The best word to describe Devil May Cry 4 in the current gaming landscape is ‘anomaly.’ Even over a year after its release, the game delivers an experience that is welcome and necessary in a gaming world dominated by first-person shooters, slower paced action offerings and two-bit puzzle games. The frenetic, non-stop sword and gunplay action in Devil May Cry 4 will take some players by surprise, especially if they’ve never played a Devil May Cry game before, as it will provide a refreshing change of pace to their normal gaming diet.

While it reuses a lot of content along the way, as well as using time-consuming puzzles and secret missions to artificially create more playtime, Devil May Cry 4 is a distinctly old-school third-person experience that action gamers would be remiss not to investigate further.

The Devil May Cry series’ main protagonist, Dante, takes a limited backseat in the fourth entry to the saga, as newcomer Nero takes centre stage this time around. The game begins as Dante crashes a seemingly harmless religious ceremony, attempting to assassinate the congregation’s head priest. Nero, ostensibly there for his lady friend, comes to the rescue and drives Dante away, although unaware of his intentions. Triggered by the attack on the priest, demons soon emerge and force the inhabitants of the city into hiding, but not before Nero’s lady friend is kidnapped, setting him on his quest to not only track down Dante, but rescue the aforementioned lady friend in the process.

Devil May Cry 4’s story is wrapped around some very well choreographed fight sequences, amazingly good looking environments, and cheesy one-liners. You’ll soon warm to the silly, convoluted story as it is all very throw-away – you can either get involved with the sequence of events throughout the game and take the twists and turns seriously, or you can simply think of them as context for the many and varied fights you will encounter - nothing more than demon-infested popcorn drama. The voice-actors do a pretty good job, at times delivering performances that are quite touching, if such a word could be attributed to a game containing evil jester clowns with blades where their hands and feet should be.

To aid Nero on his quest to rescue his lady friend, track down Dante and eventually save the kingdom from evil, he has a little help in the form of his enviable sword and gunplay skills, as well as the Devil Bringer, a demonic right arm that gives him a distinct advantage over his enemies. These skills and abilities will definitely come in handy against wonderfully designed fodder type of enemies found throughout the levels and the bosses at the end of those levels.

In any given enemy encounter, Nero will be able to juggle his foes using all of his combat abilities to the full, sweeping an enemy up high and riddling it with bullets while it hangs helplessly in mid-air, only before dodging a quick attack from a second enemy, while grabbing a third distant enemy with the extensible Devil Bringer and unleashing a multi-button attack combo on it, then moving onto the second enemy, closing the gap between himself and the demon with a few bursts of bullet fire, pouncing on it with a lunge attack and chipping away at its health with a flurry of sword swipes, finally finishing it off by grabbing it and slamming it into the ground.

Yes, Devil May Cry 4 is all about juggling enemies with the variety of attacks you have access to - and that variety only grows larger as the game progresses by using your accumulating currency to buy new abilities and attack combinations, which definitely come in handy later against the tougher foes. It’s a bit of a pity that you can’t ‘buy’ a new combat soundtrack, as you will soon be singing along with the track that plays every single time you enter into battle. It’s not a terrible song, but it can get a little repetitious.

As far as the battles are concerned, it’s heartening to know that you can’t just button-mash your way through an enemy encounter and hope for the best – your attack strategy is measured in split-seconds, as you choose the right attack at the right moment, timing your dodging manoeuvres and special abilities so you don’t get knocked down too often or open yourself up to a barrage of enemy attacks.

That being said, Devil May Cry 4 isn’t particularly difficult to begin with, with no discernable difficulty ramp other than sharp spikes when facing up against certain boss-like characters. The split-second decisions are easy to make and the controls definitely help you to control the ebb and flow of any fight you come across.

About half-way through Devil May Cry 4, just to shake things up a bit, control of Nero is taken away from you as you are presented with a new character to play as – Dante – and with him, a whole new world of combat options and abilities. It’s almost a shame that Dante is dumped into the hands of players so far into the game, as you are given so many options all at once that it’s difficult to get to grips with all of them and take advantage of them each individually. A little further in, you are given access to an awesome weapon that some have called ‘the greatest game weapon of all time.’ That’s debatable, but it certainly is cool.

You will only ever be able to learn all of Dante’s combat options with multiple play-throughs of Devil May Cry 4, which you would think would be a good thing, adding considerable replay value to the title. While this is true, the appearance of so many new abilities is at odds with the rest of the game that will see players backtracking through every environment they have previously explored, basically experiencing the adventures of Nero in reverse, only this time as Dante. These areas are repurposed with new challenges and new enemies, but it still smacks of creative bankruptcy on the part of the developers, as you face off against the same three main bosses again as Dante, and then again in the final reckoning while playing as Nero again… that’s a few too many times to defeat the same bosses.

To add insult to this jab, the levels all throughout Devil May Cry 4 are achingly linear, but still manage to confuse your progression path with some bad camera work. An example of such confusion would be entering a room through one door, walking further into said room, then watching a mini-cinematic as a new enemy is introduced. Once the cinematic ends, however, your sense of direction is turned upside down as the camera often faces another wall or door, making you doubt which door you entered through and which door leads further on the path to progression. Frustrating! Fortunately, that doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, backtracking is sure to ensue.

The in-game camera isn’t too hot either, usually doing a good job of placing itself in the best position as necessary, but in certain tight, indoor areas it can get confusing as it flits from one position to the next, or just doesn’t give you enough of a view to make combat decisions, at times failing to show enemies just off-camera that are about to slash you to threads. Frustrating! Again! This phenomenon, too, isn’t that frequent, but when it shows up, all you can do is try to get yourself into a better position so the camera catches up with you.

Devil May Cry 4 is an impressively enjoyable game, despite the camera issues and the reusing of a large chunk of content explored earlier in the experience, which is a testament to the solid, core gameplay mechanics, excellently realised enemies and environments and the storyline which, truth be told, isn’t that original or amazingly in-depth, but still manages to feel inviting and fun throughout the adventure. Just over one year later, Devil May Cry 4 can still be compared to productions being released now in terms of graphical prowess and sheer production values, and can still be recommended to anyone looking for a meaty, challenging, enjoyable action experience that seems to be a bit of an anomaly in today’s gaming landscape.

Pros: Excellent combat system; graphically impressive; enjoyably silly story; potential for great replay value

Cons: Problematic camera system; recycling of earlier content

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