Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3 and PC
Reviewed On: Xbox 360
Developer: Ninja Theory
Publisher: Capcom
Singleplayer: Yes
Multiplayer: No
PEGI: 18+

Gaming is no stranger to controversy and heated debate, but is it just me or is the shitstorm surrounding Ninja Theory’s reboot of the iconic Devil May Cry one of the worst in a while? While there’s no way of properly judging, it’s probably become even more of a hotly debated topic than the entire Mass Effect 3 debacle. There has been arguments from both sides of the fanbase over pretty much every little thing, from the new look of Dante to the changes in the combat system and everything in-between. But while both sides have largely been quite calm and debated their points in a sensible manner, there’s also been that usual minority that seems to turn up everywhere slinging shit and giving everyone else a bad name. And then after that there was just the usual people who jump on the bandwagon so they can hate on stuff because it’s fun. As for me, I’ve been sitting in the middle chomping popcorn and watching it all go down with something resembling faint amusement.

You see, I’m a pretty big Devil May Cry fan. I’ve been here since the beginning, and class Devil May Cry 3 as both the pinnacle of the of the series in terms of gameplay and as one of my favorite games of all time. But I seem to be in the minority who was actually quite looking forward to seeing what Ninja Theory could do with the franchise, because quite honestly, I didn’t want a DMC5. I’ve had four great games already from the series! Well, three, if you don’t count DMC2. And so I didn’t want another one that would feel pretty much the same as the past games. I didn’t want the series to become stale like so many others have, and was happy when Capcom made the announcement that they’d be doing the very thing gamers everywhere were always saying companies shouldn’t be afraid to do: they were going to take a major risk with one of their key franchises, completely reboot it with a new style and attitude. The result is a great game. I’m saying that right now. It’s great. It’s loads of fun.  But there are things that the purist fans won’t like.

Because of all the controversy surrounding Ninja Theory’s reboot of Devil May Cry it’s important to lay down a couple of ground rules going into this review so that people can understand exactly the point of view I’m writing this from. DmC is a reboot, it is not Devil May Cry 5 and it will not be treated as such in this review. The definition of a what a reboot should be varies from person to person: my angle is that a good reboot should keep the core concepts of what made the series special, and everything else is fair game, to be changed around however the developers see fit. Exactly what Devil May Cry meant to people is different for every person. To me, Devil May Cry was, above all else, about fun. The combat always elicited a furious joy within me, and I’d always find myself grinning from ear to ear as I chopped through the demon hordes. The question for DmC, then, from me, is are you fun? So, comparisons to previous Devil May Cry games will be made in this review for obvious reasons, but ultimately the score and my final opinion on the game will be determined by DmC’s own merits, as a standalone game, because I feel that’s the fairest thing to do.  Feel free to moan at me if you reckon that’s now how it should be handled.

In the world of DmC: Devil May Cry humanity is under the control of demons they can’t even see,  utterly unaware of their existence as they pose as politicians, news reporters and the like, manipulating the Earth as they see fit. Even the worlds most popular drink, Virility, is a creation of the demons, designed to keep humans nice and placid thanks to some special ingredients. Sort of like how Coca Cola secretly help the politicians rule the world. What, you didn’t know that? You really should keep up. At the head of it all is  returning villain Mundus, lording it over Earth as a banker in his massive tower that is sure to attract some “He’s compensating for something” jokes. With corruption and dishonesty so rife in our world, it may not be exactly subtle stuff but Ninja Theory’s cheeky jab at our greedy bankers, lying politicians and media puppets hits home nicely, laying a brilliant foundation for Devil May Cry’s plot. It’s just a shame that Ninja Theory didn’t choose to delve deeper into the concept and really use its satirical nature more in the storyline. Perhaps they were afraid some black suited men would turn up and they’d just quietly “disappear”, never to be heard from again except when angry DMC fans dig up their corpse to shout some more at it. Or they were worried about offending people with certain political views. Probably that.

Anyway,  supporting all this is DmC’s gorgeous visuals that ooze style from almost every pore. The demons exist in the world of Limbo which sits parallel with our own. Provided they’re close enough the demons can yank Dante into their world at any time, which is where all of the gameplay takes place, and when they do things suddenly start getting awesome. The very ground will heave and crack, gravity defying chunks of it breaking away and floating in mid-air, while the buildings twist and contort into strange angles, creating these amazing looking levels that are a twisted parody of the normal city which existed mere moments ago. The color palette works beautifully as well, with emphasis on vibrant red and blues that bring the world to life while being a far cry from the Gothic and dark look of the old games. When in Limbo a simple warehouse might suddenly become a deathtrap as the room expands into enormity and boxes fly off of the shelves to create makeshift pathways through the air, or you might find yourself in a strange nightclub where you’re running across bright radio waves high above cheering crowds while the occasional massive set of words, like “Kill Dante” appear on the walls.  There’s even a level that takes place inside a virtual news broadcast where you end up in a boss fight against the floating head of a reporter. Occasionally the reporter rips you out of the fight and tosses  you into an actual breaking story about yourself on a pier somewhere battling demons while you control and view the action from a news helicopter circling the area, all while you’re still actually in the boss battle back in the news building. It’s utterly bonkers, and utterly brilliant!And I didn’t explain it very well, but frankly it’s hard to explain and I’ve got all the writing talent of a depressed Lemming raised by red necks. Simple cast your eyes over the screenshots adorning this page which do a far great job than I of explaining just how beautiful and detailed DmC is. Argue what you will, but nobody can deny that DmC has outstanding production values, values that extend to the animation work during gameplay which is equally brilliant.

Atop the games marvelous visuals and satirical  world is perched the games simple yet   fairly effective story. At first the game appears to be planning on focusing more on the origins of Dante than anything else, which would have been most welcome given that this is a reboot that is clearly aiming to bring new players onboard,  but it quickly gets that particular story arc out of the way within the first hour of the game as the plot frantically keeps pace with the tempo set by the gameplay. By the second mission, barely an hour in, you’ll gained almost all of Dante’s primary abilities  and the bulk of his origins will have been neatly wrapped up and chucked away, largely in a big CGI chunk of exposition that felt like it hit pause on the flow of the game, threw the script at my face and then hit play again.  The focus then shifts to the relationship between Dante and his long-lost brother Vergil, leader of the resistance against demons and wearer of a fetching hat and coat, and their quest to go and kick Mundus’ arse so hard that people on planets far away from here will look up say, “What the hell was that?”. To do so they’ll need to take down a few of Mundus’ supports, and along the way there’s all the usual Devil May Cry nonsense we’ve come to expect, albeit toned down in comparison to the past games to fit in with the darker and more “believable” tone. There’s demon babies, huge bosses, physics defying insanity and plenty of cool moments to keep you entertained throughout the journey.

However, there’s definitely some flaws, the first being that the relationship between Dante and Vergil just isn’t explored anywhere near enough for what the storyline demands. As brothers who have only just found each other it would have been good if Ninja Theory had taken the time to really build their relationship up over the course of the game, but there’s really only a few moments between them throughout the entire six or seven hours it takes to complete DmC: Devil May Cry.  It’s a problem exasperated by my second major complaint, which is the frequent patches of rough, and sometimes just downright bloody awful dialogue. For the most part the writing is okay, but there are certainly moments when the fact that this is the first story Ninja Theory have penned themselves shows through, such as the swearing. It’s not that I’m against swearing, and in the context of a demon world it makes sense, it’s just that it’s wildly inconsistent in its execution. There are times when Dante swearing fits the situation well, and it’s hard not to be amused by a massive demon screaming “FUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK YOOOUUUUUU!” right back at him, but there’s also times when it comes across like a small child trying to shock its parents by shouting lots of bad words at them without having the slightest idea about how swearing has to have context to be effective. If that analogy doesn’t work for you, then it’s like those idiotic Youtube users that just unleash a torrent of abuse at people that means absolutely nothing because they don’t know how to use foul language properly. There’s an art to it, a sense of timing. Swearing for the sake of swearing may sort of be realistic (I live in Scotland, where swearing every second word is mandatory) but it doesn’t make for good writing.

With a heavier emphasis on story comes a need for strong characterisation as well, something which I feel DmC is somewhat lacking in its supporting cast. Vergil has had a pretty radical personality change from what he used to be, which is fine, but the personality they’ve put in their just isn’t as likable as the original nor is it ever explored as much as it should be. Likewise the modern-day witch, Kat, who acts as Dante’s vague love interest, needs more screen time, because while her character isn’t very fleshed out I  did like her.

I’d also hazard that the story comes across as feeling some what conflicted about what it’s trying to be. There are times when it feels like it has a slightly tongue-in-cheek attitude toward it’s plot and characters,  the very same style that helped define the previous Devil May Cry games, albeit not layered on quite as thickly, but then there are other times where the story tries to come across as dark, serious and edgy, and those moments just don’t work all that well, once again thanks to the flawed dialogue that makes them come across as overly dramatic.

For all of its flaws, though, and I do seem to have mentioned quite a bit of those, the storyline is surprisingly enjoyable stuff. The narrative isn’t complex nor a masterpiece of writing, but it’s strong enough and fun enough to do exactly what it needs to, which is provide an entertaining yarn that helps keep players interested throughout and provide a platform for all the manic gameplay and madness. Some terrific performances from almost every actor and brilliant animation work  help bolster it considerably and help combat some of the dialogue problems thanks to subtle nuances in the characters performances, like a slight shrug of the shoulders or small facial expression, bringing some depth to it all, although some of the cutscenes suffer from the now infamous Unreal Engine texture pop-in. There was one bit where Vergil’s coat lost its textures completely. Presumably after the cut-scene ended Vergil had to wander off, hunt the pesky textures down and stick them back on his coat with some glue. If nothing else I can certainly say that the story is of considerably higher quality than previous Devil May Cry games, although that’s hardly saying much as the writing in those could never have been considered good.

As for the star of the show, Dante, he’s gone through some pretty big changes, now sporting a short, black, spiky haircut and a long grey coat that looks like it’s been on the wrong end of numerous Saturday nights out. In other words he looks exactly like what he is, a disheveled teenager living in a trailer, getting hammered every night and banging every chick he can find. But while it’s all change on the outside what’s on the inside is strangely  familiar stuff: Dante has retained his cocky, arrogant, smug and confident attitude, casually insulting demons and  people alike with the air that no matter what happens he can deal with it, but now he’s layered with more…well, personality.  He comes across as more human than he’s ever been thanks to a few quieter moments during the story that let his usual demeanor fade away in favor of other emotions. The fact that he feels more human than the old Dante  is rather ironic considering Ninja Theory have changed things around so that he’s no longer part human, instead he’s now half Demon and half Angel.

At first, though,  he’s hard to like: the introduction to Dante isn’t exactly endearing as he takes a couple of strippers dressed as angels back to his trailer, and his initial attitude grates a little as he come across as an immature twat, although to be entirely original DMC Dante was a bit of a twat as well, a fact I can’t deny despite my love of him. At first I disliked the smug, black-haired bastard, even though he’d barely said anything and had stylishly dispatched numerous demons with relative ease. He’s a punk, a loner who doesn’t give a toss about the world. But once Dante meets his twin-brother Vergil he starts to become a far more likable character. Dante gains some perspective on his existence, a purpose in life for him to focus on, and by doing so he becomes a character with genuine drive and emotion behind him. With no memory of his parents, Dante was a loner with no idea where he fitted into the world, giving him his rather harsh view on life that made him so easy to dislike at first. It’s actually a splash of good writing: his earlier attitude is shown to be a direct result of his lack of direction, of not knowing who he is or what he should be going, and the constant demon attacks weren’t helping him any, either.  So with that sense of direction that the resistance gives him firmly in his head along with new-found brother and  love interest Kat, he grows as a person over the course of the game. By the time the credits rolled I had ended up liking this new Dante more than I ever thought I would.  The voice actor responsible for playing him nails the role, delivering a strong performance that sells us this cocky, immature and rebellious guy as somebody with a surprising amount of substance.  As much as I love the old Dante, he was mostly style over substance. This new Dante has both.

Despite the fact that I liked him and I felt he did grow as a character, he’s still a bit of a dick, though.  However, it’s important to remember that this a very young Dante, still in that know-it-all phase that we all went through. It’ll be interesting to see if Ninja Theory continue to grow the character until he becomes, perhaps, more like the old Dante, mixing the cocky attitude with wisdom gained from experience. If they do then that should make for a great story arc. That’s for the future, though, so let’s get back to the present. While I certainly liked him, I have no doubt that he’s a character will divide opinions greatly, with some, like me, liking him and others hating him. In particular I think the hardcore Devil May Cry fans will end up hating him with a genuine passion, which is one reason why they may wish to steer clear.

But now we come to the combat, the thing that I wanted to hold back on so that I could wax lyrical about the games other  strong points before moving on to  the most controversial aspect of this reboot. And let’s be pretty clear about this from the start, this isn’t your granddad’s Devil May Cry, things have certainly changed. And yes, I know that the original DMC is only just over twelve years old so saying it was your granddad’s doesn’t make much sense, but I’ve always wanted to use that phrase in a review, so shut up. The point I’m trying to make is the pace of the combat has been slowed down by a bit, and it’s default three difficulty settings available at the start of the game are all quite forgiving in comparison to previous entries in the franchise. Both of these things are deliberate design choices made to make the game more accessible for newcomers, and I’m not going to be counting those decisions as negatives toward the final score because I understand the reasoning behind them. Yes, as a DMC fan I would have certainly prefered to have kept the ultra quick gameplay and brutal difficulty, but this a reboot and that means it’s attempting to cater for a new audience as well, which the new combat system does well.

To many purists these changes will be enough to ensure that they never come near DmC, and that’s fair enough because as I began this review saying, everybody has a different idea of what made Devil May Cry so great, and for many it was the depth and speed of the combat. But I’m happy to report that while there has been changes, the things that made the combat so great to me, and I stress me and not you,  are still here in force, by which I mean fun in its purest form. What hasn’t changed about the combat is that it’s still about spectacle and lengthy combos. Dante slices through the demon hordes in spectacular style, creating massive combo chains by swapping between numerous weapons on the fly, from his classic sword Rebellion and twin pistols, Ebony and Ivory, to demonic axes and whirling shurikens. It’s not as fast as previous games, but it is quick. It’s not as deep as we’ve seen from the series in the past, but it’s still got complexity, and it’s not as challenging to achieve the once coveted triple S style ranking, but it is fun. It isn’t as deep as Devil May Cry 3, but it’s still deeper than the vast majority of hack and slash games out there at the moment.  These are just generalisations spouted by me, though, so let’s delve into the nitty-gritty of the combat mechanics and rip this stuff apart. Before carefully putting it back together again, because unreasonable destruction of random stuff is bad, kids.

At the core of it all is Dante’s classic sword Rebellion and his twin pistols, Ebony and Ivory,  which you’ll use to form massive combos using numerous different moves, from simple strikes to special moves like the Million Stab. Immediately my Devil May Cry experience kicked me in the back of the head and pointed out that something had changed: Ebony and Ivory have had their power reduced. At first my mind rebelled against this, but in time the change does make sense as they’re now mostly a tool for juggling enemies in the air, keeping them suspended until you’ve had time to slurp your tea, clean up the mess you made and then get back into it. Aside from his trusty blade and pistols Dante’s biggest combat change comes from his heritage as a freaky half-breed thing: holding down the right trigger swaps Dante to demon mode which gives him access to the heavy-hitting demonic weapons,  while holding down the left trigger gives him access to fast but light hitting Angelic weapons for dealing with crowds of enemies. The control scheme is hardly the most intuitive of designs and takes a while to adjust to, but once you do you’ll be swapping between Rebellion and your other weapons with ease mid-combo, chaining together attacks like a lunatic that’s been on a sugar binge for the past week. And damn does it feel smooth! There’s been a lot of criticism toward Ninja Theory for dropping DmC’s frame rate to 30FPS in comparison to the series original 60FPS, but frankly I didn’t feel like it had made a different. Combat in DmC is so slick it’s in danger of slipping down a drain if it’s not careful. The frame rate only dropped on me twice during my time with the game, and both times it was only for a brief second. And if frame rate is an issue for you it’s worth noting that the PC version of the game boasts a considerably higher rate.

As you progress through the game you’ll gain access to new weapons for your Demonic and Angelic forms, as well as a couple more firearms to add to your arsenal of death. You can swap between these weapons on the fly using the D-pad, which is again not the most comfortable thing to do at first but after a while you’ll be switching smoothly between your various weapons mid-combo like you’ve been doing it all your life, creating one long, sweeping attack. There’s nothing quite like landing an epic combo that uses all seven weapons in Dante’s arsenal and watching the style ranking climb to the SSS style rating. On top of that you’ll also gain access to two grappling hooks, one Demonic and one Angelic, which drags enemies toward you and pull you toward enemies respectively, which help to keep the combat flowing nicely, and also serves as the game’s platforming  mechanics, which I’ll get to later. As per series usual you’ll also be able to purchase new moves and upgrades from a shop in-between missions to bolster your killing capabilities.

There’s  also constant stream of new enemies being introduced into the game that require you to  change up your tactics a bit to deal with them, ensuring that the combat continues to feel fun and fresh throughout, and also because as we all know it gets pretty dull when you’re killing the same thing over and over. I mean, imagine killing Justin Bieber. Yeah, it’d be fun at first, but after the 50th time you’d be bored. Alright, 100th time. 1000th. Okay, that was a crap example.  Some enemies can only be damaged use Demonic or Angelic weapons, and they’re usually insultingly color-coded so that we don’t actually have to think, while others, like the pesky ninjas, require some patience and timing to beat. This continuous barrage of new enemies meets with my approval, especially while playing the game on the harder modes like Dante Must Die where big enemies that require specific attacks are mixed in with crowds of smaller enemies, creating some brilliant fights as you have to react on the fly to make sure you’re hitting the right enemies with the right moves, otherwise you could find yourself in some serious trouble, like sword in the arse trouble.

As I’ve mentioned a few times, though, it’s all a bit easy on the default difficulty settings that the game throws at your first on your first play through, meaning veteran Devil May Cry fans will want to start out in the hardest of those three. But complete the game and you’ll unlock some classic difficulties like Son of Sparda and Dante Must Die, which change-up the enemy waves and, best of all, add in new enemy behaviors, or in other words, give ’em more ways of stabbing you in the face. While still not quite as challenging as the likes of Devil May Cry 3, which was as hard as fucking nails, DmC’s higher difficulty settings do offer a solid challenge for pretty much everyone, and I’d hazard that even a seasoned pro will struggle a touch on Dante Must Die. And if you don’t struggle on that then I suggest trying Hell and Hell mode, where Dante dies in one hit while everything else has full health bars and access to their full range of behaviors. Still, Ninja Theory’s choice to keep the game accessible to a new audience may once again mean that series fanatics should keep away.

But what fans really want to know about is depth. The simple truth of the matter is that DmC: Devil May Cry doesn’t boast a combat system that is as complex or nuanced as Devil May Cry 3’s, the very game that we’ve already established is my personal pinnacle in the series in terms of some good old-fashioned demon slaying action. of course there’s no actual way to measure the “depth” of a combat system other than just guessing, so the best way I can describe is by how long it takes to achieve mastery of it . In Devil May Cry 3 mastering the combat system, or at least reaching the point where I felt I had done so, took me a good while. I can’t tell you the exact time as it was a long time ago that I last played DMC3, but suffice to say it was probably several play throughs of the game, especially since each selectable style required you to alter the way you played. For DmC: Devil May Cry it took me until the end of the game to feel like I had mastered the game’s combat mechanics, that I could handle anything the game threw at me with confidence. Upon activating a second play through on Son of Sparda mode the game quickly disproved my claim of mastery by demonstrating that my timing could do with some work and I needed to use the different dodges more often, leaving me to put in another 2-hours before I once again felt like I had complete mastery of the combat. Further play throughs seemed to back this up, with only the speed of my reactions needing some improvement. In conclusion, then, no, I can’t say DmC is as deep as past Devil May Cry games, in the sense that it didn’t take me all that long to master its gameplay.

And that’s alright, because above all else the combat in DmC is fun, plain and simple. All the different aspects of it come together to create a combat system that is fast, fluid, smooth as silk, responsive and very, very fun. It’s also finely balanced with no move feeling either useless or overpowered: they all have their uses in combat, and while on the standard difficulties you can get your way through a lot of the game with a limited repertoire of tricks, higher settings will need you to utilise them all to survive. Many fans have taken it to mean because it’s not as deep a combat as we’ve seen from the Devil May Cry games in the past that it’s somehow simplistic, when the simple truth is that DmC’s combat does indeed have a satisfying amount of complexity to it. Certainly more than most hack-‘n’-slash games we’re subjected to, anyway. It’s accessible for the newcomers that the game is so clearly aiming for, while having enough substance to keep you going for at least a second play through of it. More importantly, though, this is Ninja Theory’s first time crafting a Devil May Cry combat system, and while they’ve obviously had the previous games for reference they’ve done a damn good job. Now they need to build on it for the inevitable sequel, perhaps bringing back the concept of different selectable styles, after all the Dante in this game is young, so there’s plenty of room for his fighting skills to grow and improve.

The Devil Trigger is also worth mentioning. Gained later in the game this ability lets Dante tap into his latent demonic powers, turning his coat red and hair white in a nice nod to the original games while background colors go black and white and all enemies in the area are thrown up into the air. Devil Trigger mode is supposed to increase Dante’s damage output, but as it stands it feels pretty under-powered, with Dante’s strikes seemingly doing little more damage than they usually. Ultimately Devil Trigger is only useful for regaining some health. Otherwise, I largely forgot about it.

When it comes to using your highly tuned fighting skills during the boss battles, though, DmC disappoints a little, not because the bosses are poorly designed but because they’re the same bosses we’ve seen hundreds of times before in numerous other games. You know the kind, great hulking things that telegraph their attacks so far in advance that you’ve got time to go and check on the chicken that you’re roasting and fire off another Email to Capcom telling them how much they suck for rebooting Devil May Cry. And of course they’ve got glowing weak spots that you’ve got to hit as well, proving that Ninja Theory did indeed use a copy of the Big Book of Boss Battles when designing DmC. As I said it’s not that they’re bad, in fact they’re quite fun, it’s just that we’ve seen them so many times and I had hoped that Ninja Theory might play around a little more with the standard formula. To me a good boss fight should be like a test to see if you’ve mastered everything the game has thrown at you up until this point, instead of just asking you if you remember the very last thing the game tought you and if you can see that glowing bit over there. However, the final boss battle in the last game does deserve special mention for being utterly awesome! It’s challenging, it’s well designed and it can proudly stand amongst some of the best boss fights the entire Devil May Cry series.

When you’re not saving the world by slicing up demons like it’s going out of fashion you’ll be leaping from platform to platform, jumping on mushrooms and fixing broken pipes. Shit, that’s Mario. Sorry. Lost my train of though, there. Anyway, the leaping from platform to platform part was entirely accurate as Ninja Theory have introduced some platforming elements into DmC to help break up the pace a little, and in that task it actually succeeds rather well. The warped landscape of Limbo gave Ninja Theory plenty of opportunities for some platforming antics with the two grappling hooks forming the core of it all: the Demonic hook lets you yank objects and pieces of scenery toward you, while the Angelic is used to pull you toward things. Toss on top of that a double jump, air dash and glide move and you’ve got the basics for some platforming fun as you chain together the different moves to get around the place. It’s all pretty simple stuff, mind, as each area you can grapple to is really clearly marked along a linear path, and it’s pretty forgiving about letting you fall to your death like a pillock, but it’s still pretty entertaining to fling yourself from chunk of scenery to chunk of scenery like some sort of demented chimp that’s managed to raid the local branch of Demons Inc and steal all their weapons.

For those worried about pure content for money it’s also worth talking about just how much you can expect from DmC: Devil May Cry. The entire campaign will take you somewhere around 7-8 hours to complete. There’s no denying it’s pretty short. Replay incentive comes in the form of hidden areas to find that often can’t be accessed until your second playthrough of the game when you’ve got access to Dante’s full arsenal of abilities. These hidden souls to find and secret challenge rooms count toward the final score awarded for a level, which of course affects your leaderboard position. Other than that the main replay value comes from the desire to play through the game on tougher difficulty settings. In other words, if you’re not the kind of person that enjoys playing through a campaign more than once, you’re not getting a lot of playtime for your money, so it may be worth waiting for the price to drop if you’re really looking purely for content to money ratio.

Ninja Theory have been taking a lot of flak and have been under immense pressure, but they’ve come out smelling of the proverbial roses with DmC: Devil May Cry, a great hack-‘n’-slash game that boasts slick, satisfying combat married with beautiful visuals, entertaining platforming and a solid storyline. This is a different Devil May Cry, reinvented for a new generation of gamers to enjoy. It’s different, but that’s no bad thing, because as a reboot it aims to be different. Deriding it for being different is a pointless and futile excercise.  It’s a brilliant game in its own right, and as a reboot that’s really the best way to judge it.  Hardcore Devil May Cry fans will not be swayed by my honeyed words, though, and while I hold that they’re missing out on a damn good game by doing so I also understand where they’re coming from: the changes made have, to a degree, made them feel alienated from the very series they supported. However, those fans have had three amazing games, and it’s time for them, for me, to let go. To every other gamer out there, I highly recommend DmC: Devil May Cry, and I’m looking forward to what Ninja Theory do next with their new series.

The Good:
+ Looks amazing.
+ Fluid, fun combat.
+ Final boss fight.

The Bad:
– Iffy dialogue.
– New Dante is going to split opinions.
– Vergil and Kat don’t get enough characterisation.

The verdict: 4/5 – Great
DmC: Devil May Cry is a well-crafted hack-‘n’-slash game that boasts slick combat and a beautiful visual design. Hardcore Devil May Cry fans should probably steer clear, but everyone else should do themselves a favor and give this a whirl – you won’t regret it.

Note: You may have noticed that DmC: Devil May Cry has been the first “victim” of the new scoring system I’m using. As you can see, I’ve kept the “The Good” and “the Bad” sections, but have removed the separate scores for different aspects of game the game. Finally I’ve removed the 1-10 rating system in favor of a nice and simple 1-5 system. I’ll be posting an explanation sometime soon. Maybe. Might do.