Review - No More Heroes (Wii)
This review is a little late, since I’m well aware this game is like, well over a year old now, but since it’s probably selling less copies that ‘nickelodeon minigame compilation adventure land #4’ I thought I’d contribute to proclaiming it’s awesomeness. No More Heroes is a game by that kooky (not pretentious) chap Suda51, often referred to as the Quentin Tarantino of the video game world. Unsurprisingly, No More Heroes is a pretty unique game, and one that certainly can’t be taken at face value. I’m not trying to go all ‘games are art’, but like Killer7 before it, you can certainly see why some people insist on the notion. Personally I always thought altered beast had a deep social commentary on society’s acceptance of homosexuality, but hey whatever (It was the brokeback mountain of its time).
The plot of No More Heroes is surprisingly complex considering how little back-story we’re given to start the game out with. We’re dropped right into the heat of the action after being told in a brief intro sequence that Travis Touchdown, our geeky protagonist went and bought himself a lightsaber on eBay (correction, beam katana – almost faced a lawsuit there, phew!), with which he took to the streets and killed the 13th ranked assassin, therefore assuming his title. In order to avoid becoming a target himself, the glory of being number one and the prospect of some booty, Travis sets out to defeat the other 12 ranked assassins and become the greatest killer who ever lived. Of course, there are some twists and turns along the way, but the game generally sticks to the formula of hunting down each assassin one by one.
The gameplay in No More Heroes is pretty diverse, offering several styles of play, but you’ll spend most of the game hacking and slashing your way through goons in order to get to the end-level bosses. While there isn’t a great deal of verity to the fighting in the game (You get your high attacks and your low attacks, and that’s pretty much it), the wii’s motion controls let you do some cool finishing moves by slashing the remote in the direction that you want to cut a dude up in. You’ll also use motion gestures to control Travis’ Lucha Libre moves that he’ll acquire throughout the game, as well as charging up the battery on your katana by shaking the remote like crazy. While the endless amounts of enemies in the levels can make scenarios become slightly derivative, combat stays pretty fresh throughout the whole 12ish hour experience thanks to the Wii’s motion controls. Besides, you’ll want to slug your way through some of the more boring parts of the game in order to get to the excellent confrontations with the ranked assassins, along with the hilarious and somewhat intriguing story.
The majority of the games story is told via cut scenes at the beginning and end of each level, and most of these are pretty funny and well acted. The geeks among you will probably pick up on many internet memes and nerd-humour scattered throughout. The story is also advanced by some of the Wii’s little features, such as having to hold the Wiimote up to your ear and listen to phone conversations through the speaker, or hearing the hum of the lightsaber, (sorry, beam katana). The game also offers little minigames that take advantage of the remotes features, such as lifting it up and down like a dumbbell during training, or steering a lawnmower using the two controllers. Granted, this isn’t groundbreaking stuff, but at least it’s trying to take advantage of the console… even if you’re only going to want to play each little minigame once.
The real meat and potatoes of the game is definitely the boss fights, or ranked matches as they’re known as in the game. You’ll find yourself going toe-to-toe with all of the higher ranked assassins, who are all crazy, colourful characters who wouldn’t be out of place in an anime serial. The boss fights themselves are impressive too, though they’ll sometimes stretch on a bit, with some taking around 10 minutes to beat. Despite this the action is usually varied enough for them not to get old. A couple of them are particularly epic, though it’s hard to go into much detail without spoiling them, so you’ll just have to see for yourselves. These are definitely some of the best boss fights in a game for a long time.
The most impressive thing about No More Heroes with without a doubt its character designs – Suda51 has done an outstanding job presenting a main character that the gaming audience can really relate to. Travis Touchdown represents the geek in all of us, what with his giant Japanese anime collection, video games, big motorbike, leather jacket, wrestling obsession, and his never-ending desire to get some poon (which generally takes priority for Travis over anything else). Travis is a character that the average gamer will probably be able to draw similarities to in one way or another, and in secret he’s who we all wish we could be – I think we all have a little Travis Touchdown inside us. Of course the people who don’t feel this familiarity probably fit into the crowd of people who aren’t going to enjoy the game anyway. You’re also a crazy liar if you don’t think that some of the ranked assassins aren’t just amazingly cool.
Despite all this praise I’m giving it here, No More Heroes isn’t without its problems; in fact it has more than its fair share of them. The open world sections of the game just seem totally unfinished, there’s very little you can do other than just drive from A to B, and the collision detection in these segments just seems broken at points. Santa Destroy also seems more or less devoid of life, and considering the wacky world of No More Heroes it does seem to be quite a boring place to hang out. The side missions that you’ll be forced to complete are also pretty boring and repetitive, with little verity and uninspiring objectives. Like it or not, you’re going to have to complete these side-missions, as the ranked assassin confrontations (which are arguably what you’ll want to play the game for) can’t be accessed without saving up at least a certain amount of money. It’s impossible to tell if Suda51 intended for these side-missions to be so monotonous to simulate Travis’ anguish at his hard-earned money being squandered… but if he did, he certainly did a good job of it.
Even though there are so many things wrong with No More Heroes, it’s a difficult game not to love. There are just so many charming characters and gameplay styles to find here, and even though you’ll have to slog through a lot of boring sections to get to them, the boss encounters are some of the most rewarding since Metal Gear Solid. The fact that this is also a GOOD third party wii game means you practically have to play it, if only to encourage the sales of games for the system that aren’t shovelware. This severely underplayed game, and it needs your support!
The good: amazingly cool cast of characters, parodies and satires almost every piece of geek-culture, cool motion controls, epic boss battles… Oh, and it’s a GOOD third party wii game?!
The bad: Open world sections are buggy and unfinished, side-missions are boring (though perhaps that’s the idea… I don’t really know), gameplay can drag sometimes.
NO MORE HEROES gets 4/5 goblins
Review - Mercenaries 2 (PS3 / XBOX360)
Blatantly copying the whole GTA formula (or, ‘go anywhere, shoot anyone’) is more or less expected from games companies nowadays, but to be fair, the sneaky guys over at Pandemic Studios managed to pull it off with the original Mercenaries before it became trendy and overdone. The game’s brand of arcade-style military action combined with the freedom to blow up whatever the hell you wanted was unsurprisingly pretty popular, hence the mercenaries’ return to ‘next-gen’ consoles for more mayhem!
The premise of the game is this: you play as one of three stereotypical hard-ass vigilantes who, after completing a simple contract on Tutorial Island (probably not the real name), gets shot in the ass instead of being paid by the evil fiend and all-round bad guy Ramon Solano, and ends up working with a variety of different factions to enact Ultimate Revenge(tm). Clearly Pandemic failed spectacularly at delivering the ‘deep story’ they promised but hey, we can forgive the almost complete lack of a plot in what’s intended to be a game all about the action.
And as soon as you’re dropped into war-torn Venezuela, it’s hard not to enjoy the mindless destruction. There are over 150 different vehicles to drive and blow up at will and a vast selection of weapons to accomplish this with, and although they all feel pretty similar (is there really any difference between an assault rifle and an automatic rifle?) there’s still a good deal of choice. The most fun to use are airstrikes, where you designate your target with a smoke grenade, beacon or cool little satellite map screen before running away as fast as possible and admiring the beautiful hi-res mushroom cloud.
The open-ended sandbox style gameplay actually works pretty well. Venezuela is presented in a 64 square kilometre map, very little of which is pointless empty space, and you’ll never find yourself lost or unsure where to go next. Any vehicles, weapon drops or unnecessarily massive airstrikes you might have in your stockpile can be delivered via chopper almost instantly, which works great and lets you adapt to any situation with ease. Some kind of armory system would have been handy to prevent having to radio in several different supply drops each time you die, but that’s really a minor complaint. Each contract you take comes with a list of recommended weaponry but you’re encouraged to think up your own strategies and use as much firepower as you like, which is always fun despite the fact that a nuclear missile solves all problems.
Unfortunately, the developers’ idea of a difficulty curve was to simply increase the amount of faceless men with rocket launchers in each mission, which can lead to some pretty frustrating game experiences. I thought after clearing Rainbow Six Vegas I was done playing games where the lead character inexplicably (and frequently) detonates without warning, but due to Pandemic’s clumsy attempt at cramming as many explosions as they could into the game, it’s not uncommon to find yourself calling in a super-expensive tank only to have it blown to pieces in seconds - as a result, you’ll probably finish most of the harder missions by carpet-bombing anything in the area that even looks like an enemy target.
Despite this, the real issue Mercenaries 2 suffers from is the inexplicably large amount of glitches. The game freezes in certain places, enemies decide to stop shooting at you until you reset your console, and sometimes the annoying helicopter pilot refuses to deliver any items you already paid for; achievements unlock at random when you haven’t earned them and refuse to unlock if you have, and there are numerous graphical errors and clipping problems. Even though the majority of the bugs aren’t exactly game breaking, it just seems odd that the game is plagued with so many problems despite the release date being pushed back multiple times.
Anyway, the great new feature all the cool kids are talking about is the co-operative online play via Xbox live, which is a blast when you can get it to work. You and a friend (who you may or may not have bribed into playing just to get the easy co-op achievements) work together to run through the story or simply cause as much destruction as possible with twice the firepower. This is really where the game peaks – almost all vehicles have one or more gun emplacements for a second player to cause havoc with, from miniguns to mounted rocket launchers, and it’s twice as much fun levelling as much of the map as possible with a buddy. A split-screen mode is sadly missing, as is the option to host a game with more than two players but nevertheless, this is a welcome distraction for people who are tired of the endless online team shooters.
So what’s the verdict? Well, Mercenaries 2 is definitely a unique experience and a whole lot of fun to play, but it does suffer somewhat from Metal Slug syndrome: fantastic for the first week but gets old fairly quickly. It’s not hard to finish with 100% completion so if you’re looking for a proper action adventure, move along. If you want explosions, big tanks and a game that doesn’t care for lesser things like storylines or, uh… political correctness, then by all means, give this one a go. It’d get a better score if they had actually hired some people to remove all the irritating glitches first.
Mercenaries 2 gets 3.5/5 goblins
Review - Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
Well, it’s been about seventeen minutes since Mario’s last spin off adventure, so it looks like it’s about that time again…. Oh wait! This is a Mario spin-off that people genuinely care about! Honestly, I don’t know why Nintendo doesn’t think about creating some new franchises instead of whoring out good old Mario around 20 times a year; however Mario kart has always been something a bit more special. What’s even more special is that we Europeans get this one before our American cousins, hence the reason I’m writing this review before it’s even released for you yanks – haha! (Then again, I shouldn’t talk that much, since the far more interesting brawl hasn’t even got a solid release date yet. I think Ninty hates us for some reason). This latest rendition of the series is bundled with one of those plastic wii-wheel things, which in reality is just an empty shell to slot the remote into, but hey, freebies are freebies. While the game hasn’t really evolved all that much since the last iteration, it’s still certainly worth having a talk about it.
For those of you who aren’t well initiated with the series (or clearly haven’t played an Nintendo console for the last 4 generations), I’ll give a brief overview. Mario and company will find themselves racing around locales from the series, such as Bowser’s castle and the mushroom kingdom, picking up some boosts and funky power ups along the way. ‘Kart has always been a pretty forgiving and spontaneous game, as it rewards players in the last place with better items, and handicaps those in the lead, meaning unlike some racing games, you’ll never be in front for very long. Along with the basic controls and crazy courses, it’s this sort of thing that has always made the Mario Kart games a favourite for multiplayer experiences. Though you won’t find any real depth or series skill to the game, despite the amount of competitions you’ll often see, it’s always been easily accessible and fun to play for new players… And with this one, you get a plastic wheel!
As far as the core gameplay goes, things haven’t changed much since the last entry on the GameCube, other than the addition of bikes and the fabled plastic wheel. Both of these additions have a mild stench of gimmick about them, as the bikes don’t play all that differently from the karts, other than they’re slightly slower but offer a tricks system to get some boosts. The wheel will probably go down pretty well with the casual players, but it doesn’t offer the same level of responsiveness that you’d expect from a traditional controller, which means it likely won’t be long till you’re reaching for that analogue stick, whether it be the classic, GC controller or just the nunchuck. It’s nice of Nintendo to include a bonus controller like that, but like the zapper, it just seems to undermine the whole point of the remote itself – If the wii remote is the all-purpose controller that can be ‘anything’, why am I buying little bits of plastic to slot it into? Besides, when you’re playing in a ranked online environment (Yes, online matches are ranked), you need every advantage you can get – and the wheel isn’t one of them.
Alright enough wheel hate, let’s talk a little about the racing. It doesn’t take many risks for a Mario kart game; you’ll find the standard fare of crazy tracks, crazy characters and crazy weapons. The game features 16 all-new tracks, and the same amount of retro ones. A good thing worth noting about this entry into the series is that the new tracks are probably the best to have featured in a Mario Kart game to date, with plenty of things going on, risky shortcuts and fun extras. The healthy amount of them also means that you aren’t going to get bored anytime soon. They really are a lot of fun, though they do seem to cast a bit of a shadow over the older tracks, which don’t seem nearly as exciting. The way the karts handle makes them very accessible, because you’ll only have to use three buttons – gas, drift and item, and there’s even an option to set the drifting to automatic, at a slight speed penalty. This is a game that most newbies won’t have much problem jumping into.
There aren’t many graphical differences between this and the last version on the GameCube either. It’s by no means a bad looking game, it’s just the game isn’t going to wow you graphically, relying more on those zany track layouts and tricks. Still, this only holds true for the newer tracks, and the ‘classic’ ones seem sort of bland. The fact that these older tracks are made faithfully, hence featuring a whole ton of right angles, doesn’t help to make this much of a graphical showcase either. Now I’m not slamming the game for not looking awesome, I know the Wii’s hardware limits, but games like Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3 have already shown us that the console is capable of more than polished GameCube visuals. Considering this is the same developer we’re talking about here, it’s a shame they didn’t put a little bit more effort into making it look prettier.
Where Mario Kart wii really shines is in its multiplayer. While you’ll still be getting the four player split-screen that we all know and love, there’s also free online play for up to 12 players online, kind of like what we saw in the DS iteration, however here it’s much easier to get a game, and play with your friends. Nintendo has actually really gone a long way with the online component in the game, as you’ll be given friends lists, random matches, rankings, competitions and ghost data uploads. Besides, this is how it’s meant to be played; it’s far more fun taking someone out and provoking a hilarious reaction than just playing against AI. It’s nothing that we haven’t already seen done on the Wii’s competitor consoles; however the fact that it’s totally functional and includes all these features makes it something special for the system. This is probably the first wii game to really nail the idea of what an online experience is meant to be… This in some ways is kind of worrying (that it took so long), but as long as future games use this as a template, I think we should be alright.
Like in pretty much every other ‘Kart game, you’ll get the usual three game difficulties, the usual time trial, battle (which for some reason you can only play in teams now) and of course grand prix modes. Most of the items are the same, aside from a couple of new additions to the old lot, so everything is played pretty safe. The drifting has actually been changed in order to stop the hardcore ‘snakers’ (Apologies for my poor Mario kart terminologies) from abusing the old drifting system. Indeed, a lot of the game is made particularly easy for everyone, which brings us to one of the major flaws.
While Nintendo has obviously gone to great lengths to ensure that everyone has a good chance of winning no matter what their skill level is, it’s created some major balance issues, especially in the multiplayer. Some of the most powerful weapons are completely unblockable, and will particularly penalise the player who is in the lead. Items like the blue shell and the POW block appear far more often than they should, and the player in the last position will be receiving incredibly powerful pickups that give the player in 1st position a severe handicap. Since the distance between first and last is never usually too great, a well timed overpowered item can easily allow the last placed player to snatch a rather dubious win, which will often seem pretty unfair. Understandably, some people are going to think that I’m missing the point, and that Mario Kart is supposed to be random and unpredictable. This is fair enough, but when the game can handicaps the best players, and can randomly snatch away a victory through luck, it seems a bit strange they would opt to use a permanent player ranking system.
For better or worse, Mario kart Wii is more of the same that you’ve come to expect from the last few instalments of the spin-off series. If you dig the ‘kart games, you’re going to love this one. If you’ve never really been into it, then you probably won’t change your mind for this game either, but there’s no denying that Mario kart Wii has the best online experience that the system currently has to offer. That alone makes it worth playing.
The good: Online play is fun and addictive, good amount of fun levels, gameplay is accessible for gamers new and old, it’s totally Mario kart
The bad: Single player is a bit thin, some of the powerups don’t seem balanced, occasional lag in online multiplayer, the wheel is dissapointing
Mario Kart Wii gets 4/5 goblins
Review - Universe at war: Earth assault (PC / XBOX360)
Universe at war – Earth assault is a sci-fi RTS developed by Petrogylph, consisting of many of those lovely Westwood fellows (It said so on the back of the box!) who I’m sure you all know for the seminal command and conquer series. Naturally when one places the words “Westwood” and “RTS” in the same sentence when describing a game, you expect something special. I mean, those guys are pretty much the daddies of the genre as it stands, so the game has to be good, right?
The games setting is a fairly unfortunate one for us earthlings, as from right at the offset we’re being smacked around left right and centre by alien invaders. These extra-terrestrial fiends are the nasty Hierarchy, the mysterious Masari, and the somewhat prissy Novus. These three superpowers have come to earth to duke it out for various reasons, using our familiar settings to throw down on – so you can expect to see at least 3 monuments explode within the first 60 seconds of the game. While you will get to play as the humans in the tutorial, that’s the only time you will actually spend as them – and you’ll probably be glad for that too, since they’re totally uninteresting. After the training, you won’t be playing as the humans ever again; however the game provides three relatively lengthy campaigns for each of its factions, so it’s not exactly short on content.
One of the most interesting things about Universe at war is actually its design choices. The game’s characters borrow heavily from various sci-fi staples from present and past, such as mechas from anime, and Tim Burton’s ‘Mars attacks!’ (A film which I loved at the time, but in retrospect…. ergh). The game’s story is a fairly standard fare for an RTS, playing out similarly to Warcraft 3 and other recent offerings, where you’ll occasionally get in-engine conversations between the hero characters. Interestingly, the dialogue and voice acting in Universe at war is actually fairly good, especially considering that this genre isn’t exactly known for stellar performances (with the exception of Joseph D. Kucan as Kane). The story will develop throughout the missions themselves, though at times you’ll get tired of it randomly taking twists in just in order to make you play a certain scenario; such as defending a super weapon for a set amount of time, or destroying a specific unit. Then again, these are common genre trappings, so it’s only fair to expect these kinds of elements in an RTS.
Each of the games three factions are incredibly diverse, and require drastically different playing styles and strategies if you’re going to be succeeding with all of them. The Novus play in the traditional RTS style, using power stations and buildings to produce their forces – they’re also capable of teleporting troops down power lines around the map, which makes rushing a viable strategy. The Masari are able to put their units and structures into different ‘modes’ which will flip their strengths and weaknesses; Which of these you use will often decide the result of a battle. You’ll also get the Hierarchy, a race of intergalactic bastards who, in age-old alien tradition, just want to blow everything up. The Hierarchy are probably the most interesting race, since instead of structures you’ll primarily be building from giant ‘war of the worlds’ style walkers, which seem nigh on impossible to take down. These walkers provide some of the most entertaining parts of the game, and taking one down (or on the other hand, taking something down with one) is downright awesome. You’ll also be put in control of special hero characters that can decimate large groups of enemies on the battlefield. While the units aren’t anything revolutionary to the genre, they’re pretty unique and memorable, and also have some cool looking special abilities.
It would have been nice to have thrown a couple more factions into the mix, but you’ll still probably gel to at least one of the three in universe at war which offer the play style that suits you. All three of them also seem to be pretty balanced, which is nice, although getting to grips with the Novus is nowhere near as difficult as learning to play as the Masari effectively, so don’t expect to see an overwhelming amount of their players in the online mode. Speaking of the online mode, this is one of those few special titles to allow cross platform play between the PC and the XBOX 360, although the clunky control of the 360 version can be a bit of an unfair handicap. That said, Universe at war is still a fun and balances RTS to play online, and hardcore fans of the genre will find a lot of competition to sink their teeth into. There’s also a territory controlling ‘Conquer the world’ mode, which isn’t anything particularly new to RTS games, but does offer a decent distraction from just playing normal ranked matches. By the way, be warned that the PC version of the game required a gold subscription to play online, so if you don’t already have one for your 360 or other live PC games (yeah, because there are so many of those out right now!), then be prepared for fork out a note or two if you want to duke it out on the web. On the plus side, it does have achievements for us junkies.
There is however, one important flaw that bugged me to no end while I was playing this game, and it’s not something you’d expect from an RTS game. The camera. When the game was originally unveiled and the first gameplay was shown, people commented on how the camera was a bit too close to the action. Developers Petroglyph shrugged that off by saying that it was to give the game a more cinematic feel. Well that’s fair enough, but when the units in the game nearly outsize the screen in the maximum zoomed out view, that’s just ri-freaking-diculous. It’s actually kind of remarkable how something which could be fixed so easily can bring a game down a peg by itself; but this wasn’t noticeably fixed for the later-released 360 version, so it’s pretty unforgivable.
What Universe at war offers up sounds like a recipe for RTS nirvana, however there are a few problems that stop it from being anything more than a slightly above average RTS romp. Don’t get me wrong though, there are some strategy or sci-fi buffs that are totally going to eat this game up, and good on them, because it’s not a bad way to spend £30. The rest of us mere mortals however, are probably better off sticking to World in conflict for the time being.
The good: The three different playable factions are vastly different, well balanced online with cross-system play, some very cool and unique units to command
The bad: 360 controls are awkward, campaign is a little humdrum, camera is waaaay too zoomed in – especially when controlling the large hierarchy units
Universe at war – Earth assault gets 3/5 goblins
Review - Devil May Cry 4 (PS3/XBOX360)
Since its original PS2 debut, the Devil May Cry series has been one of gaming’s most prestigious action experiences; though perhaps not one of the most consistent in quality (I’m looking at you, DMC2), so it’s only natural that expectations for the first next-gen instalment were pretty high. In fact, this fourth game in the series has arguably been the most hyped to date, since the announcement of an ‘all new character’ who’d be taking the spotlight, and the controversy caused by it being released on the XBOX 360 in addition to the PS3.
The much touted ‘new character’ is Nero, a white-haired, emo-dressing, angsty rebel. And no, I haven’t confused him with Dante. It’s pretty clear that Capcom didn’t want to take too many risks when introducing a new playable character to the series, so Nero looks and acts almost identically to Dante, albeit slightly sissier. Seriously, while playing the demo a while ago I thought I actually was playing as Dante until I realised what sets them apart; Nero’s Devil Bringer. Essentially, the Devil Bringer lets Nero grab specific like a hook shot, drag enemies like scorpion, and throw them around like… uh… some guy who throws dudes around. He also has a sword that he can ‘rev’ to gain more power, which never works as well as it ought to, but it can make combos looks all the more spectacular. Also, who doesn’t think that a giant sword with a motorcycle’s handle for a hilt isn’t totally awesome? Dante on the other hand plays the same way he did in the last game, with different styles and weapons that you can switch on the fly. The differences between the two are subtle, but you’ll soon find yourself missing the Devil Bringer during Dante’s portion of the game, which in all honesty isn’t quite as interesting as Nero’s.
Though the game tends to give the action priority over its storytelling, there is a plot that’ll be told throughout the 10-or-so hour long adventure. Our albino heroes are charged with protecting the world from a religious cult who aims to take over the world, and while Nero and Dante will start off as rivals, they’ll eventually have to team up for a laughably predictable battle with the big baddies. The story isn’t bad for an action game, but some of the delivery is terribly confusing, especially if you haven’t played the previous games in the series. The voice actors do a decent job, but it sometimes feels like the script was written by a 13 year-old kid who’d seen the matrix sequels too many times. One particular scene that sticks out in my mind is where Nero and Dante have a moment of emotional bonding where they comment on how they like each other’s names. That said the fight choreography and action in the cut-scenes is mind blowingly good, and feel on par with CGI movies like Final Fantasy: Advent Children.
The gameplay in Devil May Cry 4 isn’t much of a departure from the previous games, though that isn’t a bad thing. You’ll spend the majority of your time hacking away at various monsters and demons, and pulling off some spectacular moves and combos. Though the fighting system does seem deep and hard to grasp at first, you’ll be juggling your enemies in the air and getting S ranks in no time. The game also has an automatic combo system for those who aren’t into learning the moves, and just want to hack and slash away. All in all, it’s pretty intuitive and the fact that you’re given two pretty different characters helps to spice things up a little. There’s also quite a bit of depth, as you’ll have to use orbs (the game’s currency) to buy new special moves and abilities from the store, and beating the game will also unlock a survival mode, which increases the mileage of the game by quite a bit. This is all well and good, but arguably the highlights of the game are the epic boss battles, which are well designed, look amazing, and are fun to fight. It’s a little bit of a shame there’s no boss mode to be unlocked, because you’ll have to play through whole levels all over again if you fancy taking on a certain boss again, just for laughs. Giant frogs? Knights that looks more like mechs? Big fiery horse-man bastards? Devil May Cry 4 has ‘em.
Presentation-wise, the game doesn’t disappoint. Some of the environments in the game look spectacular, and the character models and special attacks are pretty awesome. While some of the games areas look a little sparse and unpopulated, the art direction and various shiny things going on with the combat is more than enough to make up for it. The soundtrack is also fairly decent, although the heavy metal combat music may begin to grate after you hear it for the 100th time.
Devil May Cry 4 also inherits some of its predecessor’s bad points - often taking them to a whole other level. Repetition is always a problem with this kind of game, but it doesn’t help when you’re forced to play the same levels, including the boss fights, all over again in the second half of the game. That’s right; most of Dante’s levels simply involve replaying Nero’s, which is really disappointing. Likewise, puzzles have never been the series’ strong point, however the latest instalment takes that to a whole new extreme by adding some horrendous ‘dice’ stages, which go on for what seems like eternity and serve no purpose other than to pad out the game’s length. The maze section and the Gyro blade pushing bit are also fairly irrelevant, and it’s difficult to comprehend what the designers were thinking (or drinking) when they thought it would be a cool idea to include them. It isn’t. People want to play the Devil May Cry games to bust some awesome sword moves and junk, not solve ‘puzzles’.
There’s enough to like about Devil May Cry 4 to make it worth playing, and the amount of fun you’ll have with the game’s boss fights and pulling off some insane combos will often make you forget about most of its flaws. If you’re into the series, or you just fancy some anime-esqe monster fighting action, check this game out, but people who haven’t been into the previous games aren’t going to find much else to like here either.
The good: Combat is as stylish and satisfying as ever, cut scenes are Hollywood quality, cool enemies and bosses, combos and special effects look spectacular, gameplay has a surprising amount of depth
The bad: Dante’s levels are underwhelming, repetition will rear its ugly head near the end, story and dialogue are sort of lame, ‘puzzles’ seem horribly out of place
Devil May Cry 4 gets 4/5 goblins
