Well the demo is out on both Xbox live and Playstation network, i'm hyped and personally owned the demo in record time. However bragging isn't why i'm here, well it is but i wanna tell you about the game too.
Devil may cry 4 is a sequel to devil may cry 1, yes thats right for those who are confused the continuity is: 3,1,4,2. Great ain't it! For the second time in the series Dante is not the only playble character (excluding secret characters and special edtion dmc3), infact Dante isn't even the main character, instead we have Nero. Nero looks lime dante in dark blue leather and Dante now looks chunkier with stubble. Nero somehow early on gains a devil arm which acts as your style button for those that played dmc 3.
The demo offers 2 modes, one is a 10 minute timed version of what i imagine is level 2 or 3, the other is a non timed run up to and including a boss.
Number one first: When i first downloaded this i played it on a standard defintion tv and my first impression was not great. It looked like a slightly better looking version of devil may cry 3 and i mean slightly. Then i came very quickly against my first standard enemy, the music kicked in with heavy rock and the beautiful animations of the new game overwelmed the initail disapointment. Nero plays very similar to dante but the control scheme has been refined yet again to open up new combo possiblitys. The Devil bringer arm works as a throw button in all honesty, but it looks awesome and well definatly be upgradable with other abilities.
Combat was fluid music was good, all was well until you realise how much empty space there is and no enemies, i have a feeling this level was chosen for the demo because of this to show off the enviroments as well as the combat but i couldn't help feel dissapointed i wasn't up to my ears in death. Thankfully a new feature where when you run for about 3 seconds you break out into a sprint gets you through alot of these desolute places in no time.
at one point you get a new upgrade to the devil bringer which grabs enemies and well brings them to you ironically, this did seem a bit over powered as while not doing any damage it does break any animation the enemy was doing essentaily making ti exploitable. This ability also acts a kind of grappling hook to get you around certain enviromental puzzles (if you can call them that). one other feature worth mentioning was the new rev up on your sword, Nero doesn't have a devil trigger (Dante turns into a demon for those blasphemers that didn't play the others) so he had to get something else. By tapping L2 Rapidly you rev up the moter bike handle on Nero's sword (yes moter bike handle) which powers up and does more damage to you attacks and modifies some striking moves. However i found it clunky and slowing down combat so i stopped using it.
Strangly when you get through the meat of mode 1 you actually teleport to mode 2 but still with a time limit, only true masters can do this and beat the boss at the end in time...........*looks smug* 3rd attempt people
Mode 2 starts in a snowy mountain and has you fight a couple of snow lizards some will recognize from devil may cry 1, the have been tweaked and are great fun to fight. You eventually end up fighting Behial the flaming demon seen in the trailers. It looks epic, it feels epic and no game has ever let me own something that hard in the face and jump up and down, it actually felt more satasfiying than God of War and there wasn't even any gore.
Later i went home and ran the game through my HDTV and the game looked fantastic leaving me to wonder how such a big difference can exist between a little upscaling. Release date for Ps3 and 360 is now the 8th of Feb. Ps3 is meant to have a marginally better frame rate, however both have special edtions and well worth a buy as it comes with the first 4 episodes of the DMC anime aswell. This Party getting crazy
Kikari
This party getting crazy indeed.
When my brother buys I think Im gonna commandere the ps3 for the day and play it ^^
Xeall
So it came out yesterday and for reviewing purposes i have completed it already! Thats my excuse for spending 12 hours staring at a screen without eating and only the occational ciggy break. It turns out it was well worth every minute.
I won't bore you with the same stuff i wrote up on the demo so here is a couple of bits of note. The graphics have been upped even from the demo which looked amazing. No next gen game moves this fast keeps its frame rate 99% of the time and has a dozen odd enemies on screen at once. Lighting has been sorted, edges, textures and animations have been polished to the finest of shines.
After what can only be described as 'I just shat myself with excitement' intro, you are thrown into the game with a fantastic tutorial as new boy nero squares of versus a very relaxed looking Dante. After a fantastic looking and incredibly hard for a first level fight you get into the main game, starting from the demo level. I'm just going to point out here i played through the game on devil hunter difficulty as i assumed this was hard mode compared to human which i assumed was normal, so if i say it was hard you now have a refrence to difficulty.
The game plays out very well soon establishing the well known capcom tradition of a big halled building being the place your going to be coming back to alot. This does become somewhat annoying trying to figure out which way you are meant to go but within 15 minutes you should have a rough idea and double that and you know it inside out. Combat evolves at a steady pace introducing new enemies just as your getting comfortable. It does this through out the whole game which came as a bit of a shock being on the second to last level and still getting new enemies thrown at me.
The voice acting is some of the best i have yet to witness on a japanese game (so not including uncharted). Dante is still voiced by the guy from DMC3, but he has blatently had voice acting lessons since as he now really nails the older dante and his dry wit fantastically. Nero is as whiney and as sharp as you would have hoped and the bad guys are just a brilliantly done really bringing that extra level of depth to the experiance. Only one boss stood out to me as being badly voiced and you'll know it when you see her.
Now onto Nero and how he develops after the demo level. In short he plays better than Dante, that hurt to say but its true. Nero has gained from being a sequel to DMC3 as they have made whole new combos. No longer is it just hold back on the stick while aiming, no we have press back then forward while aiming. While this sounds like nothing it effectivly doubles the amount of combos you can pull off. When you add in his devil bringer arm with differant throws per enemy and that doesn't include.......wait thats a secret i'm not telling for the sake of storyline.
Nero unlike dante does not get any new weapons. Throughout the entire game he only get his sword and double barrelled revolver named respectivly: Red queen and blue rose. The gun has the basic of functions firing slower than dantes dual pistols (unsuprisingly). Red Queen however has the most amount of combos seen in a DMC game to date. Delays and the afore mentioned back to forward moves comibined with a wicked array of ariel combos and throws makes every fight a joy.
Now onto the Old boy Dante. He becomes the playable character about halfway through the game. Dante still has his 4 styles from DMC3, however now you don't have to pick one! All 4 styles are now on the d-pad so you can change on the fly, but more importantly in the middle of a combo if your good enough. So thats block them with royal guard, pop them into the air with sword master, jump above them with trickster, hail bullets with gunsliger and change back to royal guard to release the energy from the block in their face. Hell yeah you look good. However some moves are no longer present in styles, for example trickster no longer can run up walls. Again 'however' there are now 4 levels to each style instead of 3 adding some new moves. Royal guards picture for level 4 looks like you turn into sparda, which just has to be done even if royal guard is crap! I should point out here as i forgot to earlier that when you take over as dante he feels slow and limited comapared to the new boy. It really takes some time to ajust to his play style and lack of air combos. You soon learn dante is stronger and pummles opponants about the place.
All moves for both characters are no longer gained from experience or red orbs. At the end of every leel you still get a rank but now you get proud stars for your rank to boost you move list. Red orbs are only now used for buying items. Every time you buy a move the price of the other moves goes up meaning you have to be selective of what you want. All proud stars you earn as nero transfer to dante for re-spending and visa versa.
The story was great and i unlocked a ton of stuff when i finshed for replay value through the roof. Online ranking just makes you feel sad that there are 7000 japanese people better than you.
In sum up the game is fantastic and a well deserved addition to the series, that nearly tops DMC3 but just doesn't have that pazzaz that DMC3 hit me with. still well worth playing for new comers and veterans alike
However bragging isn't why i'm here, well it is but i wanna tell you about the game too.
