Review: DmC: Devil May Cry

Able to see most subjects from both sides of the fence, Ben loves a good debate and therefore writes a lot of our opinion-type pieces on both specific video games and the current state of the gaming industry.

Traverse the demonic world of Limbo as you join Dante and Vergil in the legendary rebirth of the Devil May Cry franchise.

DmC was meant as a new beginning for the series so when we first meet Dante (our anti-hero), he knows a thing or two about demon-hunting but not the reason as to why he knows what he does. Of course, this is all revealed as the game progresses with his knowledge increasing in line with his abilities and power. It’s the usual Devil May Cry fare with Dante’s sword and guns cutting a swathe through a bloody war between angels and demons that his family just so happen to be the epicentre of. Names such as Vergil, Mundus and Sparda will ring true with long-time fans of the franchise but perhaps these particular incarnations will not.

What the game does do is paint a very clever picture of the ‘real world’ or rather the world that you or I perceive, actually being a layer of glimmer cast by the demons secretly running the show from the shadows. Their world Limbo is a twisted vision of Earth with the ground erupting and corkscrewing underfoot, monsters leaping out of the scenery and subliminal messaging appearing on the walls. It’s a brilliantly realised vision, none more so than in one of the later levels where Dante is charged with scaling a corporate office building. The more floors he goes up, the more corrupted the humans are with the top brass of the company (secretly run by a demon of course) looking like everyday people when in the real world but their souls in Limbo are dark, twisted, wall-crawling hell-beasts. Genius.

The bottom line is that the plot is wonderfully absurd and you’ve got two choices. One – walk away in disgust or two – enjoy it for the ridiculous guilty pleasure you know it really is. Needless to say, I lumped for the latter.

Experience the endlessly deep, stylish combat at 60fps with upgraded 1080p graphics. The combat system and enemies have been completely rebalanced with gameplay tuning and adjustments, including an optional manual lock-on feature that was requested by the fans.

Action games like this thrive on the ‘if it moves, kill it’ principle and DmC is no exception. Demons, monsters and all manner of boss creatures hurl themselves at you and it’s your job to take them out as stylishly as possible. Ninja Theory have built a lightening-fast, deep and incredibly robust fighting system for the title. Dante has a combination of a melee weapon and firearm available throughout and earns angel and demon weapons early in the story. Switching between each type is instant and can be done mid-combo to devastating effect; even when you’re in possession of multiple firearms and melee types, a quick press on the d-pad flicks from one to the other. Easy, quick, brutal.

Speed is vital here because the faster you can perform combos with multiple weapons, the higher the game will rank you in terms of style. It runs up all the way to Triple-S and the more you attain this mark, the more of the upgrade currency you’ll be awarded with. There’s so many upgrades, combos and extra moves to unlock that you won’t manage it on a single playthrough, so the title keeps you incentivised by giving you harder and harder difficulty levels the more times you finish it.

In essence, Ninja Theory have created a game engine good enough to be ranked alongside any of the best out there. It’s easy to pick up, difficult to master, packed with buckets of depth and – most importantly of all – makes the player feel like a complete badass.

The definitive edition of this critically-acclaimed action game arrives with enhanced 1080p graphics at 60fps.

If you’ve played Heavenly Sword and Enslaved you’ll know that the team here are masters of motion-capture and game production. DmC doesn’t let the side down and despite how ridiculous the story is, the delivery from the actors drags you right in – just as a good action game should. It’s well constructed and filmed and the character models move with a realistic fluidity. Dante has a youthful, arrogant swagger to him in the cutscenes and the gameplay itself, often over-extending himself at the end of a combo which really sells the idea that he’s putting all of his effort behind what he’s doing.

Limbo is a another well-realised aspect of the design, helped by it being a twisted reflection of the real world; this allows the designers to play around with the concept and they’ve created a variety of distinct twists on how we perceive reality around us. You can see and feel the way the darkness seeps into everything, breaking it apart and contorting it into something sinister. Needless to say it looks stunning and runs without dropping a beat throughout, even in the new Turbo mode – more on that later.

The audio carries over well from the 2013 original with the voice-actors delivering their lines convincingly, which is no mean feet given the insanity of the plot. The various weapons all sound different with the explosions, clangs and swooshing of swords exactly as you’d expect. The highest quality moments are saved for the atmosphere, with the team creating an imposing background in Limbo that makes it feel the world’s closing in on you. The music is provided by CombiChrist, a band that describes themselves as ‘aggrotech’ which is pretty accurate: think metal-meets-electronica-remixed-by-a-demon and you’re pretty much there. It’s the best soundtrack for the slaughter of Hell’s minions.

There are two levels where the gameplay, audio and visuals come together best. The first is when you have to storm an television broadcasting centre. It plays home to a propaganda-spewing demon that’s the face of the news in the real world but in Limbo is a bizarre cross between The Lawnmower Man and the MCP from TRON; it’s an incredibly memorable boss fight that’s as intense on the senses as on the fingers. The next is a level set in a nightclub which has you leaping across neon platforms on a hunt for the club’s owner, cutting a swathe through demons as you go. It’s as if you’re playing inside a winamp plugin. The design is ingenious and highlights again the flexibility of being able to create twisted visions of the world in Limbo.

New gameplay modes offer more challenge than ever before for the hardest of hardcore DmC players.

Replayability value all depends on how much you enjoy perfecting your combos against repeated viewings of the same story. If you want to keep challenging to get better and better then ratcheting difficulty levels combined with the Definitive Edition’s Turbo mode, which makes everything twenty percent faster, will test you. Once that’s conquered you can take on the Bloody Tower. This was DLC for the 2013 release but is now included in the title, and throws wave after wave of increasingly difficult enemies at you. Survival mode meets training complex: the more you play it, the better you’ll get.

If you just want to see the story from start to finish then you’re looking at eight to ten hours all in, fifteen if you want to go back and collect all the bits and bobs. The Definitive Edition also includes the Vergil’s Downfall DLC which fleshes out the history of another character. He plays completely differently to Dante and doesn’t feel quite so fluid, but no matter which you choose you’ll get a lot out of the main title simply because it plays so well.

I consider the game to be innovative because Dante’s, and in fact the whole DmC universe’s, redesign to be so drastically different from its predecessors. It’s a breath of fresh air into a world that was beginning to creak a little under a progressively more convoluted canon. The ability to switch instantly and mid-combo between four weapon types and variants makes for a distinctive and fresh approach to combat that I hope other developers will follow.