Archive for January, 2008

Being a hardened Devil May Cry fan, I downloaded the demo from the Japanese Store as soon as I got home from work yesterday afternoon and I wasn’t disappointed!!

You have the choice of two missions: Exterminator which is a level set in Fortuna, where you face the usual type of DMC demon scum within a 10 minute time limit, and Executioner, where you battle the Frosts and face off against the awesome looking Berial!

It’s not really two missions though. If you’re fast enough/good enough to beat the Exterminator mission before the time runs out, you will go straight on to the Executioner mission.

You play as Nero, who looks like a very youthful Dante. Nero obviously doesn’t have the same move set as Dante but he kicks arse in a similar spectacular fashion. The main difference is his Devil Bringer techniques which are pretty awesome.

You can grab enemies by pressing circle and slamming them into the ground, which is a very powerful move known as the Buster. You can also grab enemies that are outside the range of your sword and bring them to you using the Devil Bringer technique Snatch. Just lock on to them and press Circle.

The cool thing about that is you can do some great looking combos by switching to your swords or guns, to kick the crap out of them. You can even pull enemies up to you while you’re in mid air to deal out some mile high arse kicking!

You can also use Nero’s Devil Bringer technique, Hell Bound, to make big leaps across gaps you would not be able to get across. It looks cool and is a nice addition to the gameplay.

Nero’s sword techniques are similar to Dante’s. Holding R1 to lock on to an enemy and pressing Triangle will launch Nero into a Streak attack, which will flatten any enemies caught by it. Hold R1 and pressing triangle, while pushing the left stick away from an enemy will launch them into the air (High Roller), where you can continue your combo.

You can avoid attacks by holding L1 and pressing X. You will roll in whatever direction you press the left stick. Handy for when you face the Frosts.

DMC4 plays like a DMC game should. If you’re a fan of either DMC or DMC3/SE then you will feel right at home with DMC4. The combat is awesome fun, everything looks great, the visuals are excellent with a lovely smooth framerate. Some people had problems with Berial’s entrance but it was fine for me.

The sound and music is classic DMC fare, so if you didn’t like it in the previous games you won’t like it now.

My biggest gripe is that it was too easy. I didn’t get hit until I faced the Frosts and that was only because I used the sword rather than grabbing them, which is the better technique to dispose of the Frosts.

The reviews all seem to point to DMC4 being easier than DMC3 which is strange because DMC3 wasn’t hard. It looks as though they are catering for a new audience so have lowered the difficulty by a couple of notches. I hope Must Die Mode is more challenging though.

It looks as though DMC4 will live up to my expectations (lowered difficulty aside) and it’s got the makings of being just as fantastic as Devil May Cry and I can’t wait to get my hands on the full game on Feb 8th (hopefully the 7th )!