Devil May Cry reboot

ShadowHearth

I liked Nero... I don't understand why so much hate. It's not fecking raiden...

As for reboot. I really hated it when I first time heard about it, though later on it grew on me. Yes, I would love that cocky old Dante, but hey, it could be worse. I will keep my eye on this game, but it won't be day one purchase, maybe setting I wil fish out on play.com or zavvi.co.uk

Mindkiller

I don't think there was any real hate for Nero. People were just pissed off with the way the game was structured. Would have been better if you played all 20 missions as Nero and just unlocked Dante like in DMC3:SE. Only reason I've held on to DMC4 is for bloody palace mode.

johnny_ultimate

I didn't even remember you played as a different character in DMC4 until I read this thread :pac:

TBH, I wouldn't even say Dante was the most inspired of protagonists to begin with. It was the gameplay that always mattered in the series, and the cutscenes tended to be skippable at best. I'd say the same thing about Bayonetta (by a considerable margin the best game of its type), bar a few very funny videogame references thrown in there.

If the gameplay is there, I don't give a **** about emo Dante unless he's shouting nonsense in the middle of the game. However, not I've seen has been particularly inspired, and I'm happy to wait to see what Hideki Kamiya comes out with next. Or just replay Bayonetta instead.

snausages

I read not too long ago that they're already thinking of making a sequel to this. Makes me sad because more than ever it seems like Capcom are ruling out the possibility of another entry in the old series. Even if DmC did badly I doubt that they'd just back-pedal and revive DMC, it would just look silly of them.

ancapailldorcha

Something I've gotten used to with the modern gaming industry. If a beloved franchise lets me down, I'll be able to find something better in the same vein. I've been thinking of giving Bayonetta a whirl as it happens. It looks similar to how DMC used to be.

snausages

Demo is out on Nov 20 on Xbox live. Nov 21 on PSN. Haven't been impressed by gameplay footage so far but I'm interested to try it for myself.

gizmo

So, anyone try the demo for this?

Unfortunately it's confirmed most of my worries based on previews and footage shown so far, it's just not DMC any more.

The drop from 60fps to 30fps has had a massive effect on gameplay, it just feels like a completely different game.
No more hard lock-on system, it's fully soft lock so you don't get that tight one-on-one feeling to combat any more.
Physics, especially jumping related, are weird.
Style counter is ridiculously generous.
I played the demo on Nephilim difficulty and breezed through it. I even managed to kick the boss around the place on little more than one health bar without really paying attention to his attacks.
"**** **** **** **** vomit **** ****". Yes, we get it. Dante is edgy and you can't write dialog to save your god damn lives.
Some of the facial animations look like something that wouldn't seem out of place in a poor Garry's Mod video.

Positives? Well visually it's not too bad, most notably with some of the morphing environments being used to great effect however knowing it has come at such a cost just ends up leaving a sour taste in the mouth.

Ugh, first Ninja Gaiden 3 and now this. I'm going to fire up DmC 3 just to get the bad taste of this rubbish out of my mouth. I can only hope Platinum deliver with Metal Gear Rising and Bayonetta 2, with other Japanese devs abandoning this traditional types of core action games and Western devs evidently incapable of delivering it full stop, I fear for the future of the genre.

richymcdermott

gizmo wrote: »

So, anyone try the demo for this?

Unfortunately it's confirmed most of my worries based on previews and footage shown so far, it's just not DMC any more.

The drop from 60fps to 30fps has had a massive effect on gameplay, it just feels like a completely different game.
No more hard lock-on system, it's fully soft lock so you don't get that tight one-on-one feeling to combat any more.
Physics, especially jumping related, are weird.
Style counter is ridiculously generous.
I played the demo on Nephilim difficulty and breezed through it. I even managed to kick the boss around the place on little more than one health bar without really paying attention to his attacks.
"**** **** **** **** vomit **** ****". Yes, we get it. Dante is edgy and you can't write dialog to save your god damn lives.
Some of the facial animations look like something that wouldn't seem out of place in a poor Garry's Mod video.

Positives? Well visually it's not too bad, most notably with some of the morphing environments being used to great effect however knowing it has come at such a cost just ends up leaving a sour taste in the mouth.

Ugh, first Ninja Gaiden 3 and now this. I'm going to fire up DmC 3 just to get the bad taste of this rubbish out of my mouth. I can only hope Platinum deliver with Metal Gear Rising and Bayonetta 2, with other Japanese devs abandoning this traditional types of core action games and Western devs evidently incapable of delivering it full stop, I fear for the future of the genre.

Going by what ign were saying , they were making it out that the reboot was the holy grail . laughed out loud at all its previews and every second article saying dmc reboot is great

gizmo

richymcdermott wrote: »

Going by what ign were saying , they were making it out that the reboot was the holy grail . laughed out loud at all its previews and every second article saying dmc reboot is great

From the IGN "preview"...

It’s fair to say the DmC has looked better every time we’ve seen it. Ninja Theory was reticent about putting it into players’ hands until the combat was absolutely in place – a process that took years of careful work in collaboration with Capcom Japan – but now that the game is pretty much ready for release, the studio has nothing to hide. Armed with a near-complete version of the game, I put young Dante through his paces over a good ten missions, and found nothing at all to be worried about. On this evidence, this new DmC might actually be better than the Devil you know – the best game in the series since 2008’s Devil May Cry 3.

Are they ****ing serious?

johnny_ultimate

TBH, the more I see of this I just kind of want it to go away.

Might just hide in a hole until Bayonetta 2 comes out.

Also, there was a guy in front of me at the Sightseers premiere in Dublin tonight showing his friend Hideki Kamiya's twitter account. The man doth have good taste :cool:

richymcdermott

gizmo wrote: »

From the IGN "preview"...


Are they ****ing serious?

You really cant help but feel that journalist are being paid to spew such rubbish.

gizmo

richymcdermott wrote: »

You really cant help but feel that journalist are being paid to spew such rubbish.

The closest thing to a negative comment in the entire article is a cheeky mention of the Vergil DLC which is being released after launch. The whole thing stinks as far as I'm concerned.

johnny_ultimate

It's IGN - about as reliable as The Daily Mail for balanced reporting, TBH.

Retr0gamer

Expect positive reviews in Eurogamer as well since it's from a UK based developer.

snausages

I agree with a lot of the above. It's nowhere near as technically fluid or diverse as DMC3. No lock-on is a major hindrance to the combat. There's no reason why one of those evade buttons couldn't have been a lock-on button.

Yet... I found myself enjoying it a lot. Combat shortcomings aside, the game has a great visual style and I like that they've jettisoned the crap puzzle sections from the old games. They were always the poo-encrusted filler bits that you slogged through to get to the juicy combat sections.

I don't think it will be a bad game. I can see it doing quite well. But with 3/5 of the game's melee weapons already available in the demo I don't expect we'll see any surprises in its combat when the full game comes out. Boss fights will be a major weakness I feel.

I hope for DmC2/DMC5 we see Itsuno back in the director's seat

deathrider

gizmo wrote: »

From the IGN "preview"...


Are they ****ing serious?

I should feckin' hope not, since they didn't even get the year of DMC3's release correct.

Aaaanyways, is this demo exlusive to Gold members (on Xbox360's side of things), or can it be downloaded by simple Silver peasants like myself?

EDIT: Scrap that. It is Gold exclusive. I'm mighty sick of that.

snausages

It's up on US PSN. If you're sneaky you can also find the xbox demo on some site and put it on a USB using Horizon.

On the IGN article, I just think that a lot of people have forgotten how good DMC3 was. It's game that only gets better and better the more times you play it. DmC really only resembles it on a purely superficial level. It's a decent enough game in its own right however.

Retr0gamer

So I played it today and I'm not impressed. Here's my thoughts. They are mostly negative but it's not terrible.

The Combo system is a bit of a joke. It's too easy to keep a chain going and they only thing that will knock you out of a combo is if you get hit by an enemy. The enemies also telegraph their moves to a hilarious degree, it doesn't take 5+ seconds to swing a scythe! Anyone used to the split second timing in Bayonetta or DMC3 required to avoid attacks is going to breeze this. I started on the highest difficulty level and found it a a total push over.

As for the combo system I can see what ninja theory were doing with it to try and emulate the old combo system but they have half arsed it by fudging it into their combo system they use in their other games. Heavenly Sword and Enslaved rely on prebaked dial-a-combos. Let me explain.

The old DMC games have a very organic system where you are in total control of how you create combos and how you continue them or move from move to move. DMC tries to emulate this by using a huge number of dial-a-combos to make it seem like you have full control. I was fooled at first but 10 minutes in I started to notice inconsistencies. Many times when I wanted to launch an opponent mid combo it would just fail, not because of anything I did wrong on my part but because the dial-a-combo input I used wasn't prebaked as an animation sequence so I was left floundering and left feeling I didn't have complete control over by own fighting style.

Also in the old games you delay button presses during combos to initiate more damaging but slower combos. This isn't present, all you have is the option to hold down the button for a useless charge up projectile. You can combo between weapons like in DMC3 but it's far less satisfying.

A hangover from Heavenly Sword and Enslaved is that now some enemies are armoured by shields or other effects. You have to use specific moves on these enemies to make them vulnerable. In both of ninja theory's previous games had these systems and they got tiresome very fast and were no fun at all, a failed attempt to inject variety into boring fighting systems. They were already annoying before the demo ended.

Platforming is really janky. If you can't get platforming right don't put it in your game. It's a weird mix of using your whip thing for enslaved/uncharted canned traversal and using jumping techniques that are annoyingly floaty. Also the way the world changes around you is nothing more than an aesthetic and it's not even carried off that well. I wasn't impressed at all by having to only press forward and jump every so often. You can stop during the majority of these sections and totally break the suspension of disbelief.

Then there's the framerate. Apparently it doesn't make a difference. Well actually it really does. 30 FPS doesn't cut it in a game like this and it's doesn't feel like a consistent 30 FPS in combat either. The flow of combat is affected and it doesn't feel as smooth or responsive compared to DMC3 or Bayonetta. It's a very sluggish game in comparison.

The boss fight was kind of crappy as well. It's got easily telegraphed moves that can be easily avoided by jumping (it looks like it should hit but often doesn't) let alone using doge commands. The camera absolutely sucks during, pointing where you don't want it so you can't see the boss telegraphing moves. In the old games with lock on even though the moves came a lot quicker it was less frustrating because you got hit because you weren't fast enough not because you were battling the camera.

Dante as a character wasn't too bad, they got his cocky side fine. The dialogue however is pretty much the most immature thing in videogames since Mortal Kombats blood. One conversation with a boss actually goes like this:

Dante: '**** you!'
Boss: '**** you!'

Whoever wrote this should be ashamed for putting back videogames as a medium by 15 years.

So is it terrible? Well not it really isn't. For Ninja Theory it is by far and away their best combat system, a huge improvement over their previous games because lets face it, the combat in heavenly sword and enslaved was terrible. It feels like the usual Ninja Theory fare, a solid 7/10. Wait for it in bargain bins if you really must or get the DMC collection or Bayonetta if you haven't gotten them.

snausages

You can do those delayed attacks in this as well.

What I don't like about DmC is that Dante moves like a helium balloon. It took a great deal of skill to keep you and your enemies airborne in the old games but in this it's mostly just contingent on your ability to spam grab attacks.

bugs

I played the demo a number of times yesterday and my opinion changed over that time. I'm quite impressed, its not perfect but they've definitely exceeded my expectation.

The combat works quite well, its not as fluid as bayonetta, but DMC was never that clever. Some inputs a stilted by control choice, ie. the two grabs can be difficult to string into combo's, coming out as gunshots on occasion.

That said, i like the function to change between the scythe and axe within combo's, it can even be adjusted so that you can start a button delay combo (which are in the game) with one weapon and finish with another, maintaining the delay combo change. On top of this, each sub weapon damages enemies of a similar colour, scythe damages enemies that glow blue, axe damages red enemies.

The colour damage thing is really only presented much in the son of sparda mode where the enemies number, type and aggression is pumped up. Hopefully its more of a factor in the full game.

Dialog was comically bad but its no worse than the brooding silliness in the japanese developed games, it can all be skipped using select and after an initial watch that will be what I'll be doing.

snausages

bugs wrote: »

but DMC was never that clever.

In what sense? I always thought the series had a good deal of nuance, especially with royal guard. More than this anyway.

Retr0gamer

bugs wrote: »

The colour damage thing is really only presented much in the son of sparda mode where the enemies number, type and aggression is pumped up. Hopefully its more of a factor in the full game.

Sweet jesus no. It was in the other ninja theory games and it got old fast.

As for the button delay mechanics, they are in there but the prebaked combo thing was the factor for why I was missing them. If you input them at the wrong time they just won't come out.

snausages

I didn't like that either. DMC3 encouraged you to play and experiment with as many styles and weapons as possible, but it's not like there wasn't a huge variance in the gameplay options available to you. In this game they're only limiting you by forcing you to hack and slash your way through firey red dudes with your big, flaming, axe-hammer thing.

bugs

snausages wrote: »

In what sense? I always thought the series had a good deal of nuance, especially with royal guard. More than this anyway.

In the sense that its not as clever as bayonetta. DMC3 and 4 both had a very extensive combat system. As for the new DMC, have to wait and see, could be worse, could be better, its only a demo yet.

As for the time delay button inputs, they're not that bad, you can very easily transition between them and even split into the other two weapons. Yes the control scheme could be tighter overall, but its not that far removed from previous games. They haven't reinvented the wheel, just taken bits from DMC3&4, and adjusted them a bit.

Personally I think they've taken a close enough approximation of the previous games that’s still fun to play and may have a reasonably deep combat system within the full game. It’s a much better game than I had expected when I heard ninja theory were developing it.

gizmo

bugs wrote: »

In the sense that its not as clever as bayonetta. DMC3 and 4 both had a very extensive combat system. As for the new DMC, have to wait and see, could be worse, could be better, its only a demo yet.

It may be a demo but that combat system is finalised, there's no way it's changing in any significant manner between now and the January launch.

As for the general appraisal, yes it could be worse and it could be better. My problem is that regardless of this, one way or another it's not Devil May Cry.

Let me put it like this, if you took the original Devil May Cry games and reskinned them, your immediate reaction would be "oh, this plays like DMC". However, if you take the new one and reskin it, I can't imagine anyone would say the same thing.

Retr0gamer

Yeah, it's not terrible but it just feels like an improvement on Ninja Theory's previous games and that really isn't anywhere near good enough for me to put money down on it. It's a massive step backwards for the series.

bugs

gizmo wrote: »

It may be a demo but that combat system is finalised, there's no way it's changing in any significant manner between now and the January launch.

As for the general appraisal, yes it could be worse and it could be better. My problem is that regardless of this, one way or another it's not Devil May Cry.

Let me put it like this, if you took the original Devil May Cry games and reskinned them, your immediate reaction would be "oh, this plays like DMC". However, if you take the new one and reskin it, I can't imagine anyone would say the same thing.

I was leaning more on the complete abilities rather than the mechanics of the combat. Im interested to see how they handle putting in more moves considering the lack of lock on pretty much removes any possibility of directional inputs for more complex moves.

I'll wait and see, still a fun game, will probably get drowned out by metal gear revengeance if that has platinums usual touch.

snausages

The game does have directional inputs for certain moves already, but they're horrible un-intuitive. It's forward-forward-Y for a stinger. I'm guessing there'll be others.

To do rainstorm you have to hold X+A in the air, X+A on the ground sort of does a weird, rising gun attack.

If you ask me, it's like Ninja Theory did genuinely try to reinvent the wheel. But all they got was a rhombus. I like Bayonetta, but I don't think there's anything in the genre quite as diverse as DMC3. 4's multi-style switching was cool but it robbed the styles of their individuality. 3 had a ton of choice. This probably won't.

bugs

snausages wrote: »

The game does have directional inputs for certain moves already, but they're horrible un-intuitive. It's forward-forward-Y for a stinger. I'm guessing there'll be others.

To do rainstorm you have to hold X+A in the air, X+A on the ground sort of does a weird, rising gun attack.

If you ask me, it's like Ninja Theory did genuinely try to reinvent the wheel. But all they got was a rhombus. I like Bayonetta, but I don't think there's anything in the genre quite as diverse as DMC3. 4's multi-style switching was cool but it robbed the styles of their individuality. 3 had a ton of choice. This probably won't.

I meant more back -> forward type inputs to extend the moves list.

I liked dmc 3 & 4, ploughed a lot of time playing both but i thought bayonetta was considerably better. Its my opinion and ultimately it tanked sales wise but nothing came close to the level of freedom the combat system allowed while providing a challenging but fair difficulty.

K.O.Kiki

RIP Devil May Cry
2001-2012