Devil May Cry 4 (PS3)

Rosin up your bow and play your fiddle hard, Johnny.
2/6/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

I pretend to be all urbane and sophisticated, with my token copy of Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue," my vintage sport coats, and my complete collection of Anton Chekov's short stories (all 13 volumes), but the truth is, I'd take a bologna sandwich and a handful of cold french fries over filet mignon any day.

Which may explain my affinity for the Devil May Cry series.

Put plainly, this stuff is pure shit.

With its gothic sensibility, mindless gameplay and dialogue that sounds like it was written on a very small and very wrinkled cocktail napkin, this is exactly the sort of thing I should be lobbying against in my ongoing and most noble quest for the betterment of our beloved medium -- yet I cannot resist its very cheap and very tawdry charms. Like a baby fascinated by a jangling set of keys, I played through the original game three times, was brokenhearted by the rotten-to-the-core sequel, played through the third game enough times to unlock Dante's no-nonsense brother Vergil in the Special Edition, and then I played it again, soup to nuts, as Vergil.

Which brings me to Devil May Cry 4.

As most of you know by now, Dante is not the star of this show. He takes a backseat to a new character named Nero. Nero has a snow-white, stylish hairdo and a long, medieval-style trench coat; he carries a big gun and a big sword; and he enjoys doling out wisecracks that are so totally lame, they wouldn't survive a grade-school playground game of "Your Momma."

Ring any bells? If you said, Hey, Nero sounds one heck of a lot like Dante, you, my friend, are smarter than the average bear. The game opens in a church/monastery where the faithful now worship Sparda (Dante's demon dad) as a god. During the service, we're introduced to Nero, who shows up late, slouches in his seat, wears headphones, and seems to be trying to look as bored as he possibly can.

Needless to say, before long, zombie/court jester-type doll-things have overrun the city -- and lo, the ass-kicking officially begins.

And what ass-kicking it is. Nero has a right arm that glows and is covered with lizard scales. This is his Devil Bringer. It's basically a giant ghost-hand that can fly across the screen, snatch an enemy, and bring it to Nero's side so he can abuse it further with his gun and sword.

Using the Devil Bringer feels awkward initially, but later in the game -- minor spoiler alarm being sounded here -- I was forced to play several levels as Dante. Only then did I realize how much I'd come to know and love the Devil Bringer. It's a very welcome twist on the increasingly tired "sweep enemy into air with sword, pepper with gunfire, rinse, repeat" formula on which the series had been built since the beginning.

As usual, the fights are of the who-wants-to-have-a-little? variety. I felt eager to get to the next room, to the next gang of monsters -- not so much to fight in a traditional sense, but to -- and this is the core of the DMC series -- do some showboating. Zipping around through the monsters' ranks -- soften this one up with gunfire, give that one over there a sword slice, use the Devil Bringer to haul that far-away enemy to my side, etc. -- represents the closest approximation we have in gaming to the one-versus-many dynamic found in Hong Kong martial arts movies.