Tag: devilmaycry

Game Of The Year 2019

Now that 2019 is drawing to a close it is time for the first ever but highly prestigious David E game of the year awards. As with any personal game of the year list there are great games from this year that I will have inevitably missing, but even so I think I have three fantastic games taking the medals, so without further ado let’s give out these prizes.

Bronze: Luigi’s Mansion 3

You find an office chair so you suck it with your vacuum to make it spin and you get rewarded, you see a magic box with a saw in it so you alternate sucking and blowing to cut through it and you get rewarded. These are a couple of examples of what I absolutely loved about Luigi’s Mansion 3; the experience of searching an environment for secrets. This was so much fun especially going through it in co-op with another person we didn’t run into a scenario that had us decrying it as dumb and making no sense, even when they are more hidden there was always a clear line of logic to follow behind the solution that made sense in the levels setting.

The levels themselves provided great variety to this, the game is set in a hotel where each floor has its own distinct theme as a couple of example; one floor had a magician theme an another had a medieval setting, each floor varies a lot as does how they hide the secrets within them. All too often in games the environment is just set dressing or built around combat encounters so it has to be applauded when one comes along that has such deliberate and excellent level design.

Silver: Devil May Cry 5

Devil May Cry is one of those special series to me, after playing the first I spent a lot of time on a Devil May Cry forum in my early teen years and kept the online moniker Nero Angelo for years. However I was one of the few hardcore fans who didn’t hate the DmC reboot, despite that I am so glad I live in the dimension that got Devil May Cry 5 instead of DmC 2.

This was exactly the return to form that fans wanted, we now have 3 playable characters Dante, Nero and V who all feel distinct. Dante is the classic over the top stylish weapon switching combat that the series is known for (though he does have a new feature I won’t spoil). Nero is again a more new player friendly character only having one melee weapon and one gun, though this time he has limited resource breakable robotic arms that add a more controlled level of complexity and variety to his gameplay compared to Dante since they aren’t freely swappable. V is the new character and plays quite differently as most of his damage is done via summoned creatures rather than directly himself.  V is probably the weakest gameplay of the three but they have a distinct quality and flair to them.

The game has a bunch of design choices that really charmed me; it is full of so much fan service other than 2 the whole of the series is referenced (even the anime), the taunts are really well done with the highlight being one Nero has where he puts on the hood on his jacket which then stays on until it is knocked off, hell they even add a mechanic for Nero right at the end of the game that is then a new mechanic to consider when replaying on a higher difficulty.

Graphically it is stunning really showing the versatility of the RE7 engine, Devil Trigger is a great song that you should to anyway, and the new female character Nico was great, I had been so disappointed in 4 when Kyrie was just a damsel in distress with no personally so I was thrilled that the new character was a return to form for the series. The short of this is if you were ever a DMC fan you should give 5 a go.

Gold: Astral Chain

It’s funny I wasn’t overly excited for Astral Chain, it looked interesting enough and was by Platinum so I took the chance on preordering it, coincidentally I had a week off work after it came out it sucked me in and I spent most of my week playing and beating it.

For DMC5 I said V’s gameplay was the weakest, well Astral Chain showed how to pull that kind of gameplay to its best. In a very pretentious way I describe characters action games as being a violent game, to stretch that metaphor even further here rather than a solo dance you have a dance partner. You are tethered to a kind of ghost monster called a legion, the legion will attack on its own if near an enemy but you have to control its movement and positioning bearing in mind that is relative to your own due to the chain. That chain itself can be a weapon as well; stretch it out between the two of you when an enemy charges at you and you can slingshot them back or wrap it round an enemy to temporarily bind them. This game feels different to a lot of action games because positioning is so important.

To facilitate having to handle two characters the combat is simplified for each, rather than remembering long combo chains the focus is instead on utilising a range of options. By the end of the game you have 5 different legions you can freely switch between, each of these can be equipped with 2 skills that you control the execution of, as well as a unique ability that combines them with your character, it for the sword legion you perform a Metal Gear Rising style slowed time slash or for the best legion you ride them. The fun of the combat is that you’ll keep between which legion you are using and how you are fighting to add some real variety to the combat.

Astral Chain has another side to it as well; you play as a cop so there is a detective side. This is there to contract with the action heavy segments by providing many quieter sections. It’s strange as on the surface people tend to think that all killer no filler is the best approach but here the contrast from these sections just heightens the feeling of excitement in the action parts, and that is why it managed to snatch the gold medal away from my beloved Devil May Cry series though in retrospect maybe I should have given it a platinum medal

Well that was my 2019 game of the year however as a very cheap person a lot of games I play are from previous years so next week I’ll be giving out the awards for the best old games I’ve played in 2019.

Devil May Cry 2 – I May Cry Too

Rather than port the Devil May Cry HD Collection to the Switch Capcom are instead releasing each of the original PS2 trilogy separately. This means that Devil May Cry 2 has been released on its own again last week, please learn from the people who fell for it the first time, do not buy 2 on the basis of liking the first game. Devil May Cry 2 was handed off to a different development team who fundamentally misunderstood Devil May Cry. Today let’s look at exactly went so wrong with Devil May Cry 2.

If you think of Dante’s character design on thing that might jump out is iconic weaponry, he carries a sword and his twin handguns Ebony and Ivory. The thing is in the first game the sword and it’s melee combat was the star of the show and the guns were used more as an accessory to it, being used to keep enemies in the air or maintain your combo while an enemy was at range. In 2 they’ve shifted the focus over to the guns and the truth is that the gun gameplay is not good. Devil May Cry is not a shooter, it does not have the depth of a shooter; the guns have an auto aim system and infinite ammo so you don’t have to consider aiming or reloading at all, it literally just descends into mashing the fire button which isn’t exactly a riveting experience.

Even if the gunplay isn’t great if the melee combat was still intact from the original that could redeem the game but it is compromised in so many ways. In the original’s castle setting you often fought in smaller more cramped spaces, 2 opens up to a larger environment with fights now taking place out on town streets, the consequence of this is there’s now more space between enemies and when they are sent flying by your attacks they travel further away from you so to keep the combo going you have to use your guns. Further compounding the issue is the auto lock on system, the camera ties its focus to the enemy you are attacking and when that enemy is sent flying the camera is dragged away right with them, so if there’s multiple enemies around you this creates a definite risk of being blindsided by an off screen enemy (this risk does apply when just shooting enemies). The worst design choice affecting the melee combat is how many enemies are simply out of reach, there’s numerous flying enemies with the most egregious example being the infested helicopter boss the genuinely spends most of the fight flying off screen so you just can’t use melee combat.

That was the crux of why melee was a worse option but the combat itself was also weakened. The weapon variety keeps the games theme and focuses on guns over melee, there’s a selection of swords but they are only differentiated by stats, by comparison the first game had a set of gauntlets you unlocked that played differently but 2 does not have this kind of variety. It also seems that the sword combat itself is downgraded with moves from the original that seem to be totally absent like thousand stabs. Now in the interest of fairness there is a second character Lucia who is on par with Dante’s gameplay but has different weaponry, and there is also Trish from the first game as an unlockable character who I’ve heard plays more like Dante from the original but I’ve not tried her myself as it would required playing through Dante’s campaign again to unlock and I just don’t want to do that, plus even if she plays better there’s still all the design choices that hurt the melee combat.

Unfortunately there’s other problems with the rest of the game as well. Its design is pretty dull; most of the environments are just brown and grey, and a lot of the bosses designs are unremarkable with them being things like possessed buildings and vehicles which doesn’t live up to the designs of the first game, like how it’s first boss was a lava spider. Well I tell a lie there that boss is reused in 2 despite already fighting them 3 times in the original. The last big problem is Dante himself, now to be totally fair in terms of design this is Dante’s best look bur his personality has taken a real downward turn, the cocky joker from the first game is gone Dante is now quiet and serious. I get why they’ve done it Dante is meant to be “cool” and the strong silent type is another “cool” character trope, but it just isn’t escalated well and doesn’t fit with the established character.

As a final point the game is really short, it only takes around 2 hours to beat the Dante campaign but I struggle to call that a negative, it seems more like a mercy. So instead of playing Devil May Cry 2 you should instead play the waiting game for the Devil May Cry 3 release, the great redeemer game that showed what a Devil May Cry sequel should have been.