I'm not mad. I have no anger. This is just fucking sad.
DmC: Devil May Cry is not a bad game, and that is its biggest downfall, as it remains far from a good game. I went into this hoping to at least get some ironic laughs while playing through it in a VC. And we absolutely did. It was great, making fun of Donte's models, the stale animations, some of the stupidest writing in a AAA game.
But then we stopped laughing. It stopped being fun.
This game is trying to push the envelope. It's trying to truly redefine what Devil May Cry will be. And yet it tries nothing. Absolutely nothing. There ARE original ideas, but the execution fails to create anything deep. Yeah, the Angel and Devil system is cool, but it hinders combo creativity when one of many angel/demon enemies appear and require you to use only one or two weapons. The grapple system is cool, but there is nothing else to them, nor is the areal combat interesting in the slightest.
Hell, I'll even go out on a whim and say that Vergil could have been an interesting character. He's always dealing with problems from the background, using others to achieve his greater goal while sitting in relative safety. Him being a coward deep down, culminating with him desiring to control others for his goals instead of joining them in freedom, could have been interesting. Hell, it could even justify his piss-easy boss, as he was never really fighting like Dante was. But not only is he, like every other major character, bland at best, but he also never establishes why he doesn't trust humans, or why he even wants to control them in the first place. He is a twist villain who exists solely to have an "equal" as the final boss. Because that's what Devil May Cry 3 did, and everyone liked it then, so why try to create something original when you can reuse ideas from older games without thinking about why those original ideas worked?
Dante is just lame in this game. It's not even that he makes jokes likely written by a 7th grader who just discovered porn, he's just so fucking dull. He has his very sparring funny lines, but that's it. He's not even cringy. He's just boring. Kat is just the token girl, and gets little characterization when she's not being useful. Mundus is probably the "best" character in this game, and only because he actually manages to have a fucking stage presence. He feels like an actual character instead of some college students the director found at the last minute.
The gameplay itself is... fine. Absolutely fine. Hell, I can consider it good or better than the other games in some areas. For example, I like having all weapons be available at all times without a menu. No need to only carry two at a time, just select a toggle, maybe press a direction on the D-pad, and bam. But what does this mean when the combat provides no new weapons in the second half? Or hell, no interesting challenges? The game has a really cool idea where the world itself shifts to impede Dante's quest, taunting him, and having the potential to create unique battle scenarios. But this game almost never takes any advantage of it. Nearly every battle is on flat, unmoving ground. Verticality doesn't exist, you will never find an enemy above you attacking from a range that you can grapple to because there is no land above to begin with. Wanna know what also doesn't exist? Enemy variety. The game rarely introduces a new minor enemy. Combine the repeats with the uncreative level design, and you have a recipe for battles blending in. The combat itself though is fine. It's just DMC3, but with slower, less fun enemies, and low challenge. I had my fun with it in the first half, but they never throw any fun new gimmicks into the game to keep the variety high. It is completely passable, and that's it.
The best part of this game is probably the soundtrack. It's not even that amazing, but it is at least a shining piece of bronze in the pile of tin foil. Not much I would listen to outside the game, but it's different from the mainline games in a way that provides genuine positive uniqueness instead of trying and failing to imitate the original.
This game is not bad. From an objective standpoint. A robot will give this game a 6/10. But I'm not a robot. I really started getting sick of this game by the 2/3rds point. I stopped caring about style or score because I realized I am never coming back to this game. The gameplay is fine. It can be mildly fun. But there is nothing else going for this game. The script fails to even be funny bad at its most tryhard, it's just one of the worst AAA scripts I've seen. I love games that try so hard and fail so hard. This game does neither. It barely tries and it barely fails. I feel like this game needed a sequel badly, something to cook on the few good ideas from here. But am I glad that we just got DMC5 instead? Absolutely. This game doesn't deserve heaven or hell. It deserves to rot in limbo.
4/10. There are some parts that are good, but the painful sub-mediocrity of everything else drags it down.
As a sidenote, a lot of people judge the game poorly on how it's an insult to the old games. Honestly, I don't care about how the old games relate to this. I didn't make any mind of Inafune because I didn't need to. This game is trying to be new, I'll judge it as if it's new.
Also thanks for the code, Josh
DmC: Devil May Cry is not a bad game, and that is its biggest downfall, as it remains far from a good game. I went into this hoping to at least get some ironic laughs while playing through it in a VC. And we absolutely did. It was great, making fun of Donte's models, the stale animations, some of the stupidest writing in a AAA game.
But then we stopped laughing. It stopped being fun.
This game is trying to push the envelope. It's trying to truly redefine what Devil May Cry will be. And yet it tries nothing. Absolutely nothing. There ARE original ideas, but the execution fails to create anything deep. Yeah, the Angel and Devil system is cool, but it hinders combo creativity when one of many angel/demon enemies appear and require you to use only one or two weapons. The grapple system is cool, but there is nothing else to them, nor is the areal combat interesting in the slightest.
Hell, I'll even go out on a whim and say that Vergil could have been an interesting character. He's always dealing with problems from the background, using others to achieve his greater goal while sitting in relative safety. Him being a coward deep down, culminating with him desiring to control others for his goals instead of joining them in freedom, could have been interesting. Hell, it could even justify his piss-easy boss, as he was never really fighting like Dante was. But not only is he, like every other major character, bland at best, but he also never establishes why he doesn't trust humans, or why he even wants to control them in the first place. He is a twist villain who exists solely to have an "equal" as the final boss. Because that's what Devil May Cry 3 did, and everyone liked it then, so why try to create something original when you can reuse ideas from older games without thinking about why those original ideas worked?
Dante is just lame in this game. It's not even that he makes jokes likely written by a 7th grader who just discovered porn, he's just so fucking dull. He has his very sparring funny lines, but that's it. He's not even cringy. He's just boring. Kat is just the token girl, and gets little characterization when she's not being useful. Mundus is probably the "best" character in this game, and only because he actually manages to have a fucking stage presence. He feels like an actual character instead of some college students the director found at the last minute.
The gameplay itself is... fine. Absolutely fine. Hell, I can consider it good or better than the other games in some areas. For example, I like having all weapons be available at all times without a menu. No need to only carry two at a time, just select a toggle, maybe press a direction on the D-pad, and bam. But what does this mean when the combat provides no new weapons in the second half? Or hell, no interesting challenges? The game has a really cool idea where the world itself shifts to impede Dante's quest, taunting him, and having the potential to create unique battle scenarios. But this game almost never takes any advantage of it. Nearly every battle is on flat, unmoving ground. Verticality doesn't exist, you will never find an enemy above you attacking from a range that you can grapple to because there is no land above to begin with. Wanna know what also doesn't exist? Enemy variety. The game rarely introduces a new minor enemy. Combine the repeats with the uncreative level design, and you have a recipe for battles blending in. The combat itself though is fine. It's just DMC3, but with slower, less fun enemies, and low challenge. I had my fun with it in the first half, but they never throw any fun new gimmicks into the game to keep the variety high. It is completely passable, and that's it.
The best part of this game is probably the soundtrack. It's not even that amazing, but it is at least a shining piece of bronze in the pile of tin foil. Not much I would listen to outside the game, but it's different from the mainline games in a way that provides genuine positive uniqueness instead of trying and failing to imitate the original.
This game is not bad. From an objective standpoint. A robot will give this game a 6/10. But I'm not a robot. I really started getting sick of this game by the 2/3rds point. I stopped caring about style or score because I realized I am never coming back to this game. The gameplay is fine. It can be mildly fun. But there is nothing else going for this game. The script fails to even be funny bad at its most tryhard, it's just one of the worst AAA scripts I've seen. I love games that try so hard and fail so hard. This game does neither. It barely tries and it barely fails. I feel like this game needed a sequel badly, something to cook on the few good ideas from here. But am I glad that we just got DMC5 instead? Absolutely. This game doesn't deserve heaven or hell. It deserves to rot in limbo.
4/10. There are some parts that are good, but the painful sub-mediocrity of everything else drags it down.
As a sidenote, a lot of people judge the game poorly on how it's an insult to the old games. Honestly, I don't care about how the old games relate to this. I didn't make any mind of Inafune because I didn't need to. This game is trying to be new, I'll judge it as if it's new.
Also thanks for the code, Josh
2 Comments
that hook combo went hard
loved every time you unintentionally clipped out of bounds
loved every time you unintentionally clipped out of bounds
eclair
7 months ago