Gameplay
GameplayLook Who’s Crying Now
Yep I saw the E3 footage; I went to the website and thought “this will be awesome!” as the game looked and sounded great. When it arrived on my doorstep I couldn’t wait to get on with some highly intellectual demon slaying, but as you are to find out, I was more than a little disappointed. Before I tell you exactly what went wrong I will tell you the story of Devil May Cry 2.
Erm… well from what I could make of it there is some evil man with a moustache, black bushy eyebrows and a fur coat (fur is murder didn’t you know) who is looking to find some artefacts that will obviously make him a lot nastier and give him the ability to rule and probably destroy the universe. So off goes Dante to stop him, but wait! He’s not alone on this one! This time he’s got a red haired ninja assassin lady to help him in the form of Lucia. She’s the angel to Dante’s devil don’t ya know? So that’s two characters to play with from the word go.
Now imagine two disks of Devil May Cry action. Sounds great doesn’t it? Until you realise what a complete mistake they made by changing the way the game is paced from the original.
Dancing with the Devil
The guys at Capcom must have lost the part of their brain that makes games interesting when developing this title as they have decided to eliminate any sign of this game being an epic survival game. Dante and Lucia move around pretty much the same as the original and can do all the cool moves that made the original groundbreaking, plus they have added a few more like running up walls and flying etc, but the developers have seemingly decided to concentrate the game entirely around the moves the characters can do. You can’t do back flips and wall jumps in claustrophobic castles it would seem so they have set the bulk of the game in vast expanses of the outside world. That gives you plenty of room to fight the ten thousand respawning enemies that randomly appear from nowhere. The exploration and puzzle element is all but gone. The game has been turned into an action beat ‘em up and it’s not for the better.
Devil May Cry: Reloaded
My hilarious sub heading should reveal a little about how I feel about the game. Like the Matrix the first Devil May Cry was a slick masterpiece with a good story that didn’t have to rely on it’s graphics to sell. It was good solid and intriguing gameplay. Like the sequel Matrix: Reloaded, the game relies on the creators knowing how cool the first was and getting complacent, hoping that just because they were cool in the first then people will just love the effects of the second, not realising that a bit of depth and discovery is needed. Instead this game suffers from long, long levels littered with fighting and backflipping in what at first looks pretty spectacular but gets very boring very soon.
How do I look?
The game graphics look a bit tired to me. After the four thousandth square mile of game has been covered for level one you really don’t want to experience the next level which (you won’t be surprised to hear) suffers from the same sort of problem. And there are quite a few of these levels to get through. I eventually did, and wish I hadn’t bothered. The laughable thing about the game is that when you complete what seems like a long survival mode of a game, you get actually get a special survival mode game! HA! I really tried to finish this for the sake of review but couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Also in case you were wondering, the whole ordeal is sponsored by Diesel Jeans, which means you get a new Jeans themed outfit when you complete it! This makes Dante look stupid in my opinion. Ah well.
Oh yes, I did mention you could play as a female character, Lucia. I’m not going to waste much time here as unfortunately she isn’t worth having a special separate disc for her as it’s basically the same levels played with different weapons and a different skin. Whoops, I’m sorry you play the first level in reverse to Dante! BIG difference or what?
Let me tell you a Fable
Going back to the story, it is one of the most vague you will ever hear. I’m still not too sure where this game coincides with the original, the main female character from that, Trish, is nowhere to be seen and she was cooler than Lucia. Also Dante’s “I don’t give a damn” attitude has changed in the poorly acted cinematics, he’s gone for a dark moody hero feel with no sense of humour in this game, apart from a scene near the end of game that I did find hilarious.
The music in the game is unbelievably forgettable, some half assed industrial techno rock that Capcom seem to be so fond of these days. Capcom usually make some very decent games but they all seem to have quite poor soundtracks with the exception of the games made before 1996. After Megaman X it all went downhill. One word of advice Capcom, get better sound programmers and composers.
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