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Devil May Cry 4 First Impressions
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PlayStation 3
First Impressions
by
Jim Rossignol
Let's get this straight: of all the hackandslash games of recent years it's been the Devil May Cry games that have best held my attention. I like their ambivalent tone and their over-designed world: the baroque-modern towns with magic swords and buses. It's a grand contemporary fantasy, and it doesn't falter. It's also a mechanically pleasingly fighting game. Guns and swords: it's all about how the fighting looks, and you have to respect that in a game. Devil May Cry 4 certainly doesn't get shy on that front: savaging multiple enemies with a giant, blazing sword and a gigantic, ammo-free pistol is once again the central beat of the game. The frenzied demon-killing doesn't seem to have lost its touch.
Visually it's impeccable too. The world design is unspeakably lavish, with incredibly intricate fortresses and cityscapes discarded in mere seconds of gameplay. There are some beautiful scenes, typical of this kind of game, where the pacing quietens. Sprinting along a snowy mountainside towards a citadel sees you encounter no monsters, no challenges, as if to let you savour the atmosphere. The final camera sweep in the approach to the colossal castle is a fantastic pay-off to the quiet moments before. I'm a keen subscriber to the Skip-The-Damned-Cutscene school of gaming, but with DMC4 I simply couldn't resist seeing what mad stunts and visual nonsense I was going to be delivered in the video sequences. The opening fight between Nero and Dante is a cinematic showdown worthy of the most insane Kung Fu choreographers.
Of course it's the in-game visuals that really count, and they're generally superb. There are some minor camera annoyances, where the tiniest movements cause it to flick about disjointedly, or simply not show you the monster that the fight-music is telling you is just off-screen, but this never really affects your play for more than a few seconds, at least in the opening few hours of the game. The bosses, once again, are incredible pieces of design. Even the first encounter with generic Balrog type is enough to set your toes tingling with next-generation delight, without ever really pushing things too far. There's never a moment's stutter. It's a game that dwells comfortably within the middle ground of 360's graphical capabilities.
Good stubble.
Anyway, I'm not going to bore you with story stuff, suffice to say that our new character, Nero, who is once again rather like Dante and Vergil in both look and attitude, has a bunch of new powers in the form of his Devil Arm. It's not a major progression from the previous games, but the grapple-hook movement and general baddy-beating you can do with it certainly adds another dimension to the swording and shooting. Nero feels quite vicious to play, and you'll want to stay close to enemies at all times. The swordplay feels even more solid than the last game, with charge-up power-ups once again adding to the "Ooh this will sting" anticipation in the fractional seconds before a big fight.
The one thing that bugged me on my first play, and actually, now I think about it, rather annoyed me in previous games, is just how stilted the jumping is. DMC has this kind of hangover from earlier eras - I want to make the killing far more fluid than it is. I know the 'air-combat' stuff is all-important to the stylish death-deliveries, but there's something particularly awkward about it in this instance. A minor quirk, and one that most fans won't even consider, I'm sure, but still it irks.
Word has it that Capcom intended to make DMC4 easier than the previous games, and I think it has. The lower tier "human" difficulty is eminently defeatable. Perhaps it's not challenging enough, especially since there are only two tiers, amounting to "too easy" and "still quite hard". I'm not complaining though, since I've never enjoyed the most frustrating elements of these kinds of games. I wanted to be cowed or worried now and then, but I don't want to get stuck. Ever. This, of course, could be the kind of thing that gets some minor tweaking between now and release. And that's only the fighting: despite motoring through our first impressions code, I don't think there was anything in terms of the puzzles or physical challenges that I felt really annoyed by - and these are usually the static faults of these kinds of games, whatever the difficulty level.
An early contender for hat of the year.
But then there's this other thing that nags me about my first few hours spent with this game. Partly it's my bearded housemate shrieking over my shoulder and saying rude things about Japanese game design, but it's also the quiet comprehension that Devil May Cry 4 is an incredibly adolescent game. I sort of don't want that to sound as pejorative as it does, but hell, this is such a teenage boy fantasy that it is, at times, flesh-cringing in its audacity. The moment when female executive of the Holy Knights, Gloria, shows up on a snowy bridge wearing a strip of cling-film is astonishing. She's made of Japanese gelatinous lady-physics (you know the kind of hyper-elastic bounce I'm talking about) and - I swear to God - there's a Matrix slow-motion shot up the cleft of her exposed arse. I mean seriously boys, there's exploitative attitudes towards women and there's... yeah. Upskirt bullet-time bum zooms.
Oh, sure, what's so great about reality anyway? It's a fair cop. I'm all for escapism. Let's get the hell out of suburbia by any means necessary, if that means tunnelling our way to heroic fantasyland via the TV then so be it. Just be careful where you end up.
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FabricatedLunatic
24/01/08 @ 08:49
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Can't wait for this. DMC3 is one of my favourite PS2 games and I expect similarly good things from the sequel.
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hana_fubuki
24/01/08 @ 09:11
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Nice preview which somewhat reflects my fears about the game. I'll probably rent it. DMC3 was already "too adolescent" for my tastes (there's "cool wisecracking hero dude" à la Drake, and then there's "cocky arrogant brat" à la DMC3-Dante). Now that I'm even older, I'm not sure I want to pay 60-70 euros for a game that will most likely be nothing more to me than an enjoyable romp - even though Nero thankfully seems nothing like Dante v3.0
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>Dizzy, don't be a douche
You always seem to forget that there are actually people here who know stuff. People who go to GDC and see presentations. People who make games and people who are in the industry. Not people like you who sit behind their PC and *think* they somehow know all this by reading forums all day. All Capcom next gen games are made on the MT framework platform. http://tinyurl.com/yt3a26 DMC is no exception... it has ALWAYS run on a multiplatform engine. There is no lead platform. Only in your fanboy mind. So EG reviewed the version they got first. Maybe the PS3 copy was still installing on the HDD? Now f*ck off to the bridge.
Edited 5 times,
most recently on 24/01/08 @ 10:18
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Kenshin001
24/01/08 @ 10:32
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Dizzy, they used the MT framework because the PS3 specs were not finalized. They began development with the PS3 in mind and when Capcom announced it was going multiplatform it meant they had to rethink their strategy and "it probably required about 1.5 times the work and 1.5 times the ability in order to be able to get everything done." According to the producer anyway.
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anyone else seem to be having trouble with stuff on the market place atm? I can see friends loggging in and out and can access the lists inside arcade/marketplace but when i try to download anything i get some 'blade' error.
Obviously im concerned as i want to be able to get the demo for this today! ;) |
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hana_fubuki
24/01/08 @ 10:52
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Well, after giving the demo a spin, I might have to revise my "strictly rental" stand on this one. I hadn't had this much fun with the franchise since the 1st one. DMC2 was, well, embarrassing, and young Dante ruined the 3rd one for me (despite the obvious quality of the game). I'm probably going to go for the PS3 version, though, for the controller and silent disk drive (yes, that's worth the extra 10 euros for me... btw, does anyone have a valid explanation as to why the PS3 version is more expensive?).
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squarejawhero
24/01/08 @ 11:06
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Wow, the "professionals" in this thread are the worst kind of know-it-all trolls I've ever read. Thank god I don't work in games development if that's the kind of cross-developer attitude that propagates on forums...
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farticusmaximus
24/01/08 @ 11:08
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Arbiter
"I've been employed in the games industry since 1987, and as a result have forgotten more about games development than you'll ever know." Oh my, what an impressive person you are! I guess we should all prostrate ourselves in your presence? No actually, you're just another no-consequence trolling wanker. You are also great at spouting bullshit in an attempt to put spin on comments. It's a multiplatform engine, as much as you would like it to be otherwise. |
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"I've been employed in the games industry since 1987, and as a result have forgotten more about games development than you'll ever know"
Great... I wrote my first commercial game in 1983. :) Never assume anything. Just don't pretend that EG is at fault here because they previewed a 360 version. Capcom wants both version to be identical... so who cares about what version is reviewed? Damn tinyurl. Well try this : http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs...
Edited 3 times,
most recently on 24/01/08 @ 11:25
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@Arbiter & Dizzy
So you both STILL work in the games industry do you? Then please act like it. I'm not sure what jobs you do in the industry. I myself am a programmer by trade with some design experience. All this lead platform stuff is usually put out there for the general public to lap up and fuel the old fanboy blood. If either of you have worked on both the PS3 and the 360, you will know that the teams are seperate because the architecture of the two machines is not compatible. Sure a cross platform engine will list the same feature specs on both machines and should run comparably. The game itself is a series of assets (graphics, levels, sound) and logic scripts that the engine interprets. In this way the game logic runs the same on both machines, the assets are shared so the graphics don't just look the same, they are physically the same (I always get a laugh out of those PS3 vs 360 visual comparisons). The main difference in graphics is simply that the initial gamma on ATI cards is always darker than NVidia cards. Looking at DMC4 and speaking to the capcom guys last year at GDC. They confirmed that there are no differences in either framerate, assets or gameplay between the two versions. They haven't made use of any specialised features of either machine and kept their engine features even to allow for quick and easy porting between the two machines. This is primarily why they can release both games at the same time. In short. Covering EITHER the 360 or PS3 version is irrelevant as both are near damned identical....oh the 360 has achievements for XBox Live but, the same system for achievements is present (though not used) in the PS3 version. I'd be interested in knowing what comapnies you two work for (mainly so that if I'm ever changing jobs I can avoid them!) |
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"@Kryon - why would sony be sending EG a Capcom game? "
I don't know how in EG it works, but my brother-in-law works in a newspaper and receives games from several publishers (Epic; Capcom; Konami; THQ), which are sent from Microsoft to them "for reviews purposes". As a matter of fact, I have a copy of Dead or Alive 4 in my desk right now, with its big yellow label saying "Promotional Copy. Not for resale"
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 24/01/08 @ 12:10
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"I'd be interested in knowing what comapnies you two work for (mainly so that if I'm ever changing jobs I can avoid them!) "
Don't worry... I do mainly procedural stuff now :) You will only find me in mobile/handheld gaming and middleware. Back to the demo. Very smooth... seemed a bit easy though? Not sure about that aspect.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 24/01/08 @ 11:58
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"It's a japanese developed game it's their culture, dead or alive, ninja gaiden, huge breasted anime women etc, you're not....racist towards their culture are you??"
You're still a beginner at this liberty game aren't ya. Racism is one notch down form suppression of liberty. It's often the tool of suppression (nationalism). The individuals rights must be protected from the majority. Wait-a-minute women are the majority? Message to developers:More bullet-time butt shots please and we'll end this damn hegemony. |
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@Arbiter
The only advantage the PS3 version may have is that the game was designed with a dualshock in imind. But the rest is nothing really. Edit Apples lawyers have gotten onto me about my imind and they don't wish to be associated with it. Sorry Steve.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 24/01/08 @ 12:45
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farticusmaximus
24/01/08 @ 12:56
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@headbog
What the fuck are you talking about you stupid paranoid fanboy? We're saying DMC uses a multiplatform engine. Nothing about PS3 bashing. *regrets accidentally viewing forum whilst not logged. Feels better now ignore list is active again* |
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ParanoidZombie
24/01/08 @ 13:07
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Is it me or is the demo very slow? I mean, lots of useless cutscenes, lots of loading times, your enemies look asleep and don't offer any resistance. As a DMC vet, I tried to perform some stylish combos, but all the fights were over before I could get past "atomic" rank.
Maybe I played too much ninja gaiden between DMC3 and this, but this doesn't look like the "heart stopping demon frenzy" they advertised. Even the boss is poor by DMCs standards. |
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farticusmaximus
24/01/08 @ 13:37
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"You say you think EG should give both versions equal coverage, why? It's the same game ffs!"
Abso-freakin-lutely! So how about people start talking about the game, and lay off the GODDAMN TROLLING! |
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farticusmaximus
24/01/08 @ 15:08
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Arbiter - Yes yes yes, snappy comment. I will simply sum you up with 'Fanboy prick'. That will suffice as it pretty much encompasses all that you are.
This article isnt a 'head-to-head', it's about the FIRST IMPRESSIONS of the game, it's characters, design, gameplay feel, etc. Nothing about which platform has the best version, but you just have to bring the trolling. I can only assume you are so sad and lonely that you have to poke your internet stick into that waspnest just to get some kind of human interaction. |
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Arbiter:
Do you enjoy arguing alot? It seems like it. Why dont you go back working on, whatever the game company that has you employed, are working on? This is all a very pointless discussion, as in, it doesnt matter at all. No one of you will change any part of the game by a tiny cockfight. I dont question your "facts" at all, just your couse. This goes for all of you petty fanboys on EG. Yay :) Cant we just enjoy, the demo, of a (supposedly) great game? Please. (And no, english is not my native language so please forgive my spelling mistakes.)
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 24/01/08 @ 16:27
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farticusmaximus
24/01/08 @ 16:22
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@Arbiter
Your first comment in this thread ended with (paraphrased) 'wah wah wah but it's PS3-led, I want my platform talked about instead of the game'. You then follow up with the incredibly arrogant 'I know more about development than anyone else in the universe' making you sound like a complete cock. Sorry, but there are no E-peen points to collect here. Try talking about the game instead of your preferred platform and maybe people will start taking you seriously. In all fairness though, Kryon did get the first shit-stir in.. |
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farticusmaximus
24/01/08 @ 17:23
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@Headbog - You are not only stupid, but a liar too.
Find a post with me quoting MS PR. I defy you. Also, check out the GTA4 thread - first stupid fanboy comment was posted by none other than headbog. You really have stolen the idiot crown from Apologie's wooden head. |
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