A couple of months ago, I went on the first vacation I've been on in a few years. I've been too busy with work or school to take the time off and travel. Since I was itching to play DMC3 on it's higher difficulties for the first time, I downloaded the HD collection on my laptop and chewed through a complete playthough over the week.

So much of this game's qualities were heightened over this playthrough. The arsenal still stands as one of the greatest of all time in variety and depth. The enemies are extremely unique, creating a good balance between combo fodder and more specific threats. The levels often put Dante in strange and uncomfortable positions during combat. Forcing the player to consider methods of play that may not seem natural.

I came home, playthrough finished, ready to dive into Vergil, bloody palace, rank hunting, difficulty scaling, to really take this game for everything it is on my PC.

The DMC HD collection doesn't support cloud saves.

I'm not even mad.

I honestly wasn't loving the middle chunk of this game. The tanker was fun, but for the majority of the plant I wasn't really feeling it. Once you hit the final segment of the game though?

Oh man.

Oooooooohhhhh man dude, easily one of the best final segments ever. I get it now.

(Played via the HD version on PS3)

So, I'm pretty well clueless on what makes a good shmup tick, but I do want to highlight the brilliance of locking away continues for a while. It forced me to fully learn the game and it's mechanics to where, on my first run with them unlocked, I had reached the final boss before needing to use one. (Yes it was on the easiest difficulty, no I don't care it felt good)

That level of understanding my place, where I was so tantalizingly close to beating the game on it's own terms immediately forced the game's hooks into my psyche.

Good time.