Review - DmC: Devil May Cry (Xbox 360)

Two brothers, born from an Angel mother and Demon father, Nephilim fighting against the armies of hell and the Demon King to rid them from the earth. Do you recognize this story? If not then you need to go and play Ninja Theory’s DmC: Devil May Cry.

You play as Dante, just an ordinary guy who goes to bars and picks up women, except he’s the offspring of the angel; Eva who was killed by Mundus, the demon king and the demon; Sparda who Mundus condemned to endure eternal punishment and pain. Unknown by Dante was that he had a brother; Vergil, who fights in a war against the demons. The two unite to try and achieve their goal of killing the demon king. That’s pretty much the general premise of the story with a couple of twists and turns that I won’t mention for spoilers sake.

The team at Ninja Theory have done an incredible job on creating unique and diverse personalities for characters who could have ended up very clichéd. This makes cut-scenes and interactions between the characters an absolute joy to watch. To be completely honest, I wish there were more cut-scene just so I could learn more about each character. To call the story and characters in DmC laughable would be a complete joke in itself. Dante has a slew of one liner that portray him as a confident and somewhat witty character. Voice acting is superb, David de Lautour brings the character of Vergil to life and Tim Phillipps as Dante is the icing on the cake. That’s enough about the story and characters, now on to the combat.

The banter between the two brothers is humours at times, even towards the end Dante claims that he’s ‘stronger’, Vergil says he’s ‘smarter’ in which Dante replies with ‘I’m better looking….. And I’ve got a bigger dick’. This kind of boy-ish humour is good in a small dose which is what Ninja Theory understands, thus this being the ONLY blatant penis joke in the game.

Dante returns with his iconic sword; Rebellion, as well as Ebony & Ivory, his to pistols. These weapons combined, Dante can silence the demon scum between him and Mundus. He also acquires new weapons and abilities along the way that can be switched mid battle by holding the left or right trigger to increase the length of a combo. Speaking of combos, Ninja Theory has made them really fun as well as easy to pull off with the addition of a feature that signals the player when they are required to add a delay in their combo.  If I were to perform Y, Y, PAUSE, Y (Y being the basic attack), the game provides a slight vibration in the controller at the end of the PAUSE and signals that it’s time for me to continue the combo.

I really like this feature; it allowed me to focus on enemy attack patterns and when to dodge rather than having to focus on a combo and ultimately get hit which would drop my style rank down by 2 letters.

Style ranks consist of 7 different levels, these are:

·             SSSensational

·             SSadistic

·             Savage

·            Anarchic

·            Brutal

·            Cruel

·            Dirty

The way to achieve these is by using various weapons and combos opposed to spamming the basic attack to fill it up. Again, I had a lot of fun with this. When I got my first full set of weapons (3 in total, firearm, angel, demon), I was a little overwhelmed by the thought of switching up the weapons mid fight but after my first play-through, I found myself switching weapons at every chance I could get and thus further increasing my score.

Technically, the game runs smoothly with very few hiccups although I’ve heard reports of the frame rate struggling on the PS3. The Xbox 360 version and I assume the PC version, only have slight frame rate issues when switching from in-game cut-scene to a pre-rendered cut-scene and vice versa.

Just quickly before I wrap this up, DmC: Devil May Cry has some of the most messed up boss battles and best visual style I have seen in a game for a while now. All I’ll say is ‘Spawn of Mundus’; you’ll know when you come across it.

Ninja Theory’s DmC: Devil May Cry is a great game and if you haven’t played it then you need to even if you’re a fan of the original games. With 7 different difficulties to play and unlock (3 are novelties more than difficulties, ‘Hell or Hell’: enemies die with one hit but so does Dante), I know I’ll be playing this game for a while.

DmC: Devil May Cry gets an 8.5 ‘Muted Microphones’ /10

Review - Halo 4 (Xbox 360)

Halo, the game the put console first-person shooters on the map, is back for its fourth installment with Halo 4. This is the first Halo game without Bungie at the helm; instead, Microsoft entrusted 343 Industries with the job of continuing the story of the Master Chief. When Halo: Combat Evolved was shown at E3 in the year 2000, John-117 was a cyborg… super-soldier… guy, since then the Halo series has evolved and sold countless units. What players didn’t realize then was that in 12 years time, the Master Chief Petty Office John-117 would being able to express more emotion from beneath the cover of his helmet than any Final Fantasy or Call of Duty character ever could. But to tell you the truth, the story of Halo 4 is really about Cortana, the AI that the Chief has carried with him since their departure from the Pillar of Autumn in Combat Evolved, the Chief is just the force that drives the story forward.

Like previous entries in the Halo series, players are required to run, gun and kill as many covys as possible while trying to stop the games antagonist, the Didact, and an army of ‘Prometheans’, the AI defense drones that populate the planet Requiem. The catch though is that Cortana, a flash cloned copy of Dr. Catherine Halsey, is showing signs of rampancy, a condition where an AI’s think themselves to death after obtaining too much knowledge. In the Halo universe, artificial intelligences possess an average lifespan of 7 years. The Chief must attempt to deliver Cortana back to earth and somehow salvage her still-working components.

The game is presented beautifully, with characters showing more emotion than any other Halo game and a lot of current games in the market for that matter. The facial animations here are only matched by those of Rockstar’s L.A. Noire and voice acting helps players connect to the story and characters more than ever before. The architecture of the world has a gleam and shimmer to it, which lends a clean sci-fi experience to the player, much like Star Trek.

The competitive multiplayer portion of the game is right up there with Halo 3. 343 provides a heap of game types and plenty of character customization options that give the player something to strive for while at the same time, offering hundreds of commendations to mix up the experience. A new feature this time round is Spartan Ops, an episodic co-op campaign that delivers a new episode every week (the first 5 weeks after the games launch = season 1) with plans for season 2 on the way.

You play as Crimson Squad as they fight to unravel the mysteries of an ancient Promethean artifact. These missions can range from defending an objective, killing ‘X’ number of enemies or getting from point A to B. Although is this a really good feature and something that will keep players coming back, the missions are made a little stale and repetitive due to constant re-use maps and a slightly confusing story. It’s worth mentioning that this feature replaces the Firefight mode introduced in Halo 3: ODST.

The Halo series has come a long way in its 12 years; we’ve seen humorous co-op, extremely competitive multiplayer and some of the most intense campaigns to date. With there being 2 more scheduled games in the series, it’s easy to say that this will be classed as one of the best and most influential series of all time.

Halo 4 gets 9.5 ‘Muted Microphones’/10

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