Hands-On Impressions
I would disagree with IGNGuides editor Jeremy Conrad\'s contention that Devil May Cry found a new genre for itself, but it\'s worth noting that Capcom actually concurs with him. Devil May Cry, officially speaking, belongs to the category of "Stylish Hard Action." No, we\'re not joking. Honest to God.
It\'s about two-thirds right, anyway -- it\'s not that hard, but it\'s certainly stylish, and there\'s more than enough action, even in the short demo movie we just recently played. Shinji Mikami can\'t quite shake the Resident Evil legacy, but he\'s moved far enough beyond it to make me interested in one of his games again. While a few camera troubles still linger, DMC\'s control is far more responsive and intuitive than what you\'ll find in any RE game, and it looks flat-out gorgeous. The modern-Gothic settings drip with detail, the monsters are skin-crawling awful, and the lighting effects are superb.
Now, why is Dante infiltrating the haunted castle of evil (and in the company of a striking leather-clad blonde, no less)? Good question. Maybe the Count has awakened from his 100-year sleep again, requiring another scion of the Belmont clan to...sorry, got confused there for a second.
It wouldn\'t be hard to mistake this for a 3D Castlevania, though, both in substance and atmosphere. The huge environments are dead ringers for the various ballrooms, bedchambers, battlements, entryways, and shadowy halls of Dracula\'s mansion. Everything is lit by candles or sunlight streaming in through stained glass. Ivy climbs up outer walls, while the run-down expanses indoors are covered in paintings, peeling wallpaper, mirrors, and all sorts of other decoration. The designs impress with both inventiveness and scale -- there are some very large rooms in this game, from the vaulted antechamber to a staircase-ringed tower four stories high, and there\'s plenty of stuff filling in the corners. Many rooms are crowded with junk, like rickety bookcases, chairs and tables, but in most cases simple texture detail is enough to give the areas life.
Every background in the game is rendered in real time, but the level of detail is apparently enough to have inspired some debate on the subject. That sort of argument ends, though, when you see the smooth camera movements around every area, not to mention the killer lighting effects from candles, chandeliers, and Dante\'s twin .45s of justice. The lighting is smooth, well-modulated, and realistic -- it doesn\'t have that sharp, on/off feel from weaker games. When the three-foot muzzle flash from a sawed-off shotgun blast illuminates the room, it looks just like it ought.
You set off a lot of those. Dante only has three weapons to use in the demo: his sword, the automatics he starts the game with, and a double-barreled shotgun he picks up halfway through. Those get plenty of use, though, what with non-stop evil guillotine-handed marionettes and horrid semi-translucent black spectres with gigantic pairs of scissors attacking from every direction. The bad guys emerge from nowhere, with the puppets crawling out of pentacle-rimmed gates in the floor and the scissormen falling through the walls. If the early grunts look this good, though, the later bad guys are going to be a heck of a sight. The puppets have a hilarious herky-jerky quality to all their movements, while the scissormen ebb and flow around the room in perfect ghostly fashion, and the way their lower edges fade into the ether is very nicely handled.
Of course, the lot of them fade into the ether once you apply enough lead to the situation, and lucky for us, Dante packs a black hole full of ammo (in the demo, anyway). Combat in Devil May Cry is just about as the trailer movies promised -- it\'s fast, intuitive, and gets the adrenaline moving. You can combine gunplay and swordplay with ease, since you control those attacks independently, and moving around the battlefield is no problem. You can strafe around enemies, and best of all, the RE control scheme\'s greatest flaw is fixed. Dante moves just like Solid Snake, immediately walking in the direction you press the analog stick. The auto-aim is very forgiving, too. You can track a target a good 60 or 80 degrees to the left or right, up or down, laying down fire the entire time.
Or intermittently, if you equipped the shotgun, which packs almost as much macho appeal as its ancestor in Doom. The .45s have a constant, droning rhythm, but the sawed-off has the high points: two successive BOOM!s followed by a neat little chick-chuck sound and a break-action reload animation. Watching the shell casings fly in either case is certainly a treat.
There are quiet moments in the demo, too, which is when you can feel some of the Resident Evil in the game. There does appear to be a fair amount of fetch-and-carry action in store, with the RE series\' trademark bizarre keys. In this case, you have to collect plenty of "Red Orbs" from the bodies of downed enemies, which open doors, so you can find a hidden sword, which you stick in the weird statue, which lets you in the final chamber, where the walls pulse and breathe with a life of their own, so you can meet and greet the gigantic lava spider. Well, I gotta admit it, the gigantic lava spider is an original concept.
So are some of the movement abilities, like Dante\'s high jump and Ninja Gaiden-esque wall-spring, and the overall pace of the game, which is far faster than RE. Like they say, it\'s not Survival Horror, it\'s Stylish Hard Action now. Whatever that is, it doesn\'t look like it will add up to a bad time, so long as the final product packs a reasonable amount of meat on its bones. We look forward to sampling more of Devil May Cry as its summer release approaches.
Sounds awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!
