DmC: Devil May Cry

Though I'm giving this game a thumbs up, I did not actually have much fun playing it. The gist is this: it's a combat arcade game pretending to be an adventure game. Adventure gamers will be disappointed, and I don't think it's such a great arcade game, either. It feels like it's trying to be two things at the same time and getting the balance all wrong. (Happily, Ninja Theory's next game, [I]ENSLAVED: Odyssey to the West[/I], gets it right.)

I'll avoid spoilers while trying to boil down the issues to two main aspects:

First, level design is exceptionally poor. All levels are essentially linear paths through a series of combat scenes. Some levels allow for limited exploration, but it always feels fake and unrewarding. The side paths just lead you to collectible items, which offer skill points and achievements. Unfortunately, getting more skill points will have almost no effect on gameplay (more on skills below). Worse is that you cannot spend time carefully exploring the level in order to collect them: pick the wrong direction in a corridor and you'll miss them, no going back. To collect them all you will have to replay the level, possibly numerous times. It seems the game [B]wants[/B] you to replay the levels: you are awarded a score for your performance at the end each level, which determines how many skill points you will get to spend before continuing. It assumes that players will want to keep replaying in order to get the best score. It assumes you care about the score.

The other main problem is the skill system. The game is almost entirely about combat, and it's very rich indeed: you have various weapons with a mindbogglingly huge amount of attacks at your disposal, which you can add or improve by using skill points. The sheer breadth of the repertoire means that there are so many strategies to choose from during combat. Though some weapons work better against some enemies, it really doesn't matter much: you can focus on what you enjoy most. So, actually you don't really need many skill points and don't need to learn too many button combinations, and indeed quite early in the game you can max out the attacks you use the most without even finding many of those collectibles. So, what's the point in skills? The point is points: if you use a wider variety of attacks to defeat your enemies, you will get a higher score when you finish the level. (Though often I found that just mashing buttons randomly gave me the highest score...) So, again, wanting more skill points depends on whether or not you care about the score.

To make matters even more absurd: you can actually move skill points between skills. So, if you choose to focus on a skill that you don't end up using, just remove it and add it somewhere else. The stakes are very low. Bottom line: you don't have to care about skill points at all in order to finish the game.

To conclude, if you care about getting high scores in your games, [I]DmC[/I] has some interesting things to offer, especially for re-playability. You can keep working on getting skill points and defeating your enemies in the best possible ways, aiming for the perfect score. If that sounds fun to you, you will enjoy this game.

What's in it for adventure gamers? First, remember that you can finish the game just fine without caring much about the score at all because of the poorly designed skill system, and just play it as an adventure game. As an adventure, [I]DmC[/I] is compelling: it is exceptionally well produced, featuring a stunning soundtrack by Combichrist, great 3D modeling, terrific voice acting, and superbly directed cut-scenes. Unfortunately, it has a thin, predictable story that is utterly disconnected from the gameplay. In the end, there are much better adventure games.