Devil May Cry reviewed

At the turn of the millennium, Capcom was hard at work at making Resident Evil 4. However, they found out it wasn't really developing into a real Resident Evil game but Capcom decided to spin this game off into its own entity. That entity became Devil May Cry and it launched a franchise of over-the-top...well everything. However, why there was a franchise ever happened is questionable cause this game is, without a doubt, the most overrated game made for the PS2. So let's dig in to Devil May Cry as we find out why.

So a thousand years ago, the evil demon king of the Underworld, Mundus, was out to take over the world. So the great warrior Sparda goes out to stop Mundus's evil plot with his trusty big-ass sword Sparda and Martial Arts & he succeeds magnificently. A thousand years later, his son Dante is out running a demon killing business when some chick named Trish literally comes crashing through the front door and says she can get him to the guys who killed Sparda. It's at some castle at some island and Dante is thrust into a situation where he has to kill everything with his big-ass sword, his handguns and Martial Arts.

Graphically, this game does hold up. The character models are pretty good but there is one flaw, Trish's hands. In once close-up near the end of the game, it's really off-model and it looks really bony and not in a good way either. Other than that, the models are distinctive and there's pretty good effects with some of the enemies like fire and a shimmery, ghostliness that some of the ghosts have. The setting itself has a very palatable atmosphere and there are a few instances of the player getting goosebumps, especially in the mirror world and the Underworld. The graphics were never really revolutionary but they do the job in a very well-done manner.

One of the greatest strengths of Devil May Cry is that it is a loving tribute to B-movie sensibilities. The dialogue is amusingly horrible, the action is frenetic cheese, Trish is either your friend or enemy whenever the plot says she she is and the voice acting is equally cheesy. I'll tell you two example of it's awesome camp. At the start of the game, well the first part after the introductory voice-over with Sparda, has Trish jumping down onto some street by the Devil May Cry building. Somehow she gets a motorcycle and, like I said before, crashes into the building. Dante, without missing a beat, says that the bathroom is in the back. Then they talk and then Trish throws Dante's sword at his heart! Then she goes and throws the motorcycle! But Dante uses his demon powers to stop the motorcycle and shots it away with his guns! The second scene happens at the end of the game...well, to explain it in detail would be spoiling it. But there is a line of dialogue so woefully delivered it's become infamous, the "I was the one who was supposed to fill your dark soul with LLLLLLllllllIIIIIIiiiIIIIIGGGgggHHHHttttttTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!" I think I may gotten a running gag....maybe, we'll see.

So with all this praise I've been giving it, why do I call this the most overrated game for the PS2? Simple, the game play is absolutely, positively and undeniably horrible. The first thing is that game is repetitive, both in structure and in attacks. The game is mission based and it's basically "Get this item and place it at some spot to advance." The attacks are either hack-hack- slash, shoot-shoot-shoot and punch-punch-kick and while there are some special moves, they're not that important and hard to work, I can never get that Round Trip to work and you just hold the damn circle button. The camera is just broken with the old-school Resident Evil cameras, where it's just one static shot that changes when you cross some invisible threshold and that's fine for Resident Evil. You're not jumping or actually in close-combat situations, you're running away from things. But in Devil, the cameras make it near-impossible to make jumps as well as you need to and make things much harder when you're fighting whatever it is you're fighting.

Also, remember that multitasking problem I talked about in my review of Musashi: Samurai Legend? Yeah, that problem appears here as well and it's even worse here cause the combat is intense enough where you really can't wait for the pause screen to come up or you'll die a horrible death. This isn't the 8-bit era, these things should not be happening with our fancy new systems. And speaking of intense combat, you know that blocking thing that we all love....yeah, you can't block here. That's right, with all that combat Capcom thrusted upon the player they thought "Hey, blocking's overrated anyways." I mean what would God of War be if you couldn't block...or had Devil May Cry's camera system? It would be that Hades level all the time, remember how much that sucked? But the fatal flaw for Devil May Cry is that it's way too freaking hard. Now, like I said before that a hard game is not a bad game. Look at Jak II, that was hard but it wasn't frustrating. You can power through the hard stuff in that game with enough fore-knowledge of the game. In Devil May Cry, the game takes sadistic delight in beating you up and cheating while doing so. You never get the feeling that this game plays fair at any point in the game...ever. You only kill something when the game feels like throwing you a bone.

Like I said, people truly love this game. I just think that those people have never played the game or just saw the cutscenes on the internet. Those people have never know the horrors of trying to do a precise jump or not dying needlessly through savage beatings due to a pause screen that never comes. It's just sad that everything that isn't about the gameplay is awesome. The graphics, the cutscenes, the dialogue in it's own way are great so why can't the game itself be great? Also, I guess I would play the sequels cause I know there's a great game there. It's just not in this game.

4/10