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.

And that, folks, brings us to the end of the nice things I have to say about Devil May Cry 4.

On the downside of the slope -- and the downside is pretty steep; better grab onto something -- the camera, while it is more flexible in DMC 4 than it has been in any of the previous games (manipulating the right analog stick causes the camera to move?a little?sometimes) remains starched for the most part, resulting in the occasionally awkward camera angle and you being attacked by enemies you simply cannot see.

Fans of the until now PlayStation-only series will likely be more comfortable playing the game on the PlayStation 3, simply because of their inherent familiarity with Sony's DualShock controller. While visuals on both machines are nearly identical, load times are noticeably shorter on the PlayStation 3 than they are on the Xbox 360. If you own both consoles, the snappier loads tilt the scale in the PS3's favor.

The drawback to those snappy loads is an initial data install onto the PS3's hard drive that takes -- brace yourselves -- about 20 minutes (or, about as long as it takes to download the typical Sony firmware update). To Capcom's credit, instead of giving you one of those load bars at which to stare, they saw fit to include a 20-minute-long refresher on the three games that preceded this one. But if you could care less about the who-what-where of the series and just want to get to the ass-kicking, you might want to use this time to finish off that Snoopy latch-hook rug you've been working on since college (finally!) or to give your mom a call (she misses you).

The world of the game feels expansive, with gorgeous HD-caliber vistas, falling snow, crumbling castles and lush jungles. Yet it?s a bit too big at times; so big that I got lost on several occasions and found myself meandering around, trying to figure out where the hell I was supposed to go next. The game's new map system is not terribly helpful on this front, and there seem to be far too few enemies. Rushing about the all-too-vacant levels, I found myself hoping to find something -- anything -- to fight.

Speaking of enemies, with few exceptions, the enemies in DMC 4 are a disappointing and -- worse still -- annoying lot (though nothing reaches the low achieved by those evil chess pieces from DMC 3. Run! It's evil chess pieces! Run!). There are hopping lizards, some shark-like things with fins that cruise at knee-level, and some sort of cowboy-hat-wearing grim reaper thing that floats in a black cloud above you. Remember those possessed marionettes from the original game? For my money, those creepy bastards were far more nefarious and nuanced than anything found in DMC 4.

Boss battles have always been a hardcore, back-to-old-school trademark of the series. They're typically ridiculously difficult, Vital-Star-hoovering and, above all, generally unforgettable exercises. My battles with Cerberus, Nero Angelo, Griffon (that giant bird that shoots lightning out of its nether regions), Agni and Rundra, and of course, the mother of all DMC bosses, the Phantom -- that spider-scorpion thing from the first game -- are seared into my brain. Though I finished DMC 4 less than 24 hours ago, I can barely recall any of the game's bosses.

Let's see?there was that on-fire horse-devil thing?that evil frog with cavorting lesbians for antennae?that snake-like thing in the jungle that flies around. None of them display much personality. Worse still, with the exception of the game's final boss battle, most simply rolled over with their high-definition asses in the air.

Devil May Cry 4, in the end, fails to evolve the franchise in any notable way. If you liked the previous games, no doubt you?ll like this one. Just don?t expect to remember much of it once the credits roll.

This review was based on a gold build of the game provided by the publisher.