DMC Demo: First Impressions

So I've been a fan of the Devil May Cry series for quite awhile now. They've always had a great mix of tight and challenging gameplay with unique and humorous characters, settings, and situations. The series drops all pretense of realism in the first few minutes and never looks back, allowing for some truly hilarious spectacles in an environment without the need to question them (of course you can keep an enemy floating in mid air with bullets, it makes perfect sense if you think about it).

When the prequel/reboot of the series was announced I was very excited - that is until they released the teaser trailer for it. Capcom passed development of the new game off to Ninja Theory (previously development had been handled internally) and the design direction was clearly a deviation from previous titles, especially regarding Dante. It was revealed later that this was a conscious decision as Capcom wanted this to be more of an origin story, depicting Dante as a very different character than in the first four games.

While there was a large backlash from fans (as was expected) I was cautiously optimistic. Having an origin story to show the growth into the established character can be very interesting. My primary concern was that it showed a distinct shift of focus onto the story itself, something that had never been a major concern in the previous games. I worried not that the new direction would be negative but that the change in focus would result in a decrease in attention to detail in the aspects of the game that had been so central before.

With the release date fast approaching Capcom released a demo for DMC recently, giving gamers their first real look at the game. Were the concerns of the fans justified, or was it all just fear of change? Let's take a look at how the DMC demo stands as it's own game and in contrast to the series as a whole.

Gameplay

The Devil May Cry series has always been about it's combat mechanics first and foremost and DMC is no exception. The actual combat is extremely similar to previous DMC games: tight controls, fast gameplay, and  challenging enemies. Really there were only a few differences in the combat system that I feel changed the feel or flow of the game.

Target Locking

Previously in the series you had the ability to lock onto a single target, allowing you to focus attacks on a single enemy, keep a dangerous enemy in your field of view to allow you to react to his attacks, or just pick out that one enemy in the distance who keeps shooting you. DMC has completely removed this, opting instead for your targets to be picked automatically based on the proximity of enemies and the direction you face.

This became extremely annoying in larger battles where you always had a group of melee enemies in your face combined with a handful of ranged or flying enemies behind them. Focusing on the ranged enemies was much more difficult than I felt it needed to be, and it was extremely frustrating not even knowing exactly who you would attack until you were committed to the action. This made ranged enemies extremely frustrating not due to their difficulty or power but due to the innate difficulty in convincing Dante to attack them.

Yeah DMC, I TOTALLY wanted to grapple onto the nearby chainsaw-wielding enemy and not the flyer. That's why I jumped before using the grapple attack.

It also made tracking specific enemies far more frustrating. No target lock means your camera won't follow the enemy, so you'll be spending far more time manually panning the camera to keep the dangerous enemy in view - either that or you'll be spending an awful lot of time flat on the ground from off-screen attacks.

Weapon Swapping

Having multiple weapons quickly available to you has always been a strength of the series, and in this area DMC does not disappoint. You still have your trusty pistols for a ranged weapon but now instead of two melee weapons to swap between you're given three. They also changed up how the controls for weapon swapping works; rather than a toggle button between them you hold down R2 or L2 (or neither) depending on which weapon you want to use.

This system does take a little getting used to, but overall I feel that it's better. Holding the button for the weapon allows for 1:1 mapping of your moves rather than your moveset being dependent on which weapon you currently have selected. I think the new system will be a bit easier for new players to pick up, but it is liable to confuse some veterans early in the game. Overall the system was fairly fun and intuitive, and stringing together combos to beat enemies into the dirt felt as fun and engaging as ever.

Gap Closers

As with just about all spectacle fighters, positioning is imperative; being able to quickly get into and out of range of your enemies is arguably the most important ability. One of the first abilities you get in any Devil May Cry game is a gap closer, allowing you to quickly get in your opponent's face to exploit a moment of weakness. In the past this was given as a thrust style move where you lunge at the enemy, however DMC instead gives you a chain to either pull the the enemy to your or yourself to the enemy.

While this seems to be a suitable replacement at first I found it to be severely lacking after spending some time with the game. The biggest problem is when you reach enemies that have the ability to block these attacks, completely negating the only gap closing abilities you have. This results in combat feeling much more sluggish whenever these types of enemies are around (which seems to be just about all the time on the hardest difficulty available).

It's worth noting that this is just a demo and you may get additional gap closers in the full game, but as it stands in the demo I see this as a step back.

Difficulty

I realize this is just a demo and we are likely seeing one of the first levels and bosses, but the difficulty seemed significantly lower than previous games. There are 4 difficulty levels included on the demo and I jumped straight into the second highest (the highest difficulty was locked until you completed the demo once). Despite the new controls and mechanics (and the fact that the last Devil May Cry game I played was on PC) I didn't die once, even on the boss. I then replayed the demo on the highest difficulty and found that it did increase not only the overall difficulty but also the enemy variety, but I still only died a single time.

The boss especially felt easy by Devil May Cry standards. There was a long forecast time for every move and it was generally pretty obvious what you needed to do to dodge from the forecast alone (slowly raising an arm to lash across the platform means you need to jump, slowly arching up and taking a breath means you need to back up, etc). Even on the hardest difficulty the boss never felt particularly deadly, and even his most powerful attacks didn't punish you too harshly for getting hit.

I really do hope this issue is just due to this being a demo and likely showing early game, but I am a bit worried about the overall difficulty of the game. It was however very encouraging to see that the higher difficulties offered an increased challenge without relying  on methods that felt cheap or unfair.

Character/Art Design

So we already know that DMC went in a completely new direction with both the character and art design, but the question still remains - is it good? Well this being a short demo we can't really fully answer, and it would be silly of us to try - however we can look at what we are shown and talk about how it sets the tone as well as what pitfalls might occur as a result.

Dante

Up to this point Dante has been portrayed as a juxtaposition between a detached/carefree attitude and a tough/bad-ass attitude. The overall presentation gave a great impression of "You're not so far beneath me to not bother kicking your ass, but you are so far beneath me for not to have to put effort into it." This attitude of confident condescension was reflected in everything he did but especially in the boss cutscenes.

In contrast, Dante in DMC is portrayed as your typical arrogant, cocky adolescent. He seems to be grasping at an extremely juvenile idea of maturity, talking himself up in importance to others and swearing a lot. All the humorous juxtaposition and confident condescension is gone in favor of boasting and trash talk.

That is the actual dialogue. Most natural writing ever.

While this is in line with the idea that we are seeing Dante before he establishes his personality it also serves to strip him of everything that was interesting and unique about him in the past games. This is again likely very early on in the narrative of the game, and it is possible that they will have his character actually grow and evolve over the course of the time. If this is their goal it could work out in their favor; showing how a beloved character developed his unique identity can lead to some very interesting narrative.

There is one major concern I have with this portrayal so far though: it could be an attempt to appeal to a younger demographic rather than having it be the starting point for character growth. If that's the case it's likely that the Dante as shown in the demo wouldn't grow or evolve much and we would be left with an extremely shallow stereotype as a protagonist for the entire game.

I think in the end whether this change in character design turns out to be a positive or negative move will be determined by how they develop it (or don't) throughout the game. It does have a very worrisome starting point though, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have major concerns with this new direction.

Environments

In previous Devil May Cry games the environments were intentionally extraordinary, e.g. a gigantic tower springing up out of nowhere in DMC3 and nobody seems to notice or care or the cathedral out in the middle of a snowy desert in DMC4. These fantastical settings clash in a perfect way with the original character design of Dante himself; the heavenly/demonic aesthetic present in the scenery sets a very epic Biblical environment, and to have a carefree bad-ass come stomping through what must be ancient holy or satanic relics with nary a worry or care is so cleverly conflicting that it further solidifies the comical undertones of the game itself.

Wait, did that tower just spring up out of the ground? Meh, probably just my imagination.

DMC instead opts for a gritty realistic scene in a city. This aesthetic lends itself more to going for a drug run down the seedier streets of the Bronx rather than comically stomping through sacred monuments like they were condemned buildings.

This could of course still be a symptom of the demo; previous games in the series have had individual levels that were closer to the gritty city shown in the DMC demo despite the overall game not focusing on these settings. DMC may take a similar approach and introduce the fantastical settings later in the game.

Overall Impression

The meat of the game is in the combat mechanics, and save for a couple exceptions that seems to be as good as ever. If you enjoy the Devil May Cry games primarily for their gameplay fear not, Ninja Theory has done a pretty good job of replicating the feel and flow of combat and you shouldn't be disappointed.

For those of you that (like me) have always thoroughly enjoyed the comedic presentation of Dante and his setting, you might want to hold off on an initial purchase. It is entirely possible that the issues I've outlined will be fixed once put in context with the full game, but I can see a lot of pitfalls that would be easy for them to fall into.

I will say that for what it's worth, the DMC demo was the last little push I needed to go out and buy the Devil May Cry HD collection.