I would never call myself a Devil May Cry veteran so before I started to play through this game I decided to do my research on the devil may cry story line. I’ve played DMC2 for a short while when I first got my PS2, but I didn’t fully understand what was going on. After reading the plot synopsis and talking to a few friends I figured I was prepared to play Capcom’s newest action adventure, DMC4.

From what I can tell DMC4 takes place after the events of DMC1 so its not another prequel like DMC3. However, with all that said, DMC4 plays much like a standalone game. There isn’t much reference to the other games, except some returning characters (Lady, Trish and Dante). In DMC4 you play as a new character Nero, he is a naive character who starts out believing Dante is the “bad guy” since he killed off Sanctus, the Order leader. Your girlfriend, Kyrie, is captured and as you progress through the game you begin to understand your true power and the true motives behind the Order.

The Review

Let’s get on with the review shall we? It took me roughly 9-10 hours to beat this game on the XBOX 360; apparently that makes a difference because there is 30 min install time on the PS3. For the first 3-4 hours you play as Nero making your way to save Kyrie. You fight your way through beautiful environments and fight against some really cool enemies. You battle some bosses until you finally reach the end of Nero’s story. I won’t ruin the storyline for you so I will simply leave you with the mystery. However after the end of Nero’s story you play as Dante and you must fight through everything Nero just went through only backwards. The enemies are a bit harder, the bosses are a bit harder but EVERYTHING IS THE SAME!!! Thats right you are playing the same game only with a whole new character that in this reviewers opinion SUCKS. I’m not sure why they did this to the player, but as soon as you start to master Nero’s abilities you can’t play him anymore and are stuck with boring old Dante. Regardless after you fight through the same environments you make it right back to the beginning of the game. You fight the secondary final boss as Dante, then you are able to switch back to Nero.

At this point in the game I was already pretty annoyed at the same shit different pile crap that CAPCOM threw at me. However when I was able to control Nero again I gave the game a second chance. Too bad CAPCOM ruined it… AGAIN! Not only did I just fight every single boss a second time, but now I have to fight EVERY SINGLE BOSS A THIRD TIME WITH NERO!!! At the end of the game you play through this board game type game play and as you progress towards the end you have to fight every boss again as Nero, even the secondary final boss. Once you defeat the secondary final boss you are confronted with the primary final boss and then the game ends.

The Summation

There is one really good thing about this game and one really bad thing. The good thing is that the environments are beautiful and the graphics are really polished. The bad thing is that its the same game three times over. It’s almost like CAPCOM decided the game was to short and needed to make it three times longer. I understand the concept and the plot structure and I understand that Dante had to make it back to the beginning of the game to confront the evil boss structure, but why take the same path? Why not open special areas that only Dante could go through? You could still use the same environments only with different corridors that were once foreign to Nero. Furthermore why throw every boss at us again in an annoying mini boss battle!

Final Thoughts

I think CAPCOM has to begin to rethink how they deal with the reduce reuse recycle outline of video game development. The point of the R.R.R outline isn’t to recreate the same crap with a different character, its to use the same environments in different ways… its to open up new ways of utilizing that environment to keep it interesting for the player. I really do hope CAPCOM gets their act together before they release Resident Evil 5. As I was playing through this game I kept thinking that DMC4 was a tech demo of the environmental engine of RE5, I could be wrong but it doesn’t feel like they put enough heart into this game to justify it as mainstream worthy. Sadly I think DMC4 will be put to shame much like DMC2 was. Another swing and a miss CAPCOM; DMC5 better be awesome because 3 strikes and your out. My final score is:

6/11