The New--What the Hell?

Up above is the man in charge of the new UK-developed Devil May Cry.  You can go to GameTrailers to hear him talk about the inspirations behind Dante's radical redesign.  Or you can not waste your time, and instead just take a look at his mop.

The New Whatever

It was not long ago, on this very blog, that I was saying that I didn't think Dante was cool anymore.  Now, as if in response to that, Capcom has unveiled a brand new Dante.

This emaciated, vampiric Dante will be starring in DmC, a series reboot from English developer Ninja Theory (Heavenly Sword, Enslaved).

At this stage, it's really too early to tell if this is an improvement or not.  I kind of dig the new, more urban duds.  His signature bold red is still there, but it's more subdued, and the overall ensemble is sleeker and less showy, more casual--a good fit for his lankier frame.  Check out the trailer, and you'll see that Ninja Theory's take still has all the right moves (no actual gameplay footage, however) and retains at least some of that swagger that DMC2 Dante was so sorely lacking.  The hair and face are startling, however, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Setting aside good or bad, it's just shocking that Capcom would essentially jettison (or allow Ninja Theory to jettison) the iconic look of one of its most recognizable characters.  That they had to bring in Nero with DMC4 already suggested that maybe the material had run its original course, and the series was due for a hard reboot.  I would have been okay with tossing all the existing mythology and supporting characters (Trish, Lady, Nero, Vergil), but here they have seemingly gotten rid of Dante himself, replacing him with a different guy who only happens to have the same name.  What makes this weirder is that the old Dante (in his DMC3 incarnation) and Trish are going to be in next year's Marvel vs. Capcom 3, giving the impression that Capcom itself isn't clear on its direction for the franchise.

The trailer is somewhat ambiguous, so I suppose it's possible that this guy is just some psychotic who only thinks he's Dante.  If the "real" Dante shows up later, in a similar capacity as he did in DMC4, then that could even be a cool twist.  Of course, Hideki Kamiya will tell you that the only "real" Dante is his DMC1 self (although I'm not sure how much of a hand Kamiya really had in designing Dante in the first place).

Whatever.  Mixed feelings on new Dante aside, the trailer looks, yes, cool, and I'm looking forward to seeing more.  Honestly, I'm more worried whether Ninja Theory will be able to capture the deep combat of the series's better installments.  I played a bit of Heavenly Sword, and it seemed pretty shallow to me.  On the other hand, a more mainstream, casual Devil May Cry might not be a bad thing, so long as it's not like DMC2.

Death of the Cool

Gameplay should be what counts in a fighting game, yes, but one of the reasons I have not been able to deem Street Fighter IV the definitive Street Fighter actually has nothing to do with how it plays.  It's the art.  More specifically, it's the character design, which is and always has been the other crucial component of a fighting game--that element that can earn a title tons of devoted fans who will never compete at a tournament level, but who will cosplay as their favorites and build shrines to them.

Obviously, SFIV contains mostly characters that were designed more than a decade ago, but these are still new takes, some of which I find to be quite disappointing.  Ryu is a bit thick, Sagat looks like a dummy, and none of the females are attractive.  To be fair, many of the other characters are spot-on, but the goofy Chun-Li and haggard Rose are probably the worst they've ever looked.

None of that really compares, however, with SFIV's wholly original additions to the franchise.  Hakan would be the most acceptable if he weren't inexplicably orange, but Abel, El Fuerte, Rufus, and Seth are all hopelessly lame.  That leaves the girls, Crimson Viper and Juri.  These are two characters who could look good someday, but my initial impressions of both were that they were uninspiring attempts by Capcom to create King of Fighters-style "cool" characters, and they simply lacked that SNK magic--that certain je ne sais quoi--that identified a true original.

But, y'know, since thinking that, I've gone back and replayed a lot of SNK games, and I've come to the conclusion that those originals were not that cool either.  Or, at least, if they were cool once upon a time, then that time is long past.

Sure, King of Fighters has always had its dud characters, but I seriously used to think that its better characters were the coolest in any video game.  The unyieldingly derisive Iori Yagami was a particular favorite of mine.

Looking at him now, I have no idea what I ever liked about him, and I just feel embarrassed.  Even among the official art, there is almost no piece that manages to make his hair work.  And why are his knees tied together?  How is anyone supposed to run like that, let alone jump and kick?  He doesn't seem built for street fighting, though he's hardly alone in that.

What is wrong with Iori is pretty much what is wrong with all of the characters in King of Fighters; these designs were made for the runway, not the ring, and their obsolescence was built-in.  Unfortunately, SNK Playmore hasn't really kept ahead of changing fashions, and the latest designs are among the series's worst.  Or maybe I'm the one that has no fashion sense.  Actually, there's no "maybe" about it.  But I think I'm just tired of the whole blasted fashion model street fighter aesthetic.  Now I just want fighters to look like fighters, as they did back in Street Fighter II.

To be fair, it's not just SNK that has failed to age with grace.  As another example, take Dante from Devil May Cry.  Here's another guy I used to think was badass.  But lately I've been playing a lot more Western-developed shooters, and when I put him next to a guy like Marcus Fenix, I realize that Dante is truly not that far removed from the typical effeminate JRPG hero.  He's stupidly good-looking, wears flashy clothes, and spouts some embarrassing dialogue.  I wouldn't call Marcus Fenix "cool," but in the context of a gaming landscape filled with space marine-type characters, Dante seems less than manly, and surely that isn't cool.

So what is cool now?  I have no freaking clue, and I'm not sure I care anymore.

Bayonetta

Bayonetta is like "Ultraviolet: The Video Game," only not quite as cool as that sounds.  But Bayonetta's eponymous heroine does have Violet's inhuman fighting abilities that test even the camera's capacity to keep up, her proficiency with the blade, her wicked gravity powers that allow her to walk on walls and ceilings, an outfit of comparably temperamental fabric, a motorcycle, and a somewhat annoying and unwelcome child tagging along.  I'm pretty sure there's even an amateur "Gun Kata" moment in there.  And Hideki Kamiya's latest game is even more frenetic and nonsensical than Kurt Wimmer's 2006 film.

Bayonetta is, of course, the latest work by Hideki Kamiya, the creator of Capcom's Devil May Cry, which in 2001 established a new standard and mechanical vocabulary for 3-D third-person action games.  The seminal game was a critical and commercial success, but Capcom then shockingly handed development on the sequel to a different team.  Kamiya was disappointed with the decision, players were disappointed with the new team's product, but then the series rebounded as the DMC2 team found its way with DMC3, after which most of us moved past the fiasco, and so too seemingly did Kamiya, as he went on pouring his passion into Viewtiful Joe and Okami instead.  By the time DMC4 came out in 2008, this was all ancient history to most fans.  But then came the unveiling of Bayonetta, Kamiya's first project since leaving Capcom.  The similarities to Devil May Cry were impossible to ignore, and players were once more intrigued by the idea of what could have been, had Kamiya been allowed to make the sequel to his game.  Now that we may finally have the answer, was it worth the wait and the heartache?

Kamiya's spiritual successor to Devil May Cry is leagues better than DMC2.  Put it next to the original Devil May Cry, stellar in its own time, and you'll find Kamiya's new game to be a more robust, vastly more refined experience.  Indeed, had we gotten Bayonetta back in 2003 instead of DMC2, I'm sure it would have been amazing.  But that's not reality.  The reality is that this is 2010--nine years and three Devil May Cry sequels since Kamiya's PS2 hit.

The near-flawless DMC3, which I consider the peak of the genre, captured most of what made the original great, then made significant tweaks and additions--most notably, the chapter select system encouraging replay--to produce an overall more solid, more playable game.  Bayonetta is a very good action game, as was DMC4, but its only substantial evolutions upon the original Devil May Cry are features that were already implemented in DMC3.  Technological advancements allow for some flashy new set pieces, but the gameplay feels fundamentally just like DMC, now a somewhat tired, distinctly last-generation game.

Even taking these games out of their respective historical contexts, I think Bayonetta would be merely on a par with DMC3 and DMC4, but not necessarily better.  The real-time weapon switching is nowhere near as tight as in DMC3, and without DMC4's handy Devil Bringer to reel enemies in, it is again sometimes cumbersome having to chase enemies down.  Despite possessing a ton of weapons, each with accompanying massive move lists, Bayonetta also doesn't seem to have as many impressive or obviously useful special attacks as Dante or Nero.  Devil May Cry is similar to a 2-D fighting game in that respect, outfitting its characters with big utility maneuvers--the lunging Stinger, for example, or the enemy-launching High Time--whereas Bayonetta, despite feeling very similar, is more like a 3-D fighter such as Tekken, where instead of having special moves, the player is supposed to string together regular punches and kicks in different sequences to different effects.  It's not that one approach is necessarily better than the other, but just as I will always take Street Fighter over Tekken, so too do I prefer Devil May Cry to Bayonetta in this respect.

As in Devil May Cry, there are additional moves to be purchased in Bayonetta, but whereas Dante never felt "complete" until he had his full arsenal, somehow I never felt, in Bayonetta, like I needed to exert myself even so far as to utilize all of the weapons I found incidentally.  I beat Bayonetta on normal difficulty--the highest default setting--never spending a dime except on the air dodge maneuver.  I did not buy any other items or abilities, nor did I go out of my way to search for hidden items or optional challenges.  Even with my Bayonetta at less than half of her maximum potential health, I never felt greatly challenged.  I must credit this to the game's very generous checkpointing, which will sometimes even restart the player in the middle of a multi-phase boss fight.  There was only one boss--the second fight with the giant infant whip-head--that somewhat confounded me, but instead of slowing down to figure it out, I just used a single healing item--the only one I would use during my entire playthrough--and powered my way through.  I know that's not how these games are meant to be enjoyed, and I'm sure I did miss a few things by not shopping, but the game itself didn't really encourage that.

The most significant point of divergence from DMC is in how Bayonetta stresses defensive play.  The DMC sequels were all offense except in boss battles, but Bayonetta requires a more attentive, defensive mindset even against regular enemies.  It's nothing as severe as Ninja Gaiden, but the central mechanic of Bayonetta is the dodge maneuver.  Nearly all enemies have attacks that cannot be interrupted and will, in fact, deflect any attack of yours.  The goal is to sidestep these attacks, and if the dodge is performed just before an attack is supposed to hit, Bayonetta will activate "Witch Time," completely freezing all enemies for a short period, during which you can assail them without reprisal.  The timing required to activate Witch Time is much more generous than for similar mechanics in other games, such as DMC3's Royal Guard block ability, so even mediocre players should be able to pick it up within a few minutes of play.  Pay attention instead of mashing buttons, and you'll find yourself stopping time with regularity against even imposing boss enemies.  When you do manage to thus neuter a boss, it's uniquely empowering, but that feeling comes at a great cost.  In requiring that you make such specific use of the dodge against even basic enemies, the game forces you to play a certain way, meanwhile discouraging the sort of experimentation and improvisation that are so much the heart of Devil May Cry's combat.  That's probably why I didn't bother shopping for moves or exploring the combo system more deeply, instead mostly just relying on dodging and the basic punch-kick-punch combo throughout the entire game.

I did mess briefly with the one-handed Easy Automatic mode.  It's pretty cool and does genuinely allow even the feeblest of players to make it through the game, so that they can, ahem, just enjoy the story.  DMC3 and 4 may not have been sophisticated literature, but they were pure narratives that presented their themes cleanly and effectively.  Bayonetta's story is complete bunk.  Neither is the plot ever even vaguely comprehensible, nor the cinematics sufficiently impressive, outside of maybe two or three noteworthy action cut scenes.  Most annoyingly, for a story so devoid of sense, there are some surprisingly lengthy and dialogue-heavy scenes to be had.

Another area in which Bayonetta differs from DMC is the camera.  Kamiya has traded the fixed camera locations of the DMC games for a user-controlled, character-centric camera.  This has a subtle effect, more so on level design than on gameplay.  With the fixed cameras, DMC was often constricted to filling its maps with lots of corridors.  Many of the more open environments, meanwhile, were just three-layer constructs, with a clear background and foreground, while the audience formed the fourth layer viewing from beyond the performance area.  Bayonetta doesn't have to thus take the audience's limited viewing angle into consideration, so its stages can be more fully three-dimensional.  So that fountain, for example, can form a more organic piece of an interactive environment, rather than being strategically placed for best eye-catching effect.  What this camera really exists for, however, is the "Witch Walk," Bayonetta's single coolest mechanic, which allows you, at specific points in the game, to defy gravity and walk on walls and ceilings.  As you transition from one surface to a perpendicular surface, it is the world itself that appears to rotate around your character.  The game's highlights are the battles with Bayonetta's rival Jeanne, during which both characters Witch Walk from surface to surface as they trade blows.

The anti-gravity business contributes to a perhaps deliberate softness in Bayonetta that, along with its vivacious new heroine, gives the game a personality subtly distinct from the harder-edged Devil May Cry.  This can be felt in the jumping, which is floatier, ironically closer to DMC2.  In the rest of the DMC titles, Dante could buy a second jump, but with or without it, he still had to rely heavily on his handguns to give him some extra hang time against ground threats.  It made for one of the coolest effects in DMC, the idea being that it was only the recoil from his pistol fire that kept him afloat against ever-present gravity.  DMC2 Dante's double-jump, on the other hand, involved some kind of magical float ability, as though he were conjuring wind beneath him, and Bayonetta similarly is able to sprout wings to gently glide short distances.  As for Bayonetta's handguns--functionally closer to machine guns--they deal more damage than Dante's, but they don't integrate very naturally into melee combos and are hardly necessary for combat, which makes them hardly necessary at all, since they aren't needed to augment Bayonetta's jumping.  Witch Time, meanwhile, is functionally similar to Viewtiful Joe's VFX Slow ability, though also somewhat the opposite.  Joe used his ability to slow down time in order so that he could dodge bullets and other fast attacks.  For Bayonetta, time slows as a result of dodging.  In the former case, Joe is having to make the most of his powers in order just to survive.  Bayonetta, meanwhile, is practically baiting attacks so that she can dodge them and activate Witch Time as a reward.  Whereas Dante and Joe seemed to always be walking a razor's edge, Bayonetta seems more out on a casual stroll.  (It also feels counterintuitive, to me, for time to slow after you've already dodged that (figurative) bullet, although I'm obviously nitpicking to call the game out on that.)

Finally, if you're one of those Devil May Cry fans who loved the first game but wondered where all the really zany stuff went in the sequels, then Bayonetta may be the game you've been waiting for.  What Kamiya offers that the DMC sequels have not is the completely random gameplay non sequiturs--points where the game will suddenly depart from the regular action gameplay and instead switch to some extended mini-game.  There's a motorcycle stage, a rail shooter stage, and other wackier sequences.  When Devil May Cry pulled this in critical, even climactic, moments, it was shocking, but a part of me had to smile and tip my hat at the sheer nerve of Kamiya to simply discard all the deep combat mechanics that the rest of the game had spent hours drilling into the player.  The rail shooter stage in Bayonetta is unfortunately much longer and more full of distracting special effects than Devil May Cry's, however, and whatever novelty there is to it wears off well before it's over, leaving the player just a pretty shallow and annoying shoot 'em up segment to endure.

If all you've been waiting for is an action game as good as the original Devil May Cry, then you've been waiting needlessly, because Devil May Cry 3 already was that game.  Bayonetta, like DMC4, is just more of the same, and the amount of enjoyment you derive from the experience will depend on your appetite for that kind of comfort food.  But if you are a hardcore fan of this hardcore genre, then the emergence of a worthy new contender in Bayonetta--much more a direct Devil May Cry competitor than Ninja Gaiden or God of War--is surely welcome, even if it doesn't revolutionize the formula.

Heaven or Hell

With console shooters really having come into their own this generation, more traditional third-person action games have seemingly become a little less relevant. 2008 gave us Devil May Cry 4 and Ninja Gaiden II, but reception for those entries was less warm than for their immediate predecessors, and the general opinion seemed to be that the hardcore combat action genre had grown stagnant. This year's best combat action game was Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2--really a rather sad comment on the state of the genre. Next year, however, we will be getting three major new releases by the end of March. I tried out the demos for all three recently. Here are my impressions:

Bayonetta

Based on the gameplay footage I had seen previously, I was expecting just a faster version of Devil May Cry, and that is essentially what the demo feels like, though I wasn't quite prepared for just how fast the game really is. That blistering speed, combined with some crazily over-the-top effects, makes the action pretty hard to follow, but I suppose it will just take some adjusting to.

Like Dante, Bayonetta fights with a combination of melee attacks and guns. She is able to switch weapons in real time, and with the added ability to pick up enemy weapons, the impressive branching combo system eclipses even Capcom's recent entries in approaching the depth of a fighting game. Some vaguely God of War-esque prompts for execution sequences adds some cinematic flair.

Right now, I just have two major concerns.

First is the art. Bayonetta herself is certainly one of the more original designs in a long while, but I can't say I'm particularly a fan. She's not cool like Dante, and her looks and speech are too overtly freaky to be attractive. Enemies and locations, meanwhile, seem much more generic in that Japanese CG way, and the angelic motif seems a little too close to Devil May Cry 4, which is comparatively more elegant. Looking at DMC4, Ninja Gaiden II, and now Bayonetta, I'm beginning to think, more than anything else, it's really the stylized art that is growing stale in this HD generation where more realistic aesthetics are in vogue.

I'm more anxious about the camera, though it may well prove to be the most evolutionary aspect of Bayonetta. Unlike Devil May Cry and every other top tier entry in this genre, Bayonetta utilizes a user-controlled camera. With the action being so intense in these games, I think most developers have concluded that it's asking a bit much to have the player operate the camera in addition to their character.

I'm not sure Bayonetta offers any new solution, but the more dynamic camera seems justified once into the final stage of the PS3 demo, which introduces the "Witch Walk" mechanic. As characters walk on walls, it is the entire room that seems to rotate. Transitioning from floor to wall feels surprisingly natural, yet the visual effect, highly evocative of a stage from The Legend of the Mystical Ninja for SNES, keeps the concept as exciting as it should be.


God of War III

My only previous experience with the God of War series was my having played the demo for the first game. My impression of it was that it was a more mainstream version of Devil May Cry, and that more or less describes the God of War III demo as well.

It's fun, but the combat does feel much simpler compared to Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. It trades the deeper combo systems of those games for the variety of more immediately gratifying gimmicks like being able to ride and command a giant. Both of the melee weapons in the demo seem designed for flailing around in all directions, and I don't think there is even a way to target a specific enemy, but most of them arrive and die as packs anyway. It almost feels more like Dynasty Warriors than Devil May Cry, but it avoids feeling repetitive by mixing in some non-combat gameplay moments.

The demo ends with a flying sequence that plays out very much like the Death Star trench run from Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, where you just constantly progress forward at high speed while steering clear of oncoming obstructions. That was a technically problematic sequence back on the GameCube, and the more powerful PS3 hardware can't really fix the inherent difficulty with that design. Kratos at least doesn't explode immediately on impact, but the close, behind-the-back angle presents serious depth perception issues--it's very difficult to gauge the distance to the nearest oncoming object, as well as the distance between that and the next closest object. This is one mechanic that I think could work beautifully, however, with that future 3-D (I mean the glasses, not polygons).


Dante's Inferno

EA's series of questionable marketing stunts has barely kept on the radar what has otherwise largely been dismissed as a shameless God of War ripoff.

Dante's Inferno wears its inspiration on its sleeve, sporting familiar combat and enemies, a similar grab maneuver, dodging with the right analog stick, the same style of cinematic QTE executions, and even a sequence in the demo that has you riding a giant enemy. I also find it hard to believe that, when this game was pitched, nobody stopped to point out that there was another well-known, mechanically similar title starring a popular character by the name of Dante.

So Dante's Inferno offers nothing new or better, and its hero may not be winning any "best new character" awards, but, based on the demos, I would not exactly consider Bayonetta or God of War III revolutionary either. Clone though it may be, EA's game is at least well-produced and very convincing in its exhibited understanding of the formula. As one more title to occupy the most ravenous of action fans, it won't have much of a lead against God of War III next year, but it will have a huge advantage in being a multiplatform title.

My concern is that it may be just another Rygar: The Legendary Adventure.

The first really accomplished Devil May Cry clone, Rygar had high production values, rock-solid frame rate, and the same perfectly responsive controls as its obvious inspiration. It was a very fine game, but I bet it made for a great demo. At first glance, Tecmo had almost flawlessly replicated the basic mechanics of Capcom's seminal hit, but the difference between an original and a knockoff became apparent as you got further into the game. As you whaled on the same caterpillar enemy over and over again for the adventure's meager five-hour duration, it was clear that the developers, driven by the motivation just to ape an existing title, had gotten only the skeleton but lacked the vision to layer on meaty substance. Hopefully the Dante's Inferno team can do better.


No, not one of these games actually seems any better than Devil May Cry 4, which wasn't much different from Devil May Cry 3. I'm still waiting for one of these games to include a full-on co-op mode, which would constitute real progress in my opinion. I mean, in the 2-D era, a one-man beat 'em up would have been considered worthless.

Nevertheless, playing these demos reminded me how much I personally still enjoy this formula. I came away feeling very good about all three games, and it's just a shame that they are all being released in such close proximity to one another. I don't know that even my interest will last through all three of them.

Some Guy Reacts to Month-Old News

About a month ago, Hideki Kamiya, director of PlatinumGames's upcoming Bayonetta, unveiled his game's "Very Easy Automatic" mode.

Players of Kamiya's Devil May Cry may remember "Easy Automatic" mode. In the original Devil May Cry, if the player struggled in the early stages, the game would make the one-time offer to switch over to "Easy Automatic" difficulty. "Easy" was self-explanatory, but "Automatic" was an additional setting that activated auto-fire on Dante's dual pistols. That was all.

With Bayonetta, Kamiya has gone quite a bit further to design an action game accessible to players of all skill levels. Not only does the easiest difficulty apparently feature regenerating health and pathetically weak enemies, but the new Automatic setting allows players to play with only one hand.

In the demonstration video, the player essentially just presses the "punch" button repeatedly, only switching to the kick for certain special attacks. The AI automatically homes in on enemies, even jumping when necessary, and performs appropriate combos. Noting that you can still manually take over movement or turn off Automatic mode entirely at any time, Kamiya describes it as like "a helping hand from an incredibly skilled expert in the game."

It sounds a lot like the theory behind the "Demo Play" feature that Nintendo has patented for use in future titles. Demo Play will supposedly allow players to hand off control to the AI any time a game becomes too difficult to get through manually. Nintendo hasn't provided any demonstrations yet, but I can think of any number of past games where the AI didn't seem to know how to play very well, so I'm intrigued to see how this turns out.

Some old-school gamers, however, worry that this will mean the end of challenge, or even interactivity, in video games. Bayonetta's Automatic mode at least is still run on the player's repeated pressing of the punch button, but it's clear from the video that the manual input is effortless, the engagement practically nonexistent, yet the onscreen action is highly complicated. To be sure, there could be ill consequences down the line to this catering to the lowest common denominator. But, for now, I'd like to just think of it as an extra option, and I'm additionally excited about the possibilities raised by Bayonetta's take specifically.

Just in the demonstration video, one can see the potential for Automatic to be utilized as a "live demo" mode. A player could play the game with one hand while using the other to point things out in real time. It would make for a much more natural presentation than having to stop and go constantly, or having a second guy doing the talking while the dude with the controller is stern-faced and silent in concentration.

That would really be more helpful for a producer than a consumer, but the idea could be further expanded in ways that I think players could have fun with. Remember the "cinematic camera" mode in Grand Theft Auto III? Set to dynamically cut to the most dramatic angle available to produce film-like camerawork, it could create for some striking shots, but it also rendered the game practically unplayable, since the most cinematic angle rarely provided the most informative view for gameplay. I think the idea could work, however, if paired with the simplified control mode of Bayonetta. With the AI handling most of the work, the player would be at ease to better appreciate the visuals and camerawork.

Taking the concept further, a developer could implement a full-blown "director" mode. Map all the normal gameplay actions to a single button, and don't even bother making the player press it repeatedly--just make it a "go" button that, when held down, tells the AI to play. Then the remaining buttons could be dedicated to enhanced camera controls. While playing the game with one button, the player could simultaneously rotate, pan, zoom, or cut to different angles. Why would you want a mode like that? Well, you probably wouldn't want to play a game that way, but it could provide a nice option to explore a game's visual assets in new ways. A player could use it to grab some dramatic images, or frame footage that could be edited together for, I dunno, a fan-made music video. It would be like the replay mode in sports games, except it would be even more dynamic, since you could act while operating the camera, instead of just reviewing recorded actions. Metal Gear Solid players could finally get those impossible gameplay angles that Hideo Kojima uses in his highly directed trailers.

I'm also thinking of the unlockable "audio commentary" in Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader. It sounded like a cool idea, but then I watched my brother turn it on. You could only run it during a mission, and, once in, my brother had to pause the game for the duration of the commentary, because he could not concentrate on both listening to the audio and surviving the action. That struck me as really lame, because clearly the point of having the audio accompany gameplay was to match the finished work in action with behind-the-scenes discussion from its creators, a la a DVD commentary. But my brother was pretty good at the game, so if even he was reduced to listening to it while staring at a static pause screen, then they probably would have been better off just making a documentary video. As it was, the best way to enjoy the commentary was probably to have someone else play the game while you got to listen and watch. Again, Bayonetta's Automatic mode would allow the concept to work much better. The talk could be appropriately synced to gameplay, but an AI assistant would let players devote more attention to listening, less to performing well.

Although, in theory, "Very Easy Automatic" and "Demo Play" are meant to aid unskilled or casual players, things like audio commentaries or a director mode would only be of interest to hardcore fans. I hope developers are considering options along those lines, because I think there could be plenty of promising applications to truly suit players of all skill and enthusiasm levels.

Resident Evil 5

I've now completed Resident Evil 5 both in single-player on the PS3 and split-screen co-op on the 360. I had a lot of worries coming into this one. Especially after the lame Degeneration movie, I was perturbed by the loss of Shinji Mikami's authorial vision and by what I perceived as a selective amnesia regarding the franchise's female leads. While I still have some qualms with the latter, the game is certainly a better product than Degeneration, and, overall, I'd say it does the series proud.

The major complaint against the game and series continues to be with the inability to move and shoot, but I maintain that RE5 doesn't need such functionality, and it has nothing to do with me being a stodgy traditionalist. I'll use it if it's there, but I've always been mildly annoyed at the absurdity of circle strafing in a lot of first-person shooters, while, in more realistically paced titles, shooting with any degree of accuracy while moving is rarely practical anyway. In Gears of War, the whole cover mechanic--now a staple of the third-person shooter genre, which does not quite include RE5--was obviously implemented specifically to direct the player away from desperate and ineffectual run-and-gun tactics.

Moreover, I'll continue to insist that dual-analog controls are not natural by any means. While single-stick movement may feel archaic to post-Halo FPS veterans, I suspect it would be much easier to grasp for everyone else. I think RE5, in its own way, as a title developed in Japan, where the FPS is still a niche genre, actually targets a broader audience, beyond just shooter fans. That said, the developers did include two dual-analog control schemes, and, while I would have liked fuller customization options, it's better than nothing. Since there's still no way to shoot while moving, the only real advantage is the ability to strafe. I imagine that would help in dodging projectiles, but I stuck with the RE4 controls I was accustomed to, and I never felt like I needed more.

Dispensing with the typewriter save system, RE5 adopts Devil May Cry 3's mission and checkpoint structure. About half the length of the overly long RE4, the full campaign is divided into several chapters, with a few checkpoints and save points per, and completed chapters can be revisited at any time to gather loot or just to improve your rank. As in DMC3, the chapter select option doesn't get enough credit as a simple yet brilliant way of encouraging replay, especially in conjunction with the extremely addictive weapon upgrade system. For better or worse, the format of linear, self-contained chapters is one of a number of changes that places the series now firmly apart from adventure and into the action genre, but it is one of the most consistently playable (and replayable) action games I've come across. Granted, I haven't yet played Gears of War 2 or Dead Space, which I hear are RE5's nearest competitors in its class, but I did very recently play through both RE4: Wii Edition and the first Gears of War, and I think RE5 definitely holds its own as a must-have addition to the library.

The biggest change, provided you have someone to play with, is, of course, the addition of two-player co-op. Multiplayer was never something I thought would fit in a main RE title, but playing through RE5 with another person is a blast. I do feel, however, that it's a sort of one-dimensional delivery of fun.

What little adventure aspects there are in RE5 don't really survive into the co-op play. One of the great benefits of any multiplayer experience is the sheer energy provided by the presence of another live human being, but it can also be awkwardly isolating if, at any time, you begin to feel like you're having more or less fun than the other person. Taking time out to forage for items or read documents can really kill that energy, so the inclination is to keep pushing forward with the action. As a consequence, you would likely miss out on many treasures and large chunks of the plot. While the documents are less numerous than in the older games, each file is far lengthier to compensate, making for some long waits whenever the other person decides to flip through twenty pages of text. It's also a shame that they do not get saved for future access, so, if you want to know the story, you have to search them out and read them as they appear. And what of the character profiles that unlock after each chapter? When in the co-op game am I supposed to read those?

The series's traditionally strong sense of immersion is never complete when you have another live human grounding you in the real world. The story, for example, is not any smarter in single-player, but it's far easier to become absorbed in it, since the impulse toward snarky commentary tends to just fizzle out when you don't have an audience. Also, through my single-player playthrough, I gradually came to regard Sheva's AI routines as aspects of the character ("She's got some skills, but she lacks experience. She needs to learn to calm down and ease up on that machine gun trigger."), adding another dimension to her personality, whereas, in co-op, the characters don't have personalities outside of cut scenes because, during gameplay, my partner is just the person I'm playing with. My point is that, while co-op is a fantastic experience, it does necessarily come at the expense of many of the qualities--ambiance, immersion, narrative--that had previously made for strong single-player adventures.

Opinions vary wildly as to whether the AI Sheva is smart or stupid, but I found that, provided you understand how she operates, she is much more a help than a hindrance. Most of the time, the AI is simple yet effective. When set to "Attack" mode, Sheva mercilessly hunts down enemies with no regard for the ammo reserves. I found it more prudent most of the time to leave her in "Cover" mode, keeping her close so that I could more easily heal her if needed or, as was more often the case, so that she could provide quick aid when I got into trouble. Even in "Cover" mode, she tends to burn through the ammo, but, otherwise, she requires very little babysitting, and my personal assessment is that things go more smoothly the less you worry about her and the better you handle your own end. On Normal difficulty, I took care of most of the fighting and let her handle all of the healing, but certain enemies--even some bosses--are actually easier if you drop back to the supporting role and allow Sheva to take point. In some ways better than a human player, she rarely misses and has no blind spots. She can also see in the dark and instantly pinpoint weak spots through the sometimes overly intense graphical effects.

Problems only really arise when specific gameplay sequences trigger contextual AI programs that override her basic behavior. I recall one hairy situation after Sheva operated an elevator that carried me to a higher platform. While up there, I ran into a pack of tough enemies, and I decided that it would be wiser to jump back down to ground level so that Sheva and I could fight them together. As the enemies followed me down and I stood my ground, I quickly found myself overwhelmed and alone. Where was my support? As it turned out, the moment I jumped down, Sheva had decided to run off to recall the elevator, and she was still at the controls waiting for me to get on again. Helping me to survive against the immediate threat was apparently not a priority. That scenario paled, however, in comparison to the boss fight immediately after.

In a two-on-two fight, one tank-like enemy continuously stalks you about the stage, while a second shoots at you with automatic weapons. It's almost like taking on an RE4 berserker that's being backed up by a Gatling gun guy. Oh yeah, did I mention this tank enemy has complete frontal invincibility? And it shoots at you too. It's a tricky fight in any event, but, in single-player, it becomes an absolute nightmare, and the greatest enemy is Sheva's busted AI. She automatically goes after the gunner and routinely gets shredded by bullets. The problem is that, for no logical reason, this event-specific AI program overrides even her impulse to heal herself. But you can't just stick close to her with herbs at the ready, because, all the while, the tank is pursuing you, and the only way to stop it is to lure it into a maze where you can wrap around and get behind it. The sadistic setup forces you to separate from Sheva, but she can't survive for very long on her own. Madness, I say! These moments are the exception rather than the rule, but they do stick in the mind.

My bigger issue with the game had to do with the real-time inventory system. While it makes sense in co-op as another mechanism to keep players from interrupting one another, it prevents you from enjoying the full variety of weapons. In single-player, it's imperative that you equip the pistol, shotgun and rifle. I usually assigned my last shortcut to either the handy stun rod or the boss-slaying magnum. With this setup, it's the grenades that fall by the wayside. Against large packs of enemies, when grenades would be most useful, the cumbersome inventory system rules out manually equipping them under such pressure. Basically, I never equipped grenades mid-fight, instead only chucking them at the beginnings of engagements, regardless of their strategic appropriateness, because I found my inventory overflowing with them. In cases where, in RE4, I would have used grenades, I just had to rely on the shotgun, and, quite often, I would end up discarding grenades to free up space for more ammo and herbs. Oh yeah, the AI Sheva is not programmed to use grenades, so it's pointless to give any to her.

Some occasionally obscure boss battles and lethal cut scene QTEs notwithstanding, RE5 is primarily a series of great set pieces. I'm not sure if there are any as dynamic as the barricade cabin from RE4, but there are a few that definitely come close, and the power of current-gen technology introduces some new possibilities. Some may lament that the switch to bright outdoor environments ruins the horror atmosphere, but the reality is that darkness has always been easier, whereas RE5 handles light as no game I've seen before. While the cut scenes--generated in real-time but looking about ten times better than the gameplay graphics (or Degeneration, for that matter)--are naturally stunning, for me, the most striking moment in the game came when we charged up a mountainside with the midday sun shining fiercely in our faces, practically blinding. Even though it made aiming harder, it was a gorgeous effect unlike anything else I've come across.

Removed from the horror elements, RE5 is definitely a departure from the classic narratives of survival. Even RE4 began as a rescue mission that ran into numerous complications along the way to extend the length of the adventure. RE5, on the other hand, is a proactive extermination mission. While I miss those old feelings of despair eventually giving way to hope and escape, since it is now an action game, it's better that the plot should be on the same page. Besides, I don't think horror could ever work in a co-op game.

Would RE5 have been a better game under Mikami's direction? I now realize that's not a fair question. Perhaps RE5 is not the visionary masterpiece today that RE4 was in its time, but it is nonetheless superb. Co-op play provides an amazing experience that is almost another game apart from the single-player, and, even though RE5 is far shorter than RE4, I can see myself spending more time with it thanks to the replay-friendly design.

The Essentials #22: Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening

The first Devil May Cry was a genre-redefining title credited with bringing the intuitive and addictive gameplay of classic 2-D action games at last into the realm of 3-D. Weirdly, in the vein of such 8-bit franchises as The Legend of Zelda and Castlevania, the series saw a sophomore effort that deliberately deviated from many of the aspects that made the original great, producing, in the case of Devil May Cry 2, a sequel that was vastly inferior. Just as quickly as the first game had some reviewers prematurely calling for an end to clunky Resident Evil-style survival horror titles in favor of Capcom's new strain of character action, the lackluster sequel left players coldly declaring the final failure of the experiment that had been DMC. Luckily, as it would turn out, DMC2 sold well enough despite poor critical reception to save the franchise from going the way of Dino Crisis. For the third outing in a row on the venerable Sony PlayStation 2, original creator Hideki Kamiya would not be returning, but the DMC2 team would be given a second chance to make the game theirs, and, this time around, their commendable sensitivity to player feedback would guide them in turning out a sequel that would take the series back strong to its roots while making many improvements to nearly perfect the formula.

Like the original, 2005's Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening was a character action game set in a Gothic castle. Within the 3-D environment, progression often relied on lock-and-key objectives as routing mechanisms, though the game was neatly broken up into missions of varying lengths, and although they were mostly set within the castle, many stages were also self-contained, while the remainder at least featured clear directions, so that wandering off course was less of an issue than in the first game.

The return to smaller, more enclosed spaces shifted the combat focus back to close-range melee attack combinations, and Dante's arsenal grew substantially by the inclusion of five distinct melee weapons, compared to the original's two and DMC2's one. While none of them were as extreme as the Inferno gauntlets of the first game, each by itself still offered just as many techniques as Dante's traditional sword, including branching alternate combos that were performed by carefully spacing out button presses, as opposed to just tapping repeatedly as quickly as possible. The major new breakthrough, however, was the advent of on-the-fly weapon switching. Players were allowed to equip Dante with their choice of two melee weapons and two firearms at the beginning of every mission. Then, during combat, it was possible to instantaneously switch between the equipped weapons with a simple click of a shoulder button. The possibilities increased exponentially as a result, as the classic sword-to-gun combos grew to include multiple melee weapons and firearms within the same string of attacks. Dante could, for example, initiate with a long series of blows from the speedy nunchuks, then, without any break, transition into the slow and heavy attacks of the gauntlets and greaves, leading into an uppercut to launch the enemy into the air, where its helplessly floating body would make for a ripe target for a penetrating rifle round.


Dante's repertoire was further expanded by the addition of the "style" system, which allowed the player, at the beginning of every stage, to choose from one of four fighting styles that governed the function of the Circle button. The Trickster style equipped Dante with a few invincible dash maneuvers to better help him dodge attacks, making it the ideal style for newcomers in need of an extra edge to get around attacks that they couldn't see coming early enough to evade through basic jumping and rolling. Swordmaster turned the Circle button into a second attack button, adding an extra set of melee attacks for each weapon, while Gunslinger did the same for firearms. Royal Guard was a higher-level style that armed Dante with a block command that, with the proper timing, could parry any enemy attack, while at the same time filling up an extra meter that powered his "Release" attack, a monstrously powerful move that, at its best, could literally rip through just about any foe. The timing for a successful parry was extremely tight, however, nearly frame-sensitive even, requiring a deep knowledge of enemy behavior and attack animations. Finally, two additional styles, Quicksilver and Doppelganger, would be earned during the course of the game. Less robust than the four main styles, the former allowed the player to slow time on enemies, while the latter would back Dante up with a shadow that would mimic all of his actions. Use of either ability rapidly expended the Devil Trigger meter, which was usually better spent on transforming Dante into his returning demonic mode. A hidden feature allowed a second player to take control of the Doppelganger shadow, and if combined with an unlockable costume that granted Dante infinite Devil Trigger, the trick effectively turned nearly the entire game into a cooperative multiplayer affair. The camera still only focused on the player controlling Dante, making it often difficult for the second player to keep track of their shadow character, but while somewhat impractical, it was an extremely cool and unexpected secret nonetheless.

Overwhelmingly, the biggest criticism against DMC3 was that it was far too difficult, with reviewers almost unanimously agreeing that it was one of the toughest games released that hardware generation. Perhaps the mindlessly easy DMC2 had made them soft and forgetful of the fact that the original DMC had also been a highly challenging, hardcore-skewing title, but there was little getting around the fact that DMC3 was a hard game. 90% of the normal enemies in the game were actually little more than glorified punching bags that moved clumsily and attacked infrequently, existing mainly to encourage the player to experiment with the robust combo engine. In fact, I felt that the lack of enemy variety was the game's greatest shortcoming compared to the original. But the bosses were a different story, and the encounter with the first real boss, Cerberus, was like slamming into a brick wall after the relative stroll of the preceding stages. More merciless seemingly than any boss from the original game, with attacks too fast and varied for the player to grasp any patterns within the time afforded by Dante's extremely limited health, Cerberus was guaranteed to crush just about any player on their first attempt--maybe even their first five attempts. If one persevered to finally triumph over Cerberus, the painful process would only repeat with the equally grueling second boss, Agni & Rudra. I personally found all subsequent bosses then to be much more manageable, but the ridiculously sharp learning curve might have turned off a lot of players before they got that far. It didn't help that the so-called "Easy" mode, offered once the player inevitably died one too many times, seemed only barely easier than "Normal."

As in the first game, grinding for Red Orbs to exchange for new moves and health upgrades was still an option, and DMC3 actually facilitated such an approach with a new mission select feature that was, in my opinion, the game's single greatest addition to the series. Whereas the first game allowed players to carry over their powered-up characters into successive playthroughs, and DMC2 offered a stage select feature unlocked after beating the game, DMC3 actively encouraged replay by allowing players to go back at any time to previously completed chapters. In theory, players could simply revisit specific missions that were heavy with Red Orbs in order to develop Dante's abilities with the least amount of effort. I personally took advantage of the system by treating Easy mode as almost a trial run for the Normal difficulty. I would first play a stage in Easy mode, and upon completion, I would then take on the Normal version of the same stage. Not only did the process of playing each stage twice hasten Dante's development by effectively doubling the intake of Red Orbs, but the extra experience that I would gain as a player helped immensely, and, invariably, I would end up scoring higher on Normal than I had on Easy.


Thus far, I've only focused on the gameplay of DMC3, as that really always was the meat of the DMC experience. But for the third game, the developers also placed added emphasis on the plot to provide additional incentive for playing through to the end. In the first game, Dante took on the greatest enemy mankind had ever known, a veritable god that ruled the demon realm. How could they possibly follow up that grand scenario? Well, for sure, not with whatever crap went down in DMC2. No, in DMC3, the solution was to match Dante up against a nemesis who was his equal and opposite, for it was none other than his own twin brother.

Just as Dante's character design was a revelation in 2001, the designers of DMC3 struck gold with Vergil. A practitioner, alongside such legendary characters as Samurai Shodown's Ukyo Tachibana and Rurouni Kenshin's titular protagonist, of the Japanese battōjutsu quick-draw sword style, Vergil would prove to be Dante's equal, not only in power and fighting ability, but also in sheer coolness. Some early concept art for the original DMC included a design for a short-haired, katana-wielding Vergil, and I immediately saw his DMC3 design as a modified repurposing of the enigmatic "Legendary Dark Knight" bonus costume from the first game, what with the similar blue Victorian frock coat and the very same "Yamato" blade. My tidy conclusion was seemingly dashed, however, when it turned out that the monocled Legendary Dark Knight himself returned as an unlockable costume in DMC3, again sans any explanation or context, and his coat, more purple than blue, was easily distinguished from Vergil's. Nevertheless, Dante's brother actually did appear in the first game, and in a pretty major role at that, though, strangely, none of the promotional materials for DMC3 made any reference to that history.

As a prequel detailing Dante's early days as a demon hunter and the sibling rivalry-turned-power struggle with his brother, DMC3 told a surprisingly engaging story that required no knowledge of previous installments but did reward players of the original by ominously foreshadowing Vergil's fate in that game. Much improved over the sparse story of the original or the forgettable drivel of the second game, DMC3's tale was told primarily through cinematic cut scenes tidily placed at the beginning and end of every mission, albeit some scenes consisted of nothing more than an overly hyper Dante showing off with some newly-acquired weapon.

While the developers were content to completely ignore the events of the second game, there were a few elements carried over and fixed up, as if to redeem DMC2's existence to some extent. Dante's default sword in DMC3, and subsequently his signature weapon, was actually the Rebellion, his blade from DMC2. The Gunslinger style, meanwhile, was largely derived from the gun-focused play of DMC2 Dante, and while severely toned down, it was still an attractive option for those who really enjoyed long-range dominance in that game. And in maybe an unintentional nod to the action of the second game, the normally harrowing battle against Cerberus actually included one relatively safe spot, from which a patient and/or desperate enough player could take down the three-headed dog with just prolonged repeated fire from the handguns.

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Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition

Less than a year after DMC3's release, a "special edition" version was announced, which, thankfully, made it to North America in 2006 as the Greatest Hits repackaging of the game. The primary enticements for double-dipping included rebalanced difficulty levels, the addition of Vergil as a playable character, and a new semi-optional boss.

The common complaint against the original release had, of course, been that the game was too punishing. The high difficulty level was perceived as a reaction by the developers to the poor reception for DMC2's severe lack of challenge. Just as DMC2's low difficulty had itself been in response to complaints about the first game's difficulty, DMC3 had gone too far the other way again, becoming possibly even more challenging than the original. Evidently, moderation was a foreign concept to the development team. Or was it?

In reality, the DMC3 that North America originally got was not quite the same game that Japan had enjoyed, and struggling players might have rightly guessed that something was terribly amiss. In the misguided tradition of titles like Contra: Hard Corps and Silhouette Mirage, the North American release was made harder by bumping the difficulty levels up one level each, so that "Easy" was actually as hard as Japan's "Normal" difficulty, and "Normal" actually became "Hard." Even more significant was the redone continue system. While the Japanese version used the same system as DMC2, offering free continues at checkpoints and Gold Orbs that served as extra lives, the North American release reverted to the more punitive system of the first game, replacing the Gold Orbs with Yellow Orbs as the only way to continue from the last checkpoint. As in my playthrough of the first game, I decided never to use the Yellow Orbs, as I didn't want to rely on a consumable resource to stumble through a game that really demanded cultivating a controlled understanding of the mechanics. Had the continues been free, however, I might have seen things differently. Certainly, it would have been easier to practice against Cerberus had I not had to replay the entire stage leading up to him upon dying to him the first time. In any case, DMC3:SE restored the original difficulty levels and allowed players to choose between the two continue systems, making for a vastly more accessible product as a result. (Note: Because of the restored difficulty levels, the box's advertisement of a new "Very Hard" mode was erroneous; it was actually the genuinely lenient Japanese "Easy" mode that was new to North America.)


The rebalanced difficulty should have bumped the game up to must-have status even for players outside the hardcore crowd, but, for veterans, the real draw of DMC3:SE was the option to play through the game as Vergil. New players would have to unlock him by first beating the game as Dante, but players who had DMC3 save data on their memory cards could jump right in as Vergil. With a more limited arsenal than Dante and no story beyond a single opening cut scene, Vergil's game was somewhat comparable to the bonus character modes from the later Castlevania titles, but the combat-focused nature of the series made it far more rewarding to experiment with this brand new character with many unique moves. While he had only one style, one projectile, and three melee weapons with none of Dante's branching combos, Vergil's abilities were still more than adequate to get him through, and while playing as him, it was very easy to imagine the entire game being built around his abilities instead of Dante's. Whereas Dante had to select two out of his five melee weapons to take into a stage, Vergil always had access to all three of his weapons, two of which were very distinct from, and generally superior to, any of Dante's. Instead of guns, Vergil fired his Phantom Swords, which behaved vaguely like Joachim's swords from Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, though series veterans hopefully would have remembered Vergil using them as far back as the first game. Their advantage over guns was that Vergil could fire them without pausing while moving or even while performing melee attacks. Basically, the only thing keeping one from firing them at all times was the potential strain on the player's hand.

The extra boss fight, on the other hand, felt lame and out-of-place. Somewhat uncharacteristic for the series, this boss was highly evasive and relied on long breaks of invincibility to turn it into essentially a turn-based battle antithetical to the free-form combat that was the essence of DMC. As a result, it was by far the weakest boss fight in the game, and what was worse was that the first of the three encounters with this boss was mandatory, despite having little place in the story. Including the same boss two more times as optional encounters later in the game did nothing to spice up the final third of the game, still comparatively the weakest leg, with fewer bosses, no new weapons to collect, and too many rehashed levels.

* * * * *

DMC3 was perhaps not a bravely designed game. Certainly, it was not as visionary as the original, which it seemed content to mostly ape. But DMC3:SE in particular was nearly the perfected form, not only of Devil May Cry, but possibly of the whole entire character action genre. I consider it one of the very best titles on the PS2, and thanks to its more accessible design, I would give it the edge over the classic original.

NonEssential #21: Devil May Cry 2

Devil May Cry was a great game. Sadly, its sequel was not.

Perhaps the success of the first game led Capcom to rush forward to capitalize with a quick follow-up; development on the sequel apparently began while the original team was still busy with the first game's localization, much to the shock and disappointment of that title's director, Hideki Kamiya. Or perhaps Capcom, sensing that the title had franchise potential, wanted to reassert that its intellectual properties could and did exist independent of any specific individuals involved in their creation. In any case, development on Devil May Cry 2 was instead handed to director Hideaki Itsuno and Capcom Production Studio 1, which had mostly fighting game credits to its name. The result, released for the Sony PlayStation 2 in 2003, was surprisingly not a gutless rehash of the sort Capcom had often historically been identified with, but, in hindsight, a rehash might have been preferable, as the numerous design changes effected by the new team were the very things that made DMC2 a massive disappointment.

The problems began with the sequel's drastic and absolutely unnecessary reinterpretation of its main character, the über-cool Dante, who had been a large part of the first game's appeal. In DMC2, in addition to giving him a different voice actor, already making it hard for fans to recognize him as the same character, Capcom stripped Dante of most of his personality. DMC2's Dante still had the extreme confidence of the original, but his cool turned to frigid cold, and the old trash-talking and swagger were nowhere to be found as, at the behest of some random supposed acquaintance of his father, he sleepily took on a city-hopping fetch-quest that he barely seemed invested in. Not only was the new Dante boring, but he himself seemed bored! And who could blame him? Even forgiving for a moment the deficiency in character, DMC2 was a complete bore of an action game due to the two major and interrelated departures from the brilliant original in the areas of difficulty and level design.


The original DMC was a very challenging game even on the default normal difficulty level. Although I was able to finish it, I'd always believed that difficulty should be a selectable option rather than a basic feature forced upon all players, and so I counted myself among those who thought the game was probably too hard for its own good. While its genre-redefining mechanics should have positioned it as the action game of its generation, its often unforgiving nature ultimately limited its appeal and confined it to the hardcore pile. The DMC2 team was obviously receptive to this criticism, and one of their declared directives was to make the sequel more accessible. Unfortunately, they overcompensated and ended up making a game that, on the default difficulty, was virtually devoid of challenge. The mostly docile enemies of DMC2 could easily be dispatched using Dante's twin handguns alone, and, in fact, the level designs practically demanded that the player approach the combat in this manner.

Aside from the difficulty, the other common complaint against the original was that the fixed cameras, while more helpful than in Resident Evil, could still become obstructed in cramped quarters. The team behind DMC2 chose to address this issue by implementing more open outdoor environments. On the surface, this was already a bad decision, as, while DMC2 was not less technically sophisticated than the original, its stages definitely looked worse and showed the graphical limitations of the PS2, whose power the original DMC had been one the first titles to really show off. The system was clearly better at rendering the polished marble and ornate shapes of the original's Gothic castle than the brick surfaces of the sequel's worn urban streets, and, thus, DMC2's humongous stages consisted of just rough, muddy textures that blandly repeated. But it was the gameplay that really suffered as a result of the change.

While it may have made the camera a non-issue, the shift to open environments gave enemies too much space to dance around in, with the result being that foes always seemed distant, encouraging the player to simply snipe them from afar with firearms rather than attempt to move into range for melee attacks. Indeed, after a few frustrating attempts early on to chase them down, only to find that my sword swings would quickly send them flying off into the distance again, I just gave up and proceeded to pummel them with the pistols. Thus, the addictive and creative combo-based engine that was the basis of DMC's combat gave way, in the sequel, to some of the most mind-numbing gameplay imaginable as the player was left with little choice but to tap the shoot button repeatedly to auto-aim at often off-screen enemies until the cessation of their yelling alone signaled that everything was dead. The worst part was that, although Dante was practically invincible while employing this "tactic," even against bosses, DMC2's guns were not actually significantly more powerful than the puny firearms of the first game, where the various ranged weapons inflicted very little damage and generally had more specialized uses (the pistols, for example, gave Dante extra hangtime when fired in the air). The guns in DMC2 had maybe a little more staggering power--enemies were effectively robbed of all action or mobility once caught in the barrage--but they still didn't do much damage, so it would take forever to dispatch a single foe. But what choice did the player have, when enemies were so insistent on keeping their distance by exploiting the open fields? Never mind that there were tons of flying enemies that, no matter how determined you were to play the game with the sword, were just an unbearable chore to get at with Dante's limited aerial melee attacks.


Thus far, I've consistently identified Dante as the player character, but DMC2 actually introduced a female co-protagonist, the mysterious Lucia. With a stony personality to match DMC2 Dante's and a ridiculous accent that may have been the precursor to Fran's in Final Fantasy XII, she was even more of a departure from the badass attitude of the original game, but I could at least appreciate the gesture in including a female character to play as, especially considering so many fans had been clamoring for a playable Trish from the first game.

Mimicking the format of the beloved Resident Evil 2, DMC2 assigned each character a separate disc and encouraged players to play through both in order to get the full story. Unlike RE2, however, it didn't matter in what order the player completed them, and, actually, the two characters' paths were largely identical, making it quite the slog to get through the second after completing one. In fact, I was not able to pull it off. I persevered through the Dante game to arrive at a brief and forgettable ending followed by no credits, and so I assumed I would have to complete both discs in order to get the full ending. After about three stages of the Lucia game, however, I just couldn't take any more of the exact same mind-numbing gameplay that I'd already experienced. Not only were the stages mostly recycled from Dante's, but all of Lucia's moves were effectively the same as Dante's. Although she wielded twin daggers instead of a sword, and throwing knives instead of guns, her basic melee combo was functionally the same (and still mostly ignored), while her infinite throwing knives operated just like Dante's pistols. Once again, I was just tapping the fire button over and over again until my enemies stopped screaming. (Or maybe that was me screaming out of the madness the game drove me to...)

The loss of multiple fighting styles was another disappointment for fans of the first game's Ifrit gauntlets. While Dante and Lucia could pick up new swords/daggers, the weapons introduced no new attacks and offered only subtly different stats and ranges. The sequel did introduce some new techniques, such as running on walls and the ability to shoot in two different directions. The latter was mostly useless, the former entirely so. On the bright side, DMC2 started the characters with all the moves they would ever have, and the character development system was only for upgrading health and weapon specs. While it made progress a little less gratifying, I never liked the idea that Dante had to slowly earn attacks and abilities that seemed so fundamental on replay. It also kind of destroys the narrative when the player has to earn back abilities that the character has already gotten in a previous game.

In terms of other things the sequel actually got right, the move away from a unified castle environment, instead favoring truly self-contained stages, more firmly established the franchise's identity as something distinct from Resident Evil. The new function of the L2 button to instantly cycle between guns did not add a lot since the handguns were almost always the answer, but the feature certainly prefigured the real-time weapon switching that became a huge part of Dante's game in later installments. While the gameplay was mostly a bore, there were occasional good moments, including one memorable section where Dante had to pull a switch and then race to the door it opened before it automatically shut itself again. He could only close the distance in time by running a perfect course while also utilizing the super speed of his Devil Trigger state, which was itself time-limited. And the final few stages actually featured some indoor environments where the close quarters allowed Dante to pull off his still-satisfying sword combos. In fact, during those sections, I thought the game became very good. It was too bad that they came only so late in the game.

One final thing I should mention is the unlockables. I wrote in my post about the first game that I actually played through the game a second time on hard mode just to unlock an honestly pretty lame costume that had no real effect whatsoever on gameplay. In DMC2, there were yet more lame costumes, but the big reward for beating hard mode was nothing less than the ability to play as Trish, who supposedly had most of Dante's moves from the first game, including Ifrit's hand-to-hand attacks. That sounded like a completely awesome bonus, but I never even tried to unlock it, and I think it's a testament to just how intolerable DMC2 was, that I couldn't even get myself to fully complete one playthrough for a reward that sounded so much better than the one I fought through the first game twice to earn. It makes me kind of mad, frankly, and, because of that one enticement, I still can't entirely rule out giving the game one more try in the future.

Setting aside all the irritating behind-the-scenes politics, Devil May Cry 2 was an unusually ambitious sequel by a team that, no doubt, had good intentions in trying to address the major complaints against the first game. Unfortunately, they went too far in the opposite direction, not only losing much of what made the original stellar, but also, in the process, delivering a game that, even judged on its own, didn't work at all. Considering all their sensitivity in gathering feedback about the first game, I don't understand how the sequel's far more obvious flaws could have escaped their notice. Focus groups should have been fleeing toward the exit after the first few torturous minutes of tapping the shoot button repeatedly while staring at Dante just standing in the center of the screen firing at off-camera enemies. It remains by far the most disappointing sequel I've ever had to endure.

The Essentials #20: Devil May Cry

I've been playing video games for almost as long as I've been alive, having amused myself with the Atari 2600 before my family upgraded to the Nintendo Entertainment System. My obsession with Street Fighter II notwithstanding, however, I was more of a casual player through the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. It wasn't until the time of the Sony PlayStation, which I only picked up three years after its release for, naturally, a Street Fighter game, that I started to get really heavy into gaming, and my passion took a step further with the PlayStation 2. The first PS2 game I played was Capcom's Devil May Cry, and, in many respects, I still consider it to have been the console's defining title.

Released in October 2001, a year after the PS2's North American launch and during the same golden period as ICO, Grand Theft Auto 3, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and Final Fantasy X, Devil May Cry was one of the key titles that helped to establish the platform's position as, not only the market leader, but also the lead console for enthusiast gaming. Often classified as a "stylish" action game, it was praised at the time for having been the first title to take the fast pace and intuitive controls of classic 2-D action games and successfully bring them into 3-D, but it actually began life in the planning stages as a new installment in the comparatively slow-paced Resident Evil series of "survival horror" adventure games, before its creators, recognizing that it had gone off in a drastically different direction, decided to make it its own game and eventual franchise.


Shinji Mikami's Resident Evil series was--arguably still is--Capcom's ace franchise and had already inspired two sister series in Dino Crisis and Onimusha, so it was not surprising to see another game built off essentially that same foundation, and, even in the final product, it was not hard to spot Devil May Cry's survival horror origins. Directed by Hideki Kamiya of Resident Evil 2 fame, and produced by Mikami himself, Devil May Cry took place mostly within a castle that bore more than a few similarities to Resident Evil's mansion, although progress was now divided up into a series of finite missions. Basic Resident Evil-style l0ck-and-key devices in each mission guided the player's exploration of the structure, and, as always, the objective was less the point than was the experience of the directed journey to get there. In Devil May Cry, that experience was combat, and it was in that department that the game truly set itself apart as something distinct from survival horror.

Eschewing the digital character-relative tank controls common among its Capcom siblings, Devil May Cry utilized the analog stick exclusively and featured a player character that moved swiftly and intuitively. Controlling more like a beat 'em up character, he could jump and roll and perform a simple yet effective combo by pressing the attack button repeatedly. Holding R1 allowed the player to lock on to targets, or, against groups, one could rely on the auto-targeting to intelligently track nearby enemies. But equipping the player with just melee attacks would not nearly have been awesome enough, so the designers provided a selection of guns with infinite ammo to supplement the sword-swinging. The possibilities unlocked by the badass combination became immediately obvious the first time a player launched an enemy into the air and realized that it could be suspended there by juggling it with rapid-fire blasts from the dual pistols. Players would then be encouraged to explore and experiment with the extraordinarily deep combo system, which opened up even further once the player gained access to the "Devil Trigger," a meter which could be consumed to temporarily transform the main character into a faster and stronger demonic version of himself. The fixed cameras, meanwhile, would swivel about automatically to try and give the player the best possible view of the action within the real-time environments.

The extreme action offered by the game engine was matched with some superb art design highly evocative of the 1998 Wesley Snipes Blade film in the game's mix of the urban and the mystical and its supercool swords-and-guns aesthetic. The half-demon protagonist, Dante, a virtual rock star and maverick, charismatic and unflappable, was the very definition of cool and perhaps the best original character introduced during the PS2 generation. Devil May Cry was possibly the most gorgeous console game out at the time of its release, and, while people go on and on about the "uncanny valley" these days, Dante and his sexy female companion, Trish, exuded visual personality in the in-engine cut scenes through their striking character designs. And things only got better with the addition of some exquisitely cheesy dialogue. The over-the-top nature of the game was nowhere better exemplified than in the instantly classic opening sequence:

Being such a new and groundbreaking game, Devil May Cry had its share of flaws and rough edges. It sometimes experienced an identity crisis due to its Resident Evil origins, as wandering around the castle looking for obscure emblems could hinder the action and muddle the focus of the gameplay. The castle setting itself seemed at odds with the mission-based structure, as any sections that had been opened up in a previous mission would usually remain accessible during the immediate mission, and, even if the mission parameters did not require returning to those areas, it could be easy to veer accidentally off course and become lost. The AI-controlled camera wasn't always helpful, particularly during the occasional misguided platforming segments that put Dante's limited jumping abilities to the test. And, to remind players that the game designers were experimenting with this new property, there were some truly bizarre moments of gameplay that departed, not only from survival horror, but from the stylish action of the rest of the game. Some awful first-person underwater stages were just the tip of the iceberg. The climactic boss fight inexplicably dispensed with the combo-based engine in favor of a Space Harrier-style rail shooter stage unlike anything else in the game. That fight was followed up by a second phase that played somewhat like the G.I. Joe arcade game or maybe those behind-the-back stages in Contra. When all that was finally over with, Dante still had to make his escape by piloting a biplane off the island while avoiding or shooting down falling debris from the crumbling castle. For God's sake, these were the moments that the entire game had been building up to?!

Perhaps in a nod to classic 2-D action games, Devil May Cry also boasted a high level of difficulty, unusually so, in fact, for such a high-profile title of that era. While Dante's slick moves would be sufficient to make sport of the early packs of marionette monsters, the difficulty ramped up considerably with the first real boss, a giant talking spider named Phantom. Phantom could take a beating and dish it right back, decimating Dante in just a few hits. Simply charging in head-on was a sure way to die, and I imagine more than a few players were surprised and frustrated after having been led by the marketing to expect a dressed-up hack-and-slash with a cool and powerful hero to control. Yet Devil May Cry was peculiar in that it was an action game that actually let the player grind their way to victory, thanks to the development system which allowed the player to buy new abilities and health upgrades using red orbs dropped by enemies. The system could be exploited by simply saving the game via the pause menu any time death seemed imminent. Then, while loading that save would start the player back at the beginning of the stage, all of the orbs collected would be preserved, and, eventually, the player would have enough stored up to purchase the skills and power-ups that would hopefully get them through to the next stage. If that still wasn't enough, the game also offered an easier difficulty level if it detected that the player was struggling early on. Taking that option barred the player from unlocking any of the post-game rewards, so I stuck with the normal mode, but I've heard quite a few players say that they went the easy route and ended up thoroughly enjoying the game, so it must have worked pretty well.

As for those rewards I spoke of, actually the only thing beating the normal difficulty unlocked was an option to carry over your powered-up Dante into a second playthrough. Like the successive playthroughs in Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, this second round was actually a much harder mode featuring new enemy placements, often populating once straightforward areas with far deadlier foes, and more aggressive bosses that had about three times their old stamina. Dante himself, meanwhile, was much frailer despite starting out with a life bar that was hopefully enhanced during the first playthrough. In fact, one of my biggest complaints about the game was that, rather than having the upgrades feel like enhancements, Dante actually only ever seemed complete while he had his full abilities, especially since, even fully-powered up for the second round, the game was still not easy. Looking back at the early stages the first time around, the gameplay was so much more limited without all the extra moves and options, and it would have been a shame if a player had come away with impressions based on just the neutered Dante. In any case, beating this harder mode then unlocked a difficulty select option for future playthroughs and, more attractive to me, a brand new outfit for Dante.

Unlockable alternate costumes were not exactly a new concept, but, for some reason, I just had to have this one. I couldn't find any pictures or video of it on the pre-YouTube Internet, but I'd heard it described as a purple "Victorian" coat and monocle, and the costume apparently came with its own exclusive battle theme music as well. This all sounded cool to me, so I dedicated myself to completing the hard mode, even though, at the time, I hardly ever played through single-player games multiple times and basically never ventured beyond the normal difficulty level of a game. In this case, I was glad I did, because it was only in playing that harder mode that I realized the true genius of Devil May Cry.


Taking things back for a moment to Street Fighter, as I am often wont to do, skill in fighting games is sometimes broken down into "technique" and "strategy." "Technique" describes a player's manual ability to perform tricky combos when it counts, as well as one's timing and intuitive sense to beat an opponent on the draw, for example, when an exchange appears imminent. "Strategy," on the other hand, describes a player's informed grasp of a game's flow and ability to exploit the game-specific mechanics. It can involve something simple like picking the right character to counter an opponent's choice, or, in Street Fighter II, the classic example would be throwing a fireball, not expecting the slow-moving projectile to hit the opponent, but hoping that its presence will pressure them into jumping over it and setting themselves up as planned for your next move.

I bring all this up because Devil May Cry, although a single-player action game, understood these two sides to skill and invited both approaches and all the mixes in between. For the technical players, the rich combo system challenged them, not only to construct techniques that would decimate enemies, but also to push for the highest grade on the game's dynamic scoring system. That's not the sort of player I am. No, I'm more the kind of guy that prefers to win as cheaply as possible. Fortunately, Devil May Cry had my back as well, and, quite unlike most 2-D action games, its incredibly versatile engine allowed almost all fights to be handled in a variety of ways. Overcoming tougher enemies required pattern recognition, but, once on offense, which Devil May Cry did revel in and reward, the game did not lock the player into one "correct" strategy that had to be perceived and executed to perfection. In that moment of opportunity after reading and evading an enemy's move, it would be up to the player how best to respond both according to Dante's vast arsenal and the individual player's ability. As the game progressed into ever more complicated boss battles, inventiveness and improvisation could serve a player just as well as technical virtuosity. For the Phantom fight, for example, I discovered on the normal difficulty that I could simply activate my Devil Trigger while equipped with the lightning blade Alastor, and that would allow me to fly into the air and spam the projectile lightning attack to zap the spider with impunity until he died, actually bypassing the pattern recognition phase altogether. On hard mode, that strategy went out the window, as Phantom's greatly increased health turned the fight into a marathon, and the Devil Trigger simply didn't last long enough for the lightning to put a dent into him. Faced with this sudden conundrum, I was eventually driven to experiment with Dante's alternative melee weapon, the fiery Ifrit gauntlets, which I had rudely dismissed during my first playthrough, despite their high attack power, on account of their slowness and Dante's reduced mobility while equipped with them.

I discovered that, while the hard mode bosses' tripled life bars rendered most attacks puny, Ifrit still packed some punch. More specifically, I discovered Ifrit's Devil Trigger mode "Inferno" move, Dante's strongest attack, a do-or-die maneuver that activated mid-jump and involved nothing more than crash-landing onto an enemy, searing it in an explosion of flames in the process. The sheer suicidal mechanics of the maneuver made it the most thrilling move I'd ever come across in any action game, but it was also perhaps the only thing that got me through hard mode. With a maxed-out Devil Trigger, the move could be performed three times before Dante reverted to his mostly defenseless human form, at which point I would basically just have to dodge attacks and taunt at every opportunity to restore my Devil Trigger meter so that I could perform it again. Of course, a better player might not have had to resort to those measures, but, hey, it worked for me and the game made me feel proud of myself for figuring out that strategy.

As for that costume, was it worth it? Probably not. The anachronistic getup, monocle and all, was just bizarre and nowhere near as cool as Dante's regular outfit. Some uncovered early concept art of the spiky-haired "Tony Redgrave" from the game's days as Resident Evil 4 suggested that it may have been a prototype design for Dante, since repurposed perhaps as the human form of Dante's father, the "legendary dark knight" Sparda, but the game itself made little suggestion as to its significance, if any. But, then again, as I discovered, the journey was worth more than the objective.

Although it was itself spawned from Resident Evil, Devil May Cry became more influential than the original Resident Evil. It doesn't quite get due credit these days for having practically founded the "character action game" genre that became the platformer of the PS2, inspiring hordes of disciples, imitators, and casual borrowers, but, to this day, it remains the title that all other like action games must be measured against, be they Bujingai or God of War.