DmC: Devil May Cry, Ninja Theory’s new title, bills itself as a Devil May Cry game, but it’s clearly aimed at non-fans and new audiences. If the public-relations trainwreck of its development process hadn’t made that obvious, the game’s defanged combat, bland boss battles, brooding atmosphere and absurdly unconvincing anti-corporatist pretenses will not satisfy series devotees.
At its best when it cribs from other sources, Ninja Theory’s outing is a poor rival to its predecessors. If it’s worth picking up, it’s only as an initial exposure to the spectacle brawler genre, or as a deprived fan craving their next fix before serious titles like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance come along. This is Devil May Cry for Dummies.
Review Score: 6.98
Like other Devil May Cry titles, DmC is a spectacle fighter that mingles combat sequences, graded on a scale from D to SSS, with the occasional exploration or platforming sequence. However, the grading system is relatively generous as long as you don’t get hit. Platforming, too, is fairly generous, since it typically consists of using a grappling hook to pull Dante across gaps or tug out platforms or race through the occasional scripted sequence.
Platforming deserves special mention, however, for one of Ninja Theory’s genuinely neat ideas. Dante spends most of the game in the demonic sub-realm of Limbo, a warped reflection of the real world that actively lashes out to kill or hinder our hero. Not only does this create many of the obstacle courses that Dante must traverse, it allows for some memorably creative environments. Standouts here include a demonic gauntlet built from the throbbing bass and visual displays of a discotheque, visibly shivering in time to the music, and a prison made from catwalks and tenements in an upside-down world where rain pours up towards the ceilings. Unfortunately, their creativity is limited by the monotonous inner-city “underground” aesthetic, but the over saturated colors and blistering mists of Limbo create a very convincing industrial hell.
So, creative environments are an undeniable point in the new title’s favor. Unfortunately, that’s about the most creative idea in the game.
While DmC’s arsenal is expansive, the combo system doesn’t encourage diversity. Dante’s sword Rebellion is a jack-of-all-trades weapon, while two demon weapons deal heavy damage and two angelic weapons deal light damage over larger areas. This creates some imbalances – for example, the demonic axe Arbiter, obtained quite early in the game, deals as much damage in a three-hit combo as multiple long combos with Rebellion or its angelic equivalent, can hit a sizable area, and crushes enemy defenses to boot. By contrast, firearms are largely superfluous – Dante’s trademark pistols are anemic, since many enemies are straight-out bulletproof, and guns rarely provide any significant tactical benefit.
The demonic roster lacks the creativity of the distorted environments. Lesser demons feature a deformed-doll aesthetic all too familiar from album covers. None of them have the eldritch feel of a supernatural horror – in fact, most don’t really attack or behave in any way that a human enemy couldn’t. Furthermore, they’re really not very bright, mostly threatening in huge numbers. Difficulty comes not from creative tactics or diverse attacks but from numbers and rigid defenses. Particularly irritating are elementally-aligned enemies who can only be harmed by one of Dante’s Angelic or Demonic weapons, further curtailing your array of options without necessarily making the experience of fighting them any more entertaining.
Bosses are inexcusably tedious brutes with shallow AI and boring visual designs. Because most are giant monsters, tactics basically consist of dodge-and-exploit-weak-point, usually with the Arbiter for maximum damage. Visually, they’re generic, although one particular battle takes place inside a TV broadcast, and really deserved a more nuanced combat. But the ugliness predominates – another truly grotesque battle can only be described as an inverted pregnancy. The inevitable duel with Dante’s brother Vergil is the best by far, but even that has its arbitrary elements and mostly serves to remind a fan of the series of the considerably better duels in the classic titles.
Average-to-mediocre gameplay is excusable in a story-focused title, and Ninja Theory expressed a desire to produce a mature story that treated its audience like adults. They didn’t succeed. DmC’s story is “mature” in that special adolescent way: cheerfully sleazy, more convinced of its relevance than it deserves, and desperately insecure.
DmC takes place in a world not unlike our own, except for the part where all the ills and shallow excesses of modern society are literally demon-spawned. The Man is real, and he has horns. Mind-controlling demonic vomit is bottled in the world’s most popular soda and a demonic parody of Bill O’Reiley spouts inane, vaguely religious platitudes on the world’s largest news network. Mundus, lord of all demons, has put aside conventional notions of conquest for control through debt and banks. But of course, “normals” go along without even seeing the demons in their midst, and only “the Order”, a vaguely Anonymous-esque band of anti-corporate terrorists, battles the hostile authority.
Enter our fratboy Dante, introduced picking up two strippers for a threesome back at his run-down trailer. This version of the iconic character is a shiftless, rather immature loser who suffers from that direst of fates – dramatic amnesia – but only for a few missions, before a recruitment effort by his brother Vergil reminds him he is in fact a “nephilim,” a hybrid of angel and demon. (Wrong terminology, by the way.) Recruited by the Order to assassinate three lynchpins of the demonic regime all conveniently located in his home city, he seems to join up largely because he doesn’t actually have anything else to do, though he’s provided the requisite tragic backstory involving the brothers’ parents’ murder/imprisonment by Mundus.
The supporting cast isn’t much better. DmC’s requisite love interest, Kat, exists almost solely to be someone for Dante to talk to and try to rescue. Antagonists are even more one-dimensional, being both petty and venal and decidedly lacking in memorable traits or battles. The high point of the entire game is a battle against the aforementioned demonic newscaster, but the portrayal is so on-the-nose that the clumsy political allusion is more obnoxious than effective. Big brother Vergil and Dante at least get screentime together as allies before the former’s sudden-but-inevitable battle, but these scenes are endemic of a much greater problem with the game as a whole.
DmC isn’t strictly humorless – one early scene features a naked Dante dressing as he careens through the flying wreckage of his trailer, privates cheekily hidden by flying debris – but its obsessive need to be “relevant” and “mature” puts it in an awkward position. It’s neither written nor staged well enough for high drama, nor wacky and charismatic for B-movie or comic charm. Characters’ motivations are shallow or ambiguous, and despite reasonably naturalistic dialogue they really don’t feel particularly human. The ridiculous conceit of a demon-run capitalistic system is delivered absolutely straight, with demonic messages like “Debt is Divine” flashing on the walls, without either the subtlety or self-awareness needed to make it work.
All these could be at least mitigated, if DmC were convincingly earnest in their presentation. However, sincerity is the one thing Ninja Theory’s title utterly lacks – coming from a big-budget title made with the blessing of a major developer, the shallow anarchistic themes (which never grow more nuanced than “fight the power!”) of DmC are no more convincing rallying cries than a Che T-shirt from Hot Topic. Instead, they feel like cynical attempts to attract youthful audiences, which is equally true of the vulgarity frequently used to substitute for wit in the title.
Certain elements seem to be put in entirely for shock value: the aforementioned introduction to Dante-as-fratboy, two antagonists whose human forms are unappealing and middle-aged caught mid-coitus, an exchange with a boss that literally consists of nothing but vomiting (literally, in the boss’s case) profanity back and forth. In particular, the portrayal of women is downright off-putting – every speaking woman in DmC is either a spiteful harpy or, in Kat’s case, a damaged damsel in distress all too willing to sacrifice her own well-being for the goals of her male companions.
Honestly, it might have been better for the ridiculously-named DmC to have divorced itself entirely from the franchise, and I’m not just saying that because I’m an unashamed fan of the classic franchise. With every token callback to the older series, Ninja Theory only invites comparisons to older and better titles. It’s doubtful that DmC would have ever been a classic, but the Devil May Cry name is an albatross rather than a lifeline.
Review Score: 6.98
- Technical Specs: 8
- Visuals: 8 (Lowered framerate and unimpressive enemy designs are a sharp contrast to some genuinely creative Limbo sequences.)
- Audio: 8 (Music and voice-acting are competent – neither spectacularly, hilariously bad nor exceptionally memorable.)
- Controls/Functionality: 7 (A somewhat toned-down version of the classic Devil May Cry controls with some bizarre design choices, such as the lack of a lock-on function.)
- Presentation (30%): 7.3
- Menu/UI: 8 (Stripped-down user interface is pleasingly minimalistic, allowing you to concentrate right on the action.)
- Narrative: 6 (DmC‘s banal narrative is toothless and mediocre, substituting shock value for pathos and cursing for personality.)
- Voice-Over/Sound Design/Soundtrack: 8 (Generic grunge-rock and mostly-competent voice acting do the job.)
- Value (30%): 6.3
- Length/Replay Value: 6 (A relatively short campaign, small enemy and boss roster, and shallow combat system won’t satisfy long-term.)
- Price Point & Value: 7 (You’re paying $60 for an average spectacle fighter of questionable replayability.)
- Lasting Impact: 6 (Homogenizes rather than revolutionizes, discarding its charisma for clumsy satire played humorlessly straight)
- Intangibles – 10%: 5 (Sleazy, clunky, and frankly joyless, DmC represents a backwards leap for the Devil May Cry franchise.)