Devil May Cry -- Series Review - Part 1 of 6

DEVIL MAY CRY - SERIES REVIEW - LaughingMan

I have a love-hate relationship with the Devil May Cry games. Well, no, it’s really more like an abusive relationship.

You are seduced by the graphics and the unique style of the game, and for a while it treats you well, letting you have your way with it. Then the game gets angry. The game hits you, hard. You stare blankly at it, wondering if what had just happened was real or not. The game apologizes to you, seducing you again by its unique play and style, setting you up for another beating. Sometimes the game will hurt you or make you feel angry and powerless, and other times Devil May Cry triumphs and excels beyond your expectations and you end up forgetting, or at least forgiving, it.


THE BEGINNING

My earliest memories of this beloved series stem back from my Freshman or Sophomore year of high school. My buddy, Llama Pockets, had purchased the Resident Evil: Code Veronica game for the Playstation 2. Therein the case of this mediocre Resident Evil game lie the demo disk that would shake video games to the core.

To fully understand what made Devil May Cry such a masterpiece, you have to go back to right before the turn of the Century and the release of the groundbreaking movie, The Matrix. The effects and style of The Matrix were unique and fresh. The bullet-time effects belonged to the Matrix alone; it was pure and untainted by the hands of lesser-filmmakers:


Uwe Boll makes Neo cry.

Then again, the Wachowski Brothers fucked up The Matrix: Reloaded, The Matrix: Revolutions, and even ‘V’ For Vendetta, so maybe the term ‘lesser-filmmakers’ is relevant to the time period before the First Matrix movie and prior to one of the Brother’s sex change.

Anyways, back on track: The Matrix took the world by storm with its insane gun choreography, special effects, and the introduction to ‘Bullet Time’. The Matrix was on everyone’s mind, and rightly so.

Llama Pockets was having a pizza and video game get together with a few of our friends and the first thing he put inside of his Sony Playstation 2 was an obscure demo disk to a game I had never heard of. The only thing he said as we all sat around the television was, “You have GOT to see this…”

The game introduced a snow haired dude clad in red leather; at his sides were pistols and strapped to his back was a broadsword. As he sat at his desk, answering the phone to his slummy business, a hot blonde clad in black leather rode through his front door on a motorcycle and attempted to kill him. Using crazy bullet-time shooting and crazy acrobatics he…

Meh, I’ll just show you:


STYLISH!!

The game REEKED of STYLE. But, as it holds true today, a cutscene is just a cutscene, and holds no merit in comparison to the game itself. However, My friends and I were FLOORED by the gameplay of that demo, and I have been a (fairly) loyal Devil May Cry fan ever since.


ORIGINS OF DEVIL MAY CRY

Developed for Sony’s follow-up console for the original Playstation, Devil May Cry began as the fourth game in the Resident Evil series. During prototyping of Resident Evil 4, the game began to take a dramatic departure away from the survival-horror feel of the original Resident Evil games. However, because of the time and money already invested into the project, the game was stripped of the Resident Evil moniker and instead given its own unique identity. No longer being a Resident Evil title, the developers were free to make major overhauls of the gameplay.

One of the most unique aspects was the ‘enemy juggling,’ which was a technique that was partially discovered by the project director Hideki Kamiya during gameplay. It was expanded to include the ability to juggle enemies with both gunfire and sword strikes. According to Hideki Kamiya, the game was built ‘from the ground up’ around the acrobatic combat style.

A less subtle departure from the Resident Evil series was in the game’s new ‘Mission-based’ gameplay, which, rather than being relatively open-ended like the previous Resident Evil games, directed the player from Point A to Point B in linear progression. However, having to overcome puzzles and obtain key items in order to progress is still remains relatively true to the Resident Evil games.


STAY TUNED FOR PART 2 - "DEVIL MAY CRY (PS2)"

Pretty good start.

Are you going to include the Devil May Cry Anime in your review or just the games?

I played the third one and it made me so angry I wanted to set my playstation2 on fire