Title: Devil May Cry
Platform: Playstation 2
Played for: ~2 hours, up to the first boss
Would play again?: No
As I mentioned in my last post, I picked up a cheap copy of Devil May Cry mainly because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. There’s been a lot of hype around the release of the latest installment, Devil May Cry 4, and the previous ones have generally been received very well.
Unfortunately, the game is nearly seven years old and it shows. Action games have evolved significantly since then, with titles such as God of War** and Heavenly Sword showing that you can have corridor fighting and linear levels with the illusion of openness and freedom***. This is not the case in Devil May Cry, and I quickly became weary of the repetitive castle corridors, endless minions and straightforward puzzles. I couldn’t find anything remarkable about the touted “stylish combo” system either, though a trip to GameFAQs told me I could perform a slightly different combo by mashing the circle button a little more slowly.
For comparison’s sake, I also tried the demo of Devil May Cry 4 available on Xbox Live. I quickly saw why this was the kind of game people would get excited about. For one, the game looked absolutely incredible in HD, and the drab castle was replaced with a great cityscape. Using Nero’s Devil Bringer arm to hookshot enemies in made for much better combo chaining, and the boss fight at the end was terrific. I’ll strongly consider giving this game a rental.
I’m sure Devil May Cry was a terrific game for 2001, but without the rose-tinted view of a fan it simply hasn’t aged very well.
**Speaking of God of War, what is up with collecting floating orbs off dead enemies? I’m not a big action game fan, but even I’ve played three games (Devil May Cry, God of War, Onimusha 2) that have used this mechanic. The orbs looked nearly identical in all three as well: red orbs for experience, yellow/green orbs for health.
***Poisonous Pixels has a great post about action games and “corridor syndrome”, check it out here.
Title: Killer7
Platform: Gamecube, but played on the Wii
Played for: ~3 hours, the whole first mission
Would play again?: Yes
I really enjoyed playing No More Heroes, and had high hopes for Suda51’s Killer7 as well. Another bargain bin title, there seems to be two or three used copies lying around at every video game store. This isn’t very surprising, the game is very strange, both in style and mechanics, and much more so than No More Heroes.
The fact that Killer7 is on-rails was a bit confounding at first. I often found myself too close to enemies, or stuck in a path menu when I wanted to shoot. The puzzles were also a tad obscure, I spent a long time wandering around the first level until I figured out that turning off the dryer would make the disembodied head inside cough up the fire ring I needed to continue.
However, once I got past these initial frustrations and began to understand the flow of the game I really enjoyed myself. The game is quirky in an endearing way, and treads the fine line between humour and horror. The stylized cell-shaded graphics are also fantastic, this is a game that will age very well. The “shooting gallery” gameplay works quite well once you get the hang of it, and would actually be a perfect fit for the Wii controls.
While I’ll once again be shelving this game for the time being, I have every intention of completing it someday.
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:52 am
“what is up with collecting floating orbs off dead enemies?”
I have the same question! I understand designers influence each other, but this feels a bit too much like copy and paste to me. And why orbs?
I’m enjoying reading your thoughts on these older games. It’s a shame more players don’t pick up games when they’re more than a year or two old. Seems silly to me, but I guess everyone wants the latest and (perhaps not necessarily) greatest.
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:49 am
I haven’t played the first Devil May Cry, but I loved the third one. You touched on this, but one of the most difficult parts is understanding the difference between a button tap and a button press, since most games never really used that functionality on the Dual Shock. And in the heat of combat, it’s hard not to just mash it as hard as you can.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:45 am
@Michael: Of course the corollary of this is that games more than a year old become nearly impossible to get a hold of. There are several great games I never would have had a chance to play if it wasn’t for eBay.
@Mitch: I have a feeling there were many subtleties of the combat system that I didn’t learn in my brief time with the game. I find it interesting that they reward slower, more precise command inputs though, especially in an action game.
March 21st, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I’ve never understood that orb thing either. It’s a rather random ‘genre rule’, really.