The Art of Jeff Chang

I've never done a review on anything before and since this is a blog, I guess I could start adding things like this to try and diversify a bit. So, without further ado..... my review of the DmC Demo available for download now on the PSN and XBL.

***Warning, long rant ahead.***

So now that you've been warned, just played the demo in the latest iteration in the DMC franchise and as a DMC fan I'd have to say, it's very disappointing. The game looks sub par even for an Unreal Engine game. I've seen plenty of games using the Unreal Engine that look miles ahead better than this game (both Batman games, Transformers, and the Gears of War games). Even indie games using the Unreal Engine look better than this game.

The combat felt next to nothing like the previous DMC games. It felt more like Heavenly Sword with aerial combat. Button layout is similar to previous DMC games but a lot more simplified. You have your melee button, jump button, gun button, and that's pretty much it from the original series. They added a launcher button (which I don't have a problem with) and two dodge buttons. There really is no need to have two buttons to dodge. One should have been used for a lock on which are in the previous games and hardcore DMC fans will tell you how extremely useful it is. It's an integral part in pulling off massive combos. Like Heavenly Sword, weapon switching is done the same. You have your starter weapon, then you can switch between the other two by holding down their corresponding shoulder/trigger buttons. Combat isn't challenging or that engaging like the previous games. Enemies will wait awhile before attacking you (even on the highest difficulty). You can't dodge cancel out of attacks which was very useful in the previous games if you wanted to get very high combat rankings.

It's not as fast or as smooth feeling as the previous games either due to the fact that the previous games ran at around 60 fps while this one runs at around 30 fps. Combat style grading has been changed. It went from being how creative you could be with your combos to how much damage you can deal in 1 fight. In previous games, you mixed up all of your available attacks while dodging, launching, and combo-ing with little downtime. Getting hit or not attacking for a short amount of time meant that you had to start all over again and rebuild your rank. Not attacking drained your ranking bar. So if you wanted to rank high, you had to be constantly moving and attacking. That was part of the fun and challenge of the previous game.

In this game, you can go from a C rank to A rank by just using his base axe attack because ranking is based on how much damage you do. There's really no point in being creative. You can just spam his strongest attacks and get a high rank. For me, there's no fun in that. Pausing between attacks for about 20 seconds doesn't cause you to start over. You can basically continue your rank from where it left off. Getting hit doesn't make you start over either unless you had a low rank, it just drop it about 2 ranks.

The game's combat seems to be heavily focus on aerial combat. There's no reason to stay on the ground except for when there are enemies that requires you to use a certain weapon against their defense, and even then you can immediately launch them in the air. A lot of re-positioning isn't required either seeing as how you have the ability to grab an enemy from a distance and shorten the gap by either bringing them towards you or launching yourself towards them.

The story is okay I guess. From what I can gather, demons are trying to take over the world by using media, social media, products, and entertainment. "Dante" becomes involved with a renegade group modelled after annonymus lead by his brother Vergil, and for some reason, Dante is a half-demon/half-angel, demon hating douchebag who thinks it's cool to use profanity in every other sentence (I'm thinking that's an NT thing cuz there's cussing in nearly every scene of dialogue that I've seen about this game).

The only positive thing that I've been able to get from this demo (and everything that I've read and seen about it) is that the visual direction is really good. Something NT is really good at. The transforming levels are an interesting touch. That's pretty much about it. If you're at least a little bit interested in the game, there's a demo available on the PSN/XBL (supposedly there's going to be one available on PC because the game is slated for a PC release sometime after the console versions). Go download it, play it, and let me know what your opinions are DMC fan or not.