demo'd - devil may cry 4

there's been a couple of very interesting, very hyped demos that have arrived on live in the last little while. as part of a new thing i'm going to do, i'm going to grab em while they're still hot, cool em off in my xbox hard drive, boot them up and give them a go.

then, initial impressions of these unifinished balls of clay will come to be.

so, for my first demo'd, i took a crack at devil may cry 4.

this is a series near and dear to my bro's heart, having loved up all the ps2 entries of the series and ranting and raving about how i should 'definitely check them out though they can sometimes be a bitch to beat'.

this is my first toe dip in dmc water, so i grabbed my muted green xbox controller and started it up.

locale

now, first off, the settings in this game exude cool. they're super old looking (great adjectives, i know!) but in the kind of run down, shadowed way.

chars

the bad guys, in all their f-d up mutated glory, are really cool and got me excited about this game from the get go. but then came the combat.

gameplay

now, i'm not saying the combat isn't deep, because as a dmc newb, there may be subtleties that i just don't know about. but to my mind this was a button masher at it's core.

one button for punch, another for your 'devil-bringer' sword and another for your gun. throw in a jump button and you're playing a platforming beat em up.

again, i could be missing something, but while the combat felt 'fun' for the 10 minute intro ride, it didn't feel like it would last. not to mention that nearing the end of my 10 minutes (which they've tailored so you can't get tooooo far in the game) i came to some enemies that were the first to do actual damage to my character.

that was the weird thing. it didn't feel too balanced. i took no damage and was f-ing guys up left and right a moment before, and then suddenly WHAM! i was between two intimidating looking mother f-ers on a field of ice (whereas i was previously in a burnt out city) who i couldn't do a whole lot of damage to and who seemed to suddenly be smacking me around like a cat with a 3 armed mouse.

overall fun-acity

the overall fun-ness of this game, will completely rely on getting the balance right between the strength of your character and that of the bad dudes (surprise, surprise) and i sincerely hope there is some form of level upgrade to make you a little more prepared for the bigger and stronger guys.

demo'd!

JD