Devil May Cry 4

[JoeSchmo]

UK is top right now.

I got 100% S on All the missions leading up to Dante so far.

[viruszero]

I reviewed DMC on another forum so I may as well post it here.

Alright, time to review DMC4 on the PS3, so in the words of Dante:
"Let's Rock"
And cue the awesome background music for some stylish fighting.

But getting down to business here, Devil May Cry debuts on the PS3 and the Xbox360... I was quite happy to see this as DMC is one of my favourite games series. (Despite a lackluster DMC2...)

So let's see what we got in this installment:
- 2 heroes, Dante (our tried and true devil slaying pizza loving hero) and newcomer Nero... Check
- More stylish combat than you can shake a stick at... check but see below...
- Decently difficult... check
- good soundtrack... check.

Onto the review.

Graphics- 9/10 - The playstation 3 version looks fantastic. (I don't know about the xbox360, but i would imagine it'd be a similar level.) The backgrounds look excellent and the characters look great. The common enemies seem to look like upgraded versions of ones you've fought from DMC1, but more on this later... There are several moments of "Holy crap did you see that?!!?" which especially occur in the cutscenes. Which there are plenty of cutscense so you'll want to watch them on the first play through, but on subsequent ones you might just want to skip them with the start button. But the cutscenes themselves are rendered quite well... If you've ever seen FF7:Advents children... then you'll be treated to quality atleast as good as that.


Sound- 7/10 - Most of the themes serve as more background music than anything, and they're not particularly memorable at all... The only theme that is memorable is one you'll be hearing quite alot... so you might as well get used to and enjoy it, and thats the fighting music.

Listen to it here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLBAFJWbd30

Thankfully the sound effects are all crisp and clear and sound exactly like they should... You won't see a cat and hear it barking. The voice acting is pretty good most of the time... Rueben langdon reprises his role from DMC3 to play Dante and he does a pretty good job. Best line he says (I don't know whether or not to call it the most idiotic line or the most painfully obvious oberservation ever....):
"Check it out... It's got wings." (end of mission 11.)

And for anyone who watches the english dub of bleach you should immediately recognise Nero's voice actor... aka Ichigo Kurosaki (Bleach's main character)
He does a pretty good job, but some lines feel a bit forced. The emotion that's supposed to be there just isn't...

Another returning role from DMC3 is Daniel Southworth as Credo, previously Dan voiced Dante's brother vergil, but in this one he delivers a solid performance as the captain of the order.

The rest of the voice actors are solid but not really worth mentioning as either they don't speak enough or if they do speak enough (more than 10-15 lines) there was nothing memorable about to speak of.

Gameplay- 10/10 - Gameplay gets an S rank because it'll have you racing through levels ripping demons to shreds with Nero, then Dante, and finally Nero again.
New to Nero though is the devil arm... you grab enemies and bring them to you for combos, you can also throw them in various ways and generally wreck some havoc. The devil arm is also used in many of the game's puzzles and secret missions.
The secret missions return and bring 12 new challenges to get 3 full precious life extending blue orbs. Not much to say about them other than be sure to practice because they can be tough.

But finally when you do get to use Dante, familarity sets in as he's got the exact same styles from DMC3... with a twist. You can now switch them on the fly, any time you want during a fight by pressing the d-pad... Tired of using the swordmaster style, press the left and go guns blazing with the gunslinger, or make things tricky for the enemy and use the trickster style to make them have trouble hitting you. I rarely used royal guard in DMC3, let alone here... but it's there again if you liked it from DMC3.

Overall- 5/10 - The controls are tight and respond well, the graphics are good, the sound is pretty good, and the gameplay is really good. But there are still several minor annoyances that plague this game... mainly to do with the 2 main characters... So here they are:

Nero- He takes some getting used to. His style is vastly different from Dante and he focuses heavily on using the devil bringer (aka the right arm which allows him to bring enemies to him, or if they're too heavy, allowing him to jump to them.)
Personally I find the devil bringer slightly gimmicky and most of the time I spent play as Nero I defaulted to the basic triangle times 4 combo then either a rush move to get close again or use the r1 + circle to use the devil bringer to launch me at the enemy or them to me to continue the assault again, completely ignoring the other abilities of the devil bringer. (Such as being able to grab enemies and throw them in various ways.) Occasionally I would vary my moves up abit but the style gauge seemingly rose whether I did the same move alot in a row or not. So there wasn't much of an incentive to vary things up any amount. And Nero never changes weapons so for the whole game you have his sword the red queen and his revolver, the blue rose... That's pretty much it. He does get one other weapon in mission 6 but you really can't use that other than for special attacks...

Dante- I am somewhat disappointed by the small amount of time you actually get to play as Dante in this game. You get to use him from mission 12-18... (And the bloody palace too) And basically that's it so I would say it's a bit of a let down.
But the time you do get to use Dante is quite sweet. Dante is all about combos, and he makes it very easy... switching styles on the fly is an incredible thing. Which makes for some incredible combat... though I mainly stuck to swordsmaster and gunslinger.
In this game Dante doesn't get his usually huge arsenal of weapons, instead he gets 3 guns and 3 devil arms.
Guns - ebony/ivory, shotgun, pandora- which transforms into other weapons on which buttons you press and when/how you use it.
Swords - Rebellion, Gilgamesh (aka typical gauntlet type weapon reminicent of both ifrit and beowulf) and Lucifer (the odd weapon of the bunch... rather weak but can chain endless combos and if used right I imaging it could do some heavy damage.)

But even if he doesn't get a massive arsenal, he is many times more varied than Nero ever is, which makes playing him so cool, but then you do feel a bit saddened when your forced back to playing as Nero for the last levels.

[Raikon]

I was gonna make a review but then Yahtzee made one that I think that fits perfectly.

www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/3001-Zero-Punctuation-Devil-May-Cry-4

[Albireo]

Hmmm.... i thought the voice was familiar... but i thought it was just common among those "badass" seeming characters...

[randomdrifter865]

This game was kickass just as good as it prodecessors. Though 2 really needed a kick in the pants. I loved that buster that nero has or devil bringer as its called. Dante will always be dante except number 2's version of dante. Other than that Dante still makes his old school can of whoop still great and bloody too.

[hiddeninja]

Devil may cry 3, and 1 had the best storys and 4 comes in to introduce a mew main character... I can probably guess he was added, because their trying to add to the storyt of sparda? guessing that he 'inherited' Sparda's blood. Which goes out of the story since they said sparda had TWO twin blood sonz...

Well Nero kinda makes the game easy which is a good thing because of his devil trigger which is basically uber... since most of the times his grabs can't be countered, you would have to do certian 'things' to make your devil bringer perfect. Which people dont tend to do....

I feel sad though because bringing in a new character and giving him most of the gameplay is off the charts... But bringing in Nero was the exact same thing as brining in Lucia in DMC2 so I don't really know why we should care, just because nero was brought into the whole plot.... I guess nero sorta' replaced vergil because hes white haired too, and he has the blood of the demon knight sparda.........

[viruszero]

They said he had two sons by one mother... But they never said how many other girls Sparda was going with. And he was a demon... So just maybe he was guilty of a bit of greed and lust? (More women was his problem perchance?)

[hiddeninja]

Then atleast he should have some form of 'momento' that sparda had left Dante, and Vergil either that or Sparda treats him like trash Which is likely?

[viruszero]

Or possibly it could be that Sparda never knew he had another son... Like the woman ran from Sparda once she found out he was a demon, but before she knew she was pregnant.

Or it could always be that Nero is a clone/copy of Vergil.

But again, I think it was a bit needless to pull a MGS2 with this game. (For those not aware of the trait of MGS2 I'm referring, I mean to play as the hero for only a short bit then have the rest of the game centered on a newcomer.)

If/when they decide to do DMC5, I hope that if they bring Nero back they allow a player to choose which character they want to use for every mission... (Possibly have the levels designed so that there are several paths one can take through the level... like a Dante specific one where only Dante can go through and he has some challenge to meet. A Nero path, where it's Nero only and he might have some challenge to pass through with his devil bringer. Or finally a third path but where it's entirely combat oriented and much tougher then either of the other two paths, but is there to give a choice in case someone doesn't like/ can't do the character specific challenge. ) Or... If they have two characters introduce a splitscreen multiplayer mode where both Dante and Nero can be played by the players and run through the levels.

Then you can do stuff like tagteam bloody palace or combat practice etc..

[hiddeninja]

Well the 'two player' idea was introduced in DMC3, when you use dopple ganger and press start the second player can control the doppleganger dante..... This went also with mission 19 when you tagged team with vergil in a small circle arena

But when I tried it with my bro, it wasn't as good as I though it would be because the dopple ganger could go as far as it wanted (until a door) without seeing a angle on the second player, and with the dopple ganger you only have limited time two player

Which is kind of stupid, because if you wanted infinite devil trigger and power... You would have to finish Dante must die mode and heaven or hell.....

EDIT: If by chance they do make a DMC5 and with Nero, and make a two player mode how will they format the screens? Can they go out through the doors? Or can only First player go to the next room bringing on the second character with him...? Or would they make one huge area instead of using the 'room' idea from resident evil 1-5? And how by chance would they upgrade their character skills? Like nero's devil bringer, or Upgrade dantes weapons? Would they infact share the read orbs and cut it 50%-50%, or would you have to fight for it yourself?

[Jovany]

They should make DMC 5 kinda like Megaman X5, where you can choose to be either Dante or Nero for every Chapter, or be Like X4 where you choose a charatcer and now your stuck with him until You create a New game or pass the Game...

[hiddeninja]

Well it should be rather megaman X6 because it can create its own stories because you can choose what character you want on each mission, but the missions would be the same except the dialouge would be different... and there should be some special cutscense for each character (if you finish with dante/nero) Just like in 6 but then agian..... That would make it harder for Capcom since their already making like... 3 major gameds that have already become world known

There would be a small possibility of that happening but I wouldn't bet my money on it unless they take 2 years instead of 1 XP or I just might be hellishly wrong....

[viruszero]

If they use the engine they built for DMC4, make some tweaks to it so that it looks even better, they can probably make another DMC game within a year.

I mean they could make all new levels and enemies and put them in the game fairly easily... (At least by their standards anyway.)

And as for the number of games they're making... They can make quite a few games in a year because they have a huge staff. And likely divisons set up for each game series they're making. For any solo games, they likely just have a few other teams they just combine and shift around as necessary to make the final team to build the game they want. And any of the laftover are reassigned to another project or placed as aid on the major one incase they need more people to get it done in time.

[randomdrifter865]

True in Capcom's case but, honestly the story four was great and the gameplay was awesom to continue the series in a simillar fashion to Megaman X series. I do like the idea of that but, wouldn't there be a flaw in the Story sense two was the actual end for Dante unless he some how escapes from whatever he is now... Unless Capcom can somehow create more of the middle than I guess we keep our favorite devil hunter and his companions Trish and Lady Considering neither of them weren't even in two due to some circumstances and what not... Of course I guess we could keep Nero around considering he isn't like Raiden from the Metal gear games. They pretty much dropped him because of Snakes popularity. You know how they have to adjust the story so everybody can see their favorite star shine some more of fall depending on the circumstances.