DMC: DEVIL MAY CRY

Hack & Slash; a genre that's been helping angst driven teenagers vent their frustrations for years. Sure there's God of War which plays practically the same way but I've always prefered the smug, wise cracking charm Dante to the smash, kill and destory attitude of Kratos. I'm not saying God of War is a bad series at all; it's just Dante was here first, 4 years earlier in fact. So anyway...Hack & Slash, while it's relativly one dimensional it terms of gameplay it generally makes up for it by having great stories with epic battles and stunning locales. Devil May Cry 1 set the standard for the series and it's been exceptionally hard to beat since however I defineitly feel that DMC: Devil May Cry comes remarkably close to that classic stylish game we fell in love with many years ago. Dante has undergone a massive remodel in this installment and survived, many gamers were quite sceptical towards Dante's overhaul but in the end he came out on top, I'll touch more on this later. I'd just like to point out now that DMC: Devil May Cry is the 5th installment in the series, why Capcom didn't just call it 5 we'll never know, it makes just as much sense calling other popular games MGS: Metal Gear Solid or SSB: Super Smash Bros. For the purpose of this review I'm just going to call it DMC5.

So anyway where were we?...ah yes, so, DMC5 is the earliest chronological installment in the life of the legendary son of Sparda, Dante. Dante being the offspring of both a demon and a human naturally possesses the out of this world abilities of demons while maintaining the look and almost normal life of a human. DMC5 explores the early years of Dante's life, the introduction of his brother Virgil and their first battle with the demon king 'Mundus'. This is where Dante first learns of his demonic powers and how to harness them in order to makes transformations into a demon. The game plays around with all relativly straight forward mechanics and elements but executes them all exceptionally well. One thing I must say is that the boss battles are back in full force and are the perfect level of challenging. While previous DMC installments have brought some cool boss battles a lot of the frustration factor was in cheap shots but this time round it's all about you, so when you finally bust that badie down to size the reward is plentiful and very satisfying. Probably one of the best improvments on the game as opposed to the last is the variety of locales and the missions. DMC4 saw a lot of repetition and ultimatly left me feeling a little dissapointed in the lack of imagination. Here my train of thought when playing DMC4...'Oh cool city, what's next? Snow fortress, caves, forest, epic tower thing...that's pretty cool, I wonder what's next, oh it's the same levels I just did but backwards. Great! So just half effort in the creativity department so we can focus on making the villains boobs look just that little bit rounder, sigh!'

To be honest it's hard to explain just why DMC5 strikes so close to home and the original but I feel it definitely has something to do with the mixture of sleek gameplay and crazy fight combo's. Movement controls come naturally and executing combo's if surprisingly smooth, it's quite easy to pull off tricky moves and the reward is satisfying. Launching enemies into the air and flurrying between multiple weapons of varying power is so much fun. Anyone who's familiar with DMC games or this style knows what I'm talking about when I say that some games can be exceptionally difficult when it comes to pulling off moves but in DMC5 everything is so fluent. This is game that comes highly recommended and while the story may be a little short the replay value is high. Getting back to Dante's re-invention I feel that it was also a great idea to shine a light on a different part of Dante's life with a different look. The execution makes it feel like the game has been refreshed and that what could've been a stale near done to death sequel was instead a well thought out take on the DMC franchise. I hope you all get around to playing it soon and release any left over teen pent up frustration on some pain deserving demon spawn. Have fun!

Genre: Hack & Slash Action / Adventure
Platforms: PC, PS3 & 360
Score 9 / 10