Mr Durand Pierre
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Devil May Cry 3 is the first game I've played in the series. I hear it's a prequel, but none of that really matters, since the story is complete bunk anyway. Though it is worth noting that it's consistantly entertaining in an over-the-top campy way. Except for Dante's one-liners, since they're meant to be funny and fail, they're far more painful than anything else in the game's cutscenes. But who care's about the cutscenes anyway? The main thing that matters is how does it play.
Very well actually, with some minor reservations. The game has been hyped up as being impossibly hard (IGN called it the second hardest PS2 game of all-time), but I didn't find it to be THAT bad. Hard yes, but certainly possible. What keeps the game consistantly entertaining is that if you save your game before dying you'll still have to start the level over, BUT you'll keep all the currency you've collected. I'm not sure why they want you to save first, rather than merely having the game automatically save your progress after a game over ala Viewtiful Joe, but they do. The manual doesn't clearly document this, but I feel it's an important thing to know going into the game, so when you die over and over again none of it will have been in vain, since you've been bulking up your red orb stash. (and if you're really cheap you could replay the beggining of level 7 a few times just for the giant orb stash. I tried it a few times, but got bored quickly.) As a result, the game gets easier and easier (sort of).
Comparing this to Viewtiful Joe isn't a bad comparison actually. Even if Joe is a 2D game and this is 3D the gameplay is rather similar. The main similarity being the currency system that lets you buy moves, continues, health, and such between missions. In many ways DMC3 is only posing as an action/adventure, when it's really more of a beat-em-up. It'll take a few levels before you can do any exploring whatsoever, the game is extremely linear, and you'll frequently have to fight tons of respawning enemies before you can move on. There are some light puzzles, but there were some in Viewtiful Joe as well. If you were to bring Viewtiful Joe into the third dimension and give it some goth window dressings you'd have DMC3 to a tee.
But much like Viewtiful Joe, Devil May Cry 3 shares the same crucial shortcoming: There is one move in the game that kicks so much ass that it renders all other moves near obsolete. If you haven't played the game yet you might want to skip the next paragraph since I'll be giving away the game's one cheapass manuever.
In VJ it was the close-up/slow-mo punch combo. In DMC3 it's the ability to double jump around while charging up your guns, then releasing them in mid-air. You need to equip gunslinger mode to do this, but once you do it really does work on 90% of the fights in the game, excluding some bosses and a few individual enemies. It's a shame this move exists too, as otherwise the combat is so dead on balanced and the AI so damn good, that it forces you to be constantly changing your moves in mid-combat. It took me about half the game to realize this combo, and even then it took a friend watching me play to point out to me that I was doing it all the time, but once I discovered the cheapness inherent in this strategy it really brought my opinion of the game down. I should have avoided using this strategy, but I lack the will-power. I mean if it's there, and it works, it's hard to resist. Either you shouldn't be able to charge up your guns, or you shouldn't be able to double jump. To get around this I would reccomend playing through the game with a style other than gunslinger. It'll be tough at first, but you'll thank me later. I plan to go through the game on a harder setting with the trickster style equipped. Wish me luck.
My other complaint about the game is the camera, and the lock-on system. They're a bit faulty. Not enough to ruin the game by any means, but enough to screw you up from time to time. Considering how faulty the lock-on system is I'm somewhat amazed it hurts the game so little. Mostly because 99% of the time it doesn't really matter who you're locked on to as long as you're locked onto something. And when fighting bosses there's usually only one thing to lock onto. As a result it's really only a minor annoyance. Same with the camera. Sometimes an enemy will come from off-screen and hit you, but when you're fighting half a dozen enemies at a time you're not going to want to stand still for more than half a second anyway, so you can hardly blame the camera.
My only other real mark against the game is the soundtrack. The main title theme is really good, and there is some good music in the game, but they play the same song over and over again during the combat. It's some trashy gothy metal song with pretty stupid lyrics, but it works okay with the action... until you realize that it plays during just about every fight in the game, and since fighting is 90% of the game you'll be hearing that song an awful lot. Considering how much polish went into most of this game it's dissapointing how few songs there are on the soundtrack.
But nit-picks aside, what really matters is whether or not the game is fun to play. And I found it to be extremely fun. The amount of moves that are all very easy to pull off is amazing (there's no tekken style hitting back twice then a series of buttons crap). The moves never get more complicated than holding R1 and a face button while pointing the analog stick in a certain direction. While I suck to high heaven at games like Tekken, I got the hang of the fighting in this within a half-hour. It's surprisingly easy to ram your sword into an enemy, use your sword to launch him into the air, jump in the air and start launching bullets in him, then cap it off by doing a downward thrust into the enemy. Stringing together a series of combos against an enemy had never been so satisfying. This is greatly helped by the animations and sound effects. You really feel like a badass in this game.
Another major advantage to the game is the boss fights, which are mostly excellent. There were maybe two of them that I found to be too repetitive, and long, and boring, but there's still about 10 or so others that are excellent. It took me over 3 hours to beat mission 3 because of Cerebus, and I must have spent near 40 tries on the bosses to mission 5. I expressed some dislike over a chepass move in the game, but even that won't work on a lot of these bosses, who are generally large, quick, and have a good variety of attacks. And on most of these fights I'd win being only one hit away form death after dying countless times to these bosses where they'd be only a hit or two away from defeat. I can think of few times my heart has ever pounded so fast from a videogame, and certainly never so frequently. This game is not for those with heart troubles. But if you can take the intensity of it all, the feeling of elation you get from defeating these bosses is orgasmic.
It's also worth noting the inventiveness that went into the set design for this game. Some of it is typical gothy stuff, but I liked how there's a lot of backtracking that doesn't feel like backtracking. where shortcuts bring you to a place you were at long ago. The enemy design too is pretty great, though it relies a bit too much on different variations of the same grim reaper design. (though it's still better than Viewtiful Joe's flatty robots taking up most of the game). I did wish that the spiders took fewer hits though. Considering how awesome they look I wish they were more fun to fight.
Overall Devil May Cry 3 is an oh-so-close to great game. But as it is it is still very very good. With a few more songs, a better camera, and the exclusion of a cheap move or two it would be perfect. But it still may be the best game of its kind on any console today. If you're up for the challenge you should buy it.
Pros:
-Amazing combat
-Good AI
-Great Boss fights
-I liked the currency and power-up system
-lush environments and enemies
Cons:
-there's at least one really cheap move that I discovered
-Camera and lock-on issues
-not enough variety to the soundtrack
overall 9.0 (out of 10)
Very well actually, with some minor reservations. The game has been hyped up as being impossibly hard (IGN called it the second hardest PS2 game of all-time), but I didn't find it to be THAT bad. Hard yes, but certainly possible. What keeps the game consistantly entertaining is that if you save your game before dying you'll still have to start the level over, BUT you'll keep all the currency you've collected. I'm not sure why they want you to save first, rather than merely having the game automatically save your progress after a game over ala Viewtiful Joe, but they do. The manual doesn't clearly document this, but I feel it's an important thing to know going into the game, so when you die over and over again none of it will have been in vain, since you've been bulking up your red orb stash. (and if you're really cheap you could replay the beggining of level 7 a few times just for the giant orb stash. I tried it a few times, but got bored quickly.) As a result, the game gets easier and easier (sort of).
Comparing this to Viewtiful Joe isn't a bad comparison actually. Even if Joe is a 2D game and this is 3D the gameplay is rather similar. The main similarity being the currency system that lets you buy moves, continues, health, and such between missions. In many ways DMC3 is only posing as an action/adventure, when it's really more of a beat-em-up. It'll take a few levels before you can do any exploring whatsoever, the game is extremely linear, and you'll frequently have to fight tons of respawning enemies before you can move on. There are some light puzzles, but there were some in Viewtiful Joe as well. If you were to bring Viewtiful Joe into the third dimension and give it some goth window dressings you'd have DMC3 to a tee.
But much like Viewtiful Joe, Devil May Cry 3 shares the same crucial shortcoming: There is one move in the game that kicks so much ass that it renders all other moves near obsolete. If you haven't played the game yet you might want to skip the next paragraph since I'll be giving away the game's one cheapass manuever.
In VJ it was the close-up/slow-mo punch combo. In DMC3 it's the ability to double jump around while charging up your guns, then releasing them in mid-air. You need to equip gunslinger mode to do this, but once you do it really does work on 90% of the fights in the game, excluding some bosses and a few individual enemies. It's a shame this move exists too, as otherwise the combat is so dead on balanced and the AI so damn good, that it forces you to be constantly changing your moves in mid-combat. It took me about half the game to realize this combo, and even then it took a friend watching me play to point out to me that I was doing it all the time, but once I discovered the cheapness inherent in this strategy it really brought my opinion of the game down. I should have avoided using this strategy, but I lack the will-power. I mean if it's there, and it works, it's hard to resist. Either you shouldn't be able to charge up your guns, or you shouldn't be able to double jump. To get around this I would reccomend playing through the game with a style other than gunslinger. It'll be tough at first, but you'll thank me later. I plan to go through the game on a harder setting with the trickster style equipped. Wish me luck.
My other complaint about the game is the camera, and the lock-on system. They're a bit faulty. Not enough to ruin the game by any means, but enough to screw you up from time to time. Considering how faulty the lock-on system is I'm somewhat amazed it hurts the game so little. Mostly because 99% of the time it doesn't really matter who you're locked on to as long as you're locked onto something. And when fighting bosses there's usually only one thing to lock onto. As a result it's really only a minor annoyance. Same with the camera. Sometimes an enemy will come from off-screen and hit you, but when you're fighting half a dozen enemies at a time you're not going to want to stand still for more than half a second anyway, so you can hardly blame the camera.
My only other real mark against the game is the soundtrack. The main title theme is really good, and there is some good music in the game, but they play the same song over and over again during the combat. It's some trashy gothy metal song with pretty stupid lyrics, but it works okay with the action... until you realize that it plays during just about every fight in the game, and since fighting is 90% of the game you'll be hearing that song an awful lot. Considering how much polish went into most of this game it's dissapointing how few songs there are on the soundtrack.
But nit-picks aside, what really matters is whether or not the game is fun to play. And I found it to be extremely fun. The amount of moves that are all very easy to pull off is amazing (there's no tekken style hitting back twice then a series of buttons crap). The moves never get more complicated than holding R1 and a face button while pointing the analog stick in a certain direction. While I suck to high heaven at games like Tekken, I got the hang of the fighting in this within a half-hour. It's surprisingly easy to ram your sword into an enemy, use your sword to launch him into the air, jump in the air and start launching bullets in him, then cap it off by doing a downward thrust into the enemy. Stringing together a series of combos against an enemy had never been so satisfying. This is greatly helped by the animations and sound effects. You really feel like a badass in this game.
Another major advantage to the game is the boss fights, which are mostly excellent. There were maybe two of them that I found to be too repetitive, and long, and boring, but there's still about 10 or so others that are excellent. It took me over 3 hours to beat mission 3 because of Cerebus, and I must have spent near 40 tries on the bosses to mission 5. I expressed some dislike over a chepass move in the game, but even that won't work on a lot of these bosses, who are generally large, quick, and have a good variety of attacks. And on most of these fights I'd win being only one hit away form death after dying countless times to these bosses where they'd be only a hit or two away from defeat. I can think of few times my heart has ever pounded so fast from a videogame, and certainly never so frequently. This game is not for those with heart troubles. But if you can take the intensity of it all, the feeling of elation you get from defeating these bosses is orgasmic.
It's also worth noting the inventiveness that went into the set design for this game. Some of it is typical gothy stuff, but I liked how there's a lot of backtracking that doesn't feel like backtracking. where shortcuts bring you to a place you were at long ago. The enemy design too is pretty great, though it relies a bit too much on different variations of the same grim reaper design. (though it's still better than Viewtiful Joe's flatty robots taking up most of the game). I did wish that the spiders took fewer hits though. Considering how awesome they look I wish they were more fun to fight.
Overall Devil May Cry 3 is an oh-so-close to great game. But as it is it is still very very good. With a few more songs, a better camera, and the exclusion of a cheap move or two it would be perfect. But it still may be the best game of its kind on any console today. If you're up for the challenge you should buy it.
Pros:
-Amazing combat
-Good AI
-Great Boss fights
-I liked the currency and power-up system
-lush environments and enemies
Cons:
-there's at least one really cheap move that I discovered
-Camera and lock-on issues
-not enough variety to the soundtrack
overall 9.0 (out of 10)
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