Dante's hair is now black but upon entering the devil trigger mode it turns white as it used to be and after first achieving this he earns a permanent white streak through his black hair. If you can quell your rage long enough to beat the game you even unlock a costume change solely to turn his hair white and similarly styled to the old Dante. Would you kindly now calm the fuck down.
The other so called problem was the slightly more electronic and modern soundtrack. When i first caught whiff of this, i thought the whole game had been dubstepped on but in actuality it's still a primarily metal soundtrack with a few club or rave elements. The only distinctly Skrillexian tune i heard was accompanying the penultimate boss battle and there were far more prominent disappointments than the soundtrack at that point.
I don't think anyone can blame the new DMC of disgracing it's predecessors as the developers are clearly fans of the series and while they poke fun at the old games they also honour them with all the achievements being quotations from past games, signature moves being recreated and even classic lines and themes getting a knowing nod here and there. Right, now that's out of the way we'll start properly.
DMC brings the series firmly into the modern era but unlike the abysmal second instalment of the old series, it mixes this realism with what it calls Limbo. A purgatorial plain where demons roam freely and the very environment warps and twists to foil or trap you. This is the main stand out highlight of this new game, they've achieved a surreal modern art style that doesn't bore you to tears and genuinely invokes a feeling of oppression and being hunted which weaves perfectly in with the main narrative's themes. Heavily graffitied streets brimming with demonic disease, twisted neon nightclubs or the clinical filtered digital insides of a news program. It's interesting to look at and enticing to play through and the art direction for most of the game is to be applauded.
Remaining in positive territory the core gameplay is mostly solid also. Mainly the combat which is fast, fun, brutal, in depth and everything it should be for a Devil May Cry game. If anything brings you back to replaying the game it'll be the sheer variety of combos, the satisfying impact of most of the different weapons and the allure of maxing out your stylish points. In short the combat is the second major highlight of this new DMC and it stands proudly amongst the best systems of the old titles.
Unfortunately you soon start running out of good things to say about DMC almost as quickly as it's very short campaign wraps itself up. Dante definitely has an arc throughout the story and the side characters are kept few so we can grow accustomed to them and have a fair amount of time to learn their own secrets and motivations. The writing overall is...mixed. There are times when it really shines and these feel like complex, real characters within a witty and self-aware game. Then there are other times where dialogue feels clichéd and cheesy without the wit or self-aware irony.
The narrative is on a mostly downhill slope, starting off pretty interesting with Dante being a smug carefree prick living a life of lust and lethargy until the smart but scarred character of Kat brings him out of his sleazy world and gives him greater purpose, reuniting him with his past and twin brother Vergil. All this amongst a backdrop of a heavily monitored and oppressed society, with a monopolised manipulative media satirising Fox News, polluted iconic popular consumables, reminiscent of a global brand like Pepsi albeit under the perspective of conspiracy theorists. It's truly a Devil May Cry for the modern age, so it's all the more of a shame when it ends up feeling like the worst parts of games we've already seen.
The narrative builds nicely but becomes more and more predictable and cliched whilst slowly this underlying theme of an Orwellian society takes a back seat to mystical, super-powered adventures in magic land. This instead of the subtle blend between the familiar and the fantastical the start of the game accomplishes. As i mentioned the writing also begins to feel less polished and characters start speaking and acting unrealistically, leading to some effectively built up tensions and conflicts that feel utterly underwhelming, unsatisfying or forced by the end. Even the level design becomes more bland and grey after such a strong opening.
Back in the realms of gameplay it's worth noting that the platforming sections that break up the combat can be more than a little clumsy and the game is not without some fairly glaring glitches in places. Then there's the increasingly common tendencies of modern games to strip you of all your abilities and set you following the path of another character (usually down a bland corridor) whilst exposition and plot happens. It's good and important that we have these bonding moments with characters so we care what happens to them later, but they can be made more interesting and ideally intertwine with the gameplay better than simply, travelling, tag along, storytime moments.
There's a constant contrast between moments of considered, well thought out design and cheap, gimmicks we've all seen before. There are new enemies introduced regularly and many of them are innovatively designed and varied, as are some of the bosses, but the further you get in the game the more ideas seem to run out. Fighting through a news program is a great new idea, the final boss of it being a giant floating head is not. The penultimate boss battle with the game's main antagonist Mundus, who has been really effectively built up as a dormant demonic God, secretly pulling the world's strings, ends up being the standard triple A massive monster fight against a disappointingly dull giant.
Perhaps the game is so short because they realised they were running out of good ideas, but that's not a great sign for the first title in a so called reboot. That said there are a fair amount of collectibles and extras if you enjoy such things and don't mind replaying the levels, along with the many sadistic difficulty settings common to DMC games but it doesn't personally make up for such a short overall story. Things are left pretty blatantly unfinished for sequels and even DLC to slowly expand upon, after sucking up more of your money of course. I don't want to sound overly cynical here because i like the bones of this new series and it has the potential to become something really different and interesting, but i feel quite ripped off with only roughly half of the short game fulfilling this potential.
If you're genuinely interested in this new series, be you a fan of the old one or not, and can forgive the games' brief length and increasingly lacklustre moments, there is definite fun to be had here. If you enjoy titles in the arguable "Hack and slash" genre DMC in terms of combat is a great addition to that category. If you're hoping for the kind of satirical strong narrative or drastic re-imagining of Devil May Cry that the trailers and promotion hinted at you could well be eventually disappointed. More than anything else, i look forward to seeing how this new series develops in the future.
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