light effects, which invite you to explore, and conceal treasures and hidden levels – the missions however are quite linear, allowing you to investigate a variety of sunken and raised levels. Anyone who appreciated the Gothic style of the other Devil May Cry games will not however be so satisfied: There are masses of cathedrals, darkened lanes and creepy interiors, but this splendour is however destroyed by a monotonous thumping sound, from which there is barely any variation and which gets on your nerves in the long run. Overall, the general presentation, the menus and the features have been only slightly fine-tuned – you often get the feeling of wading through an update of the previous three instalments.
MK
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