Devil May Cry 4 (PC)

Devil May Cry (DMC) 4 is an action adventure game. (Oh, you don't know much about the history of DMC? Well, clicky here for some convoluted wiki action to learn more about the history of the series.) In the fourth installment you take on the role as a new character, Nero, and of course, Dante in later portions of the game.

I'm not going to waste your time with the plot of the game. You want to know about that? Go somewhere else. It's not that I don't find the plot to be irrelevant or holding the game back, I'd just rather get to the nitty gritty here, so to speak.

DMC 4 is clearly a game ported from the console to the PC. As an avid PC gamer, this took me a good few days of fence sitting to get over it. There are a lot of annoying console type things within the game.

I was originally annoyed by the lack of mouse support; however after using an Xbox 360 controller on my PC, I realized how that couldn't have worked so well. If they had implemented mouse support, it would pretty much require you to have a gaming mouse with a lot of extra buttons, and in the end, what's the point? Those with gaming mouse with that many buttons can use their mouse (but just not for camera movement, which is what one would expect with a mouse). Those that are without a gaming mouse would be annoyed that they didn't "do it correctly", or whatever. In the end, keyboard or gamepad as your only options made sense.

What They Did Wrong
First and foremost are how screens will show buttons for an Xbox 360 controller, even when you do not have one plugged in. If I do not have a 360 controller plugged in, I don't want to figure out that the escape key has the same function as the "start button" to pause the game and bring up a menu. I don't want to figure out that the "A" button inside a green circle coincides with my keyboard. Same goes for "B" inside a red circle. Now, when I have a 360 controller plugged in, by all means, do this. It makes sense then. Otherwise, show whatever buttons are necessary to coincide with the keyboard.

Another annoying feature was that instead of programming the game in a way that knows what keys/buttons you have set for what whenever it tells you to do something, it only tells you the default key/button to press, which probably won't coincide with what you're using. For the keyboard I did not have to change a lot of the default buttons, but I did have to change a few. The most important being the "jump key". Using "K", or whatever, didn't make sense. Using the space bar did.

Why is it so hard to quit? I can mash alt+F4, or just bang my head on the keyboard a few million times for that ease, yes, however when I pause the game, I should be able to find it there. I shouldn't have to visit a few different menus to go back to the main screen so I can quit. That's also going to be my only major complaint about the user interface. It's not terrible, it's not great. It functions as it should.

Since the dawn of 3D games, getting the camera angle right has always been a problem. That's no different here. What little stupid platforming there is in the game, it's made annoying by horrible camera angles that tend to swivel to and fro to make your experience arbitrarily harder. It doesn't stop at the platforming parts though. The camera angles will swivel when you don't need them to, and when you would like them to, well, they won't because they're stuck on some arbitrary surface. Awesome...

There are secret missions through out each level that take you to some previous area and has you perform a challenge for a prize. If you fail said challenge, instead of asking you if you'd like to try again, it just takes you back to where you were so you can initiate it again if you're so inclined. What I hate about this is that in the instances where I want to try the challenge again, instead of a simple option asking "Try Again?", it just assumes you don't. Often times, I want to attempt a challenge more than once, and I'm sure a lot of other people would as well.

The constant loading screens are annoying as well. Sure, they don't last long, but I'm not on a console either. I've installed the game to my hard drive. A few animations for opening doors to show the next part of the map in a some spots would've been nice. Instead, every single door you happen upon will load a new map. Give me a break.

What They Did Right
I love the combat. It's a bit repetitive, but what fighting game has combat that isn't? The combat is just so damn neat to watch. I sometimes wonder if I'm watching a cinematic sequence instead of controlling the game. It's just... stylish. You start off doing a simple sword swinging, you upgrade your abilities some and then bam! Your moves have flare to them. It's no longer simple sword swinging. Now you're stringing this neat looking combination of moves together. For example, you target a demon, rush in at him. It knocks him back into the wall. This gives you an opportunity to toss him into the air with your sword, which you do. Now you use your devil arm to grab the demon and pull it back to you so you can blast it with your gun to push it back. While you wait for your guns effects to explode that guy, you move to the next guy who is about to hit you. You side step it, slash slash slash slash, then charge and slash. Immediately after that you jump towards a group of enemies, use your devil arm to pull that demon you just smacked towards you, toss it to the ground. You quickly blast it with your gun; immediately after you point your sword downwards and dive in at the guy. You quickly jump up to avoid an attack and the dude blows up in the crowd of enemies to knock them all down.

The higher the difficulty you go, the more enemies there are. At some points the combat is such a blur that you don't realize you've just mauled ten demons in ten seconds. On the hardest difficulty, this can be a burden sometimes, however who cares? Just slash, shoot, grab, maul, do whatever it takes to destroy the throng. It's just intensely fun.

The voice acting is superb. I haven't heard voice acting of this quality in a while. It suits the characters perfectly. It's such a shame that the animation and dialog itself is only average, otherwise you'd get the full experience of the emotions, the subtle movements, that you see in the cut-scenes. Where the dialog and animation does do it justice however, it's moving. Nero's cries over his love being stolen away get to you. Dante's mockery of the two lesbian sprites hanging from a giant stinky toad is hilarious. Without the quality voice acting in those scenes, or any other scene for that matter, the game wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable.

Did I mention the combat? Because, you know, it's absolutely amazing.

No but seriously, let me go back to the combat for a moment. In some fighting games there are just simply moves you never do, ever. This isn't the case here. At some point you find yourself using every single move throughout your adventure. You might stick to the same tricks on a consistent basis, but you're always mixing it up with the same few moves you love to use to add something to the excitement that you see.

I like the addition of the "automatic" feature. It's there to make it easier to perform combos. While I'm sure there are people who detest this, I use it religiously. I can concentrate a little less on how precise I have to be with my movement and can concentrate that much more on how I want to handle the situation. It has its own faults, for sure. Sometimes it does things I don't necessarily want it doing, but I've found it to aid me much more than it hinders me.

Despite there being no mouse support, the way the keyboard works with the game is actually very nicely done. After getting used to it, I found I could do what I did with the controller. I couldn't do it 100% of the time, but it was close enough where it didn't hinder the experience. My hat is off to you on that portion Capcom.

One last thing that I think they did really really well were the anti-piracy measures. There are zero. No CD-Key. No stupid starforce protection. None of that stupid crap that potentially can break a game for a legitimate user. You pop the game, it installs. Now I don't know if the legal copy of the game has a no CD feature in it, but the pirated version sure does. The legal version tends to recognize the pirated version as the real version of the game, so if there is truly no no-CD support in the legal version, the pirated version works very nicely with it. (Don't cry; I did buy the game after falling in love with it.)

Final Thoughts
There are a few things I'm on the fence about. I don't know if the sound track to the game is really suited here. It's not bad, it's not great. It's just there. I don't know what the infatuation with heavy metal and combat is, but it's a bit played out. The animation and dialogue doesn't have a consistent quality. The lines are just sometimes so god awfully cheesy that without the excellent voice acting, those scenes would have been a put off. The animation doesn't help other at times where an expression isn't correctly conveyed. You're almost on edge of your seat only to be suddenly taken a back by how you're seeing something that doesn't fit. Also, the constantly jiggling of tits in those scenes doesn't look right either. Yes, I get it. Lady and Julia have big bouncing breasts. Guys like to look at attractive women with big bouncing breasts. As a male I understand this all to well. But damn, it just sometimes doesn't look right.

Ultimately, the gameplay is what carries this game. There are plenty of cut scenes, but they're usually not over the top, and they are generally kept short so you don't get tired of them. That helps to add to the game where the gameplay lacks. It really makes what could have been an anticlimactic fight peek so nicely so you don't feel too cheated. It's a solid mix between the two to make you want more.

Despite the lack of many PC oriented things, like resolutions bigger than 1280x1024, the game still delivers a solid experience, even while you're still being reminded this was developed with the console first and foremost in mind. For a game to do that it has to be an exceptional game. PC gamers tend to be fickle about such things, and I'm not any different. Seeing as how this game has kept me enthralled for over a week now, I can honestly recommend it to any PC gamer looking for a different type of game. The action is fast paced. The story is presented in an overall decent fashion. And most importantly, it's seriously a lot of damn fun.