Devil May Cry

DMC's roots began when Shinji Mikami's team began to draw up Resident Evil 4 Ц however, Mikami changed the plans midstream and decided to take the base of RE4 and develop it into a whole new series with a completely different plotline. The plot revolves around Dante, a half-man, half-demon, all badass, the son of Sparda, a legendary Dark Knight. Sparda was the man responsible for saving the world from being taken over by Mundus, who's pretty much the Devil. Now, 2,000 years later Mundus is trying to take over again, and a mysterious woman named Trish enlists Dante to stop this from happening. Dante is perhaps one of the coolest characters ever created Ц a smart mouth, smooth look, and the Terminator style of shooting his shotgun and reloading. He oozes coolness and is the anti-Claire Redfield, the meek, scared human trying to survive. Instead, Dante welcomes the battles and rips the shit out of everything that crosses his path.

Make no mistake about it though Ц DMC is far from Resident Evil. The only real similarity is that Capcom publishes it, and Mikami's team put it together. Comparisons between them are unfounded, due to the many differences in playing style. Instead of putting you in charge of a weak, more УhumanФ hero, you get to control an ultimate badass in Dante who has no fear whatsoever. And instead of running away from enemies to conserve ammunition, you are encouraged to fight and destroy everything that moves, and the best part is, there is no ammo limits. It's an endless stream of shotgun shells and grenade rounds, with no need to hunt for more. This is a pure action game.

Of course, you don't have to use guns all the time; Dante can take advantage of his Demon powers to slice through the missions by using his Alastor sword (the other swords doesn't let you use the Devil Trigger), or punch and kick your way through by using the dual gauntlets named Ifrit. And you can switch between Alastor and Ifrit at the press of the R3 button (also known as the right analog stick), reducing the amount of time fooling around on the menu screens. Thankfully, DMC doesn't fall into that trap of being too repetitive, for a game of this nature, because of all the different ways you can kick ass.

Finally, the Alastor and Ifrit give Dante some extra powers in his Devil Trigger. Once the trigger is filled after beating enough enemies (or getting a Devil Star to fill it completely), a press of the L1 button transforms Dante into his demon form for a short time, giving him eve more powers to obliterate the enemy. This also slowly rebuilds your health as long as you aren't getting hurt while transformed. This comes in handy with the tough bosses (and I mean tough).

Devil May Cry is split into 23 total regular missions, and many tough secret missions that are unlocked depending on what mission you are on. Despite the mission-based format, DMC still retains the same typical traits of those games that don't have levels per se, just one long game. Instead the missions tell you exactly what to do instead of running around town figuring out what to do next (like Silent Hill 2). Some missions are pretty long, some are rather short, but include a boss battle to make up for it, which may take a lot of your time before you figure out how to correctly beat the boss and its pattern.

Throughout the game, Dante collects orbs. Lots and lots of orbs. A majority of them are of the red variety, but in other cases, Dante will find green orbs for recovering health, blue orb fragments to increase his health meter, and yellow orbs for continuing the game in case you don't survive somewhere. Along the way Dante can find other useful items like Holy Water, Untouchables, and the aforementioned Devil Stars. Of course if you cannot find them, you can trade your red orbs in at the end of levels (or at a God of Time УstoreФ) for these items (which I guarantee you will need for the bosses), or you can purchase new abilities for Dante's sword and gauntlets. I've found that the new moves are not as important as the health and damage items, and you can blow through the game without buying abilities. However they're there if you want them.

When playing through Devil May Cry, the impression you're playing a 3D version of Castlevania is at times evident. A huge castle with tons of enemies and challenging bosses, as well as the platform jumping is familiar, but it doesn't make DMC seem like a rip-off of that series. There isn't much emphasis on puzzles at all; which is about right for a pure action game. There are some puzzles, but they're extremely straightforward and almost hand-holding in nature. But the fact is, this game is all action, and putting in tough, mind bending puzzles that take hours to solve would destroy the fast paced flow that DMC exemplifies, in the same way giving unlimited ammo forwards the game along. DMC manages to balance this really well Ц in some cases solving a puzzle is only solved by beating a boss; combining the two seamlessly.

And for the action, let us just say this game is hard. REAL hard. Like the old school games with a giant wad of enemies, DMC rushes at you mercilessly and without remorse. Rarely will you have a few minutes of rest from action, and it seems as if you're always encountering enemies at the worst possible times. As you progress you come across more and more variety in enemies, as well as increased challenge. Sure, the Marionettes aren't going to be a problem, especially when you can blast them in one shot from the Grenade Gun, but the new enemies like Fetishes (no idea where that name came from) and the tough Frosts, as well as the Nobody enemies. Yeah, that's the name of one of the toughest regular enemies.

But the stars are the bosses. Not only are the bosses tough, most of them are HUGE. Without spoiling the game, you'll be amazed at the size of most of them, besides Nelo Angelo, who you saw at the end of the DMC Demo. They are hard, but not in that УcheapФ hard that many games throw together nowadays. Instead, it's hard as in getting destroyed if you don't figure out the patterns and plan the proper strategy. And there's the oh so important weak points that most bosses don't have anymore. Instead of just firing at something until it blows, you can iron out the weak spots and attack. Each fight has different strategy and is a lot more than just blasting at something until it goes down. This is the old-school way of doing things, and they way it always should be.

What's more, beating the game unlocks even harder difficulties Ц regular old Hard, as well as the vicious, torturous, insanely hard Dante Must Die difficulty. DMD is the ultimate; if you can beat it, you are the master of your domain, for sure. Thankfully, if you can't handle Normal (the default), you can unlock Easy by dying a few times and continuing, in the same way Onimusha unlocks its Easy level. In Easy (known as Easy-Auto), the enemies are simple and Dante's moves are done automatically. However you get nothing for beating the game on Easy, so I suggest not worrying about it and sticking with Normal.

What's great about this game is the variety Ц besides the usual 3D running around, there are a few elements of platforming games, as well as the cool underwater areas where you can get a Needlegun and knock around the baddies. There's a couple more game styles thrown in, but it would ruin the game for you, so you'll have to find out on your own. I promise it's cool, as all of DMC really is.

Summing up DMC comes out as: cool. Just cool. A hack & slash type game such as this is a danger for getting repetitive, but it never does, due to the weapon variety, as well as how damn cool it looks to slice and dice. And you're rewarded points for style combos; so the better you look tearing up the enemies, the more points you get. It doesn't affect the ending, but it's good bragging rights. You do get ranked at the end of every mission, however, based upon things you do within the missions; how fast you get through, how much damage you take, and what kind of special items you used. The better you do in all areas, the better the ranking. And the higher ranking you get, the more red orbs you get, and the more red orbs you get, the more stuff you can buy. It's a cycle that works wonders and increases replayability.

Speaking of replay, one knock on DMC is you can probably beat it pretty fast. I'd say first time through, you'll get by in 10 hours or so. Once you know what you're doing, you can get done in three. However in a game like this, 3 hours is more than enough, and is so rewarding you can't help but not want to play through it again and again, on the hardest difficulty levels. Saying the game sucks due to length is shallow and unfounded Ц and think about this; I can beat Super Mario Bros, on of the best games ever, in less than an hour when motivated. It's the perfect length and gives so much replay that you'll be playing for quite a while, just to test all the moves out.

Visually, Devil May Cry is hands-down the best-looking PS2 game out right now, ahead of ICO. The level of detail is amazing; taking a look into the Cathedral and seeing the huge temple and the bluging vines holding it up is a sight to see. The rest of the levels, a lot of times, you'll want to stop and take a look at how nice it all looks. The characters, especially Dante, are well animated and put together with serious style. The effects from boss fights and such are also wonderful and are sure to wow most gamers. Yes, there is a little staircasing going on (jaggies), but it doesn't make much difference. No matter, the game still is incredibly fun and that's what counts.

The sounds are great, in a cheesy way. Dante comes off as a major badass smartass the whole game, laughing off challenges and dropping witty comments along the way. There isn't a whole lot of dialogue, but what is there is pretty well done. The background music is really low-key stuff Ц until the enemies come calling. Then it changes into a cheesy guitar riff that repeats with almost every battle until the halfway point, and then it switches to something else. If you don't like cheesy rock (and I do) you won't like, but what plays when you aren't fighting might satisfy. The other effects like swords clanging and guns shooting are also done quite nicely.