When I loaded up Devil May Cry (DMC), I was absolutely sure that I would realise I'd marked it 'unplayed' by mistake. I was convinced that I’d simply be correcting the spreadsheet and moving on to something else.
But that didn't happen. The game I was thinking of was DMC 3 which, the unjustly maligned reboot aside, is the only game in this series I have played.
DMC is also the only game directed by Hideki Kamiya I haven't played, and considering I believe every single one of his other titles to be a different kind of masterpiece, you can begin to see why it was a bit of a shock to realise I had never played this, his directorial debut.
The first thing that hits me about DMC is how much exploration and basic puzzle solving there is.
But then it doesn't take much in the way of research to discover that the bones of this game were originally going to be Resident Evil 4, and when you learn this, the disparity between what you expect from a Hideki Kamiya game, and how DMC plays, suddenly makes sense.
The environments are very much in the Resident Evil style of survival horror; the creepy castle, the overgrown areas, the secret passages... even the paintings and statues that you interact with are all very Raccoon City. But then some enemies drop in and it's literally a different game.
It instantly embodies the stylish mix of melee and gun combat that will be familiar to anyone who's played anything else in this series, or indeed either of the Bayonettas - I'd forgotten quite how much the combat in that series is an evolution and refinement of that found in DMC. There are other similarities too, such as the gems used to buff and enhance your stats, which are almost identical across the two IPs.
But there are a couple of problems with putting as stylish and dexterous a combatant as Dante into Spencer Mansion 2.0.
Firstly, this particular castle is a maze of smallish rooms interlinked with winding corridors. If you've seen Kill Bill Vol.2 and remember the fight in the caravan (a more interesting idea than it played out, unfortunately) then you’ll have a grasp of the kind of issue this presents.
The game is pretty generous with the amount of clipping that it allows, which in this case is a very good thing, but it's still rather too often that you find yourself blocked by a pillar or unable to use the aerial moves at your disposal due to a low ceiling.
Secondly, the game has retained the fixed (or semi fixed) camera angles that characterised the Resident Evil series of this era. Moving around the castle can be a confusing affair at the best of times, especially as, unlike Jill Valentine and the crew, Dante doesn't control rotationally.
It's not unusual to find yourself holding the analogue stick in a 5 o'clock position while Dante runs in the 9 o'clock direction... until the camera changes and suddenly he's running at 2 o'clock... and then you release the stick, all the directions reset, and everything is backwards.
It can make it frustrating just moving from A-to-B, but throw in a giant spider-boss in a small area with 4 camera angles and multiple architectural obstacles and you're damn close to controller hurling territory.
However.
I love that word. I love the way it says "I hope you enjoyed reading those last 200 words because I'm about to contradict them."
However, Devil May Cry is an exceptional hack-and-slash game.
The way it builds from the bare bones of 2-button combat up to a point where you're effortlessly mixing swordplay, gunplay, dodging, weapon switching, and item use in the blink of an eye is clearly the work of a master of the genre.
It's a very challenging game but, those camera and environmental quirks aside, it always gives you the tools to overcome the challenge.
It's no small help that the 'Missions' into which the game is divided are pretty short, and there are fairly generous checkpoints.
It's never the case that failure doesn't feel like a set-back, but it’s never such a big set-back that you can't be bothered to pick yourself up and go again.
That small mission structure, by the way, is ideal for mobile play and makes the recent Switch port a very attractive proposition.
In the end the quirks born of the game’s history give it a unique character, they never go away but they become part of what makes the game different, and very special.
But that didn't happen. The game I was thinking of was DMC 3 which, the unjustly maligned reboot aside, is the only game in this series I have played.
DMC is also the only game directed by Hideki Kamiya I haven't played, and considering I believe every single one of his other titles to be a different kind of masterpiece, you can begin to see why it was a bit of a shock to realise I had never played this, his directorial debut.
The first thing that hits me about DMC is how much exploration and basic puzzle solving there is.
But then it doesn't take much in the way of research to discover that the bones of this game were originally going to be Resident Evil 4, and when you learn this, the disparity between what you expect from a Hideki Kamiya game, and how DMC plays, suddenly makes sense.
The environments are very much in the Resident Evil style of survival horror; the creepy castle, the overgrown areas, the secret passages... even the paintings and statues that you interact with are all very Raccoon City. But then some enemies drop in and it's literally a different game.
It instantly embodies the stylish mix of melee and gun combat that will be familiar to anyone who's played anything else in this series, or indeed either of the Bayonettas - I'd forgotten quite how much the combat in that series is an evolution and refinement of that found in DMC. There are other similarities too, such as the gems used to buff and enhance your stats, which are almost identical across the two IPs.
But there are a couple of problems with putting as stylish and dexterous a combatant as Dante into Spencer Mansion 2.0.
Firstly, this particular castle is a maze of smallish rooms interlinked with winding corridors. If you've seen Kill Bill Vol.2 and remember the fight in the caravan (a more interesting idea than it played out, unfortunately) then you’ll have a grasp of the kind of issue this presents.
The game is pretty generous with the amount of clipping that it allows, which in this case is a very good thing, but it's still rather too often that you find yourself blocked by a pillar or unable to use the aerial moves at your disposal due to a low ceiling.
Secondly, the game has retained the fixed (or semi fixed) camera angles that characterised the Resident Evil series of this era. Moving around the castle can be a confusing affair at the best of times, especially as, unlike Jill Valentine and the crew, Dante doesn't control rotationally.
It's not unusual to find yourself holding the analogue stick in a 5 o'clock position while Dante runs in the 9 o'clock direction... until the camera changes and suddenly he's running at 2 o'clock... and then you release the stick, all the directions reset, and everything is backwards.
It can make it frustrating just moving from A-to-B, but throw in a giant spider-boss in a small area with 4 camera angles and multiple architectural obstacles and you're damn close to controller hurling territory.
However.
I love that word. I love the way it says "I hope you enjoyed reading those last 200 words because I'm about to contradict them."
However, Devil May Cry is an exceptional hack-and-slash game.
The way it builds from the bare bones of 2-button combat up to a point where you're effortlessly mixing swordplay, gunplay, dodging, weapon switching, and item use in the blink of an eye is clearly the work of a master of the genre.
It's a very challenging game but, those camera and environmental quirks aside, it always gives you the tools to overcome the challenge.
It's no small help that the 'Missions' into which the game is divided are pretty short, and there are fairly generous checkpoints.
It's never the case that failure doesn't feel like a set-back, but it’s never such a big set-back that you can't be bothered to pick yourself up and go again.
That small mission structure, by the way, is ideal for mobile play and makes the recent Switch port a very attractive proposition.
In the end the quirks born of the game’s history give it a unique character, they never go away but they become part of what makes the game different, and very special.
No comments:
Post a Comment