I had a chance to sit down and play the DmC demo that was released yesterday. I’ve been watching DmC since they announced it. Initially I thought it was going to be terrible but as time has progressed, they’ve improved it quite a bit. Still, I wanted to try it for myself. Thankfully they’ve given us that opportunity…so here I go.
The Story
Obviously since this is a demo we’re not getting the whole story here. But it does give a glimpse into it by showing us the same stuff we’ve basically seen in the trailers already. Imagine the movie They Live with demons instead of aliens. Bam! Dante is a half angel, half demon (instead of half human/demon like in the classics) and gets drafted into The Order, a demon fighting agency, by Kat and his twin brother Vergil. And so his adventure begins. In the demo Dante slaps an energy drink out of someone’s hands and the cameras go crazy, lock onto Dante, and Limbo comes to life trying to destroy him. The second stage you can play is Dante vs the Succubus (here forever known as The Slurm Queen), the one who makes the energy drinks that the unsuspecting public are drinking.
I can’t really judge the story too hard because we don’t have the whole picture in the demo. However, the Slurm Queen story has already been done by Futurama. In fact, that’s pretty much the entire plot of one episode where the Planet Express crew gets to visit the Slurm factory. It’s almost like the guys at Ninja Theory watched that episode and went “we HAVE to have Dante do that!” It’s kind of lazy.
And don’t get me started on the dialog for the Slurm Queen boss battle. Every other word is a profanity. Which, you know, as much as I don’t really care for lots of profanity, we’re all adult. A little bit would be fine for this new re-telling of Dante since it’s supposed to be set in a more realistic world. People curse in the real world, so it wouldn’t be out of place in DmC. The problem is that they went the lazy route and made them curse back and forth to each other like they were trying to imitate the Angry Video Game Nerd or something. Not EVERY word needs to be an EFFFFFFFFFF YOUUUUUUUUUUU!
The dialog for the rest of the demo is fine though.
The Graphics
The graphics are very pretty, as expected from Ninja Theory. Dante still sort of looks really bland when compared to his environment though. Having said that, Dante doesn’t get lost in the background though–at least not on the two levels that we have access to. I never had trouble following where my character was, is what I’m trying to say. Limbo looks really shiny. The HUD looks kind of dull though. I’m not really sure what else to say about the graphics right now. lol
Gameplay / Controls (PS3 version)
The meat of any Devil May Cry game is not the story but how the game and combat controls. People really play DMC for crazy stylish combos and to destroy monsters left and right. This game obviously has a new take on the controls which can be a little annoying to learn when you’re so used to playing the other DMC games (especially if you’ve played them recently like I have).
Let’s start with the actual controls first. In classic DMC you had one button you could hold down to lock onto the enemies which would allow you to perform certain moves (like Stinger). This game throws the manual lock out the window and replaces it with an auto-lock. The hard lock button is now a dodge button (muchlike DMC 2). In most of the classic DMC games you could swap weapons by hitting R2 and L2 to cycle through. This game is a bit different in that you have to hold down the button to use to that weapon. It is a little weird at first but after a few minutes you get used to it. Because you can hold it down, it’s easier to swap weapons (simply release it to return to Rebellion or hold down the opposite trigger to swap to the other weapon). In the classic games you’d have to cycle through and I remember on DMC 4 being annoyed when I couldn’t get to the weapon I wanted fast enough (3 didn’t really have that problem as much since you could only carry 2 at a time). Here it’s actually quite seamless to switch between the three allowing you to do some funky combos.
Devil Trigger has been moved from L1 to pushing in both stick buttons at the same time. L1 has been replaced with yet another dodge button. I never found it very hard to hit R1 while holding L2 or R2 so I’m not really sure why we need two dodge buttons. I also don’t like that they took the taunting button out. Circle no longer does any kind of cool special style related move like in 3 and 4 but has been replaced to be a “launch into the air” button. Goodbye Trickster, I’ll miss you!
With all that said, what about the most important aspect? The combat! A ton of people were complaining that the combat feels slow, unresponsive and just unlike DMC. I really don’t know what drugs they’re on because it felt fine to me. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m NOT the greatest Devil May Cry player on the planet. In fact, I pretty much suck at it (especially 1 & 2). So maybe if you’re an expert at DMC and know the good tricks like jump canceling you might complain, but for an average Joe player, it seemed fine by me. It didn’t feel sluggish to me at all.
The main complaint I have with the combat is that it seems like Ninja Theory wants you to spend the entire game up IN THE AIR. This is pretty evident by having the dedicated launch button and how the devil trigger flings everything helplessly up into the air. Aside from Devil May Cry 4, most of my combat in the other DMC games was spent on the ground. Sure, they all had the ability to fling stuff up into the air for you to juggle, but I never really did that much unless I just wanted to get something out of the way for a moment (crowd management). This game seems the complete opposite. They WANT you to be up in the air more than on the ground. Was I doing the other DMC games wrong?!
The difficulty is a little hard for me to rate right now because I’m still playing the demo on the normal mode to get used to the controls. I will say this though, the only times I really got hit and hurt was due to me making a mistake–player error. The enemy AI doesn’t seem to be all that aggressive/tricky. A little more practice with the controls and combat and I’m pretty sure I could beat the first level without getting hit. As for the Slurm Queen boss, the boss fight was a little boring after the initial time you knock her down and pull the cord (or whatever it is that’s attached to her). It’s repetitive. Her attack pattern doesn’t really change. I manage to beat her on the first try (which kind of shocked me). By comparison, Cerberus (the first boss in DMC 3) beat me down so hard that I didn’t even know what hit me.
Here’s a quote concerning the boss and the difference between DmC and DMC 4…
I read that and that pretty much sums that aspect of it up pretty good. I feel sort of the same way. You had to practice the buster in DMC 4 and know when you could grab the bosses and it was always really cool to grab the bosses and slam them into the ground or whatever. When Nero stops the Savior using his buster it just made you feel strong. This boss fight never really made me feel “strong” like that. It just felt repetitive.
But this is only one boss in the game and it’s one we’ve seen over and over via gameplay videos and trailers. So we’ll see how the rest of the game stacks up.
I could probably go on here about the platforming sections but this is going to be kind of long and I want to move on. 
Music
The music of the Devil May Cry series has never bothered me, no matter what it is mainly because after a while you tend to just block it out. I honestly don’t even remember what DMC 2’s music even sounded like, despite playing that game not too long ago, for example. This game seems to be full of wub wub wub screamo, but again it doesn’t really bother me. It’s probably better than what I was expecting, lol. So yeah, music is sort of a non-factor for me. If the full game does turn out to have lots of horrible music, I can always turn the music volume down and listen to the radio or something while playing. Not a big deal.
Final Thoughts
So yeah, there’s a few thoughts I had on the DmC demo after playing it for a little bit. I will probably continue to play it for a bit longer to practice the combat and controls some more.
Is it worth paying $60 for the full game based on this demo? To me, not really. I think it will be a decent game–certainly better than DMC 2–but I don’t think I’m going to spend that much money for it. When it gets to $30 or so, I will probably pick it up and give it a whirl. If nothing else, I’ll pick it up for the Vergil DLC story that they’ll be releasing (that one looks pretty awesome).
For anyone who’s on the fence about this game or hates it just because it’s not classic anime-style Dante, I say at least TRY the demo and see what you think. Who knows, you might actually like it!
