In his first review, Kam from Gamer Heroes brings you the audio version of his review for Devil May Cry V! A full written version of the review can be found below:
For some reason or another, I missed every other Devil May Cry game up to this point. I had always heard that they’re incredibly difficult or that they’re nonsensical and ridiculous or I even just didn’t have the platform for the latest game. Over time, my tastes (and financial situation) developed to where I was up for a challenge and embraced full-on batshit insanity and was feeling ready to jump into the next entry. Once I saw the E3 2018 reveal, I felt an emotion that seemed a lot like love at first sight? My point is, between my perception of what this series is and my infatuation with the announcement, my expectations were set pretty high. I’m happy to report that it didn’t just meet expectations, but blew them away entirely. Hell, I’d say this is the coolest video game I’ve ever played.
First, let me tell you about how impressively stylish this game is. Think about any game you know of that has an impressive amount of style and coolness associated with it, Persona 5 is a good example. Anyone who fires it up for even 15 minutes or takes a look at some footage can tell just how incredibly cool that game looks and sounds, but at the end of the day, Persona 5, while still a great game, could be separated with the audio/visual style it has and still function on it’s own. Devil May Cry V‘s style just can’t be removed from the game because it’s just such an integral part in making most of the systems work. Need a way to power up your sword strikes? Great, your sword’s handle is also a motorcycle throttle that sets it on fire when you rev it up. Want a way to charge your meter during a fight? Just pull out a book and recite some poetry while your demon pets fight for you. Enemy too far away? Just hop on your DEMON MOTORCYCLE and RUN THEM OVER. These things not only felt great to pull off, but kept pulling me back in when I absolutely had other games to play. It’s also worth touching on that this game is drop-dead gorgeous. The characters look beautiful and the enemies and environments don’t, but in, like a good way. The new RE Engine that Capcom has put together visually shines with this game and the recently released remake of Resident Evil 2, and has me very excited to see what happens when they push this tech to the limit.
Not only is the combat super stylish, but also incredibly rewarding. You’re given so many different cool toys to play with and figuring out the best way to take out this giant screaming demon thing was super fun and tense. The cool toys are great and encourage you to play differently depending on the character, but once you unlock the game’s third character, there’s almost no point to playing the others, since he can pretty much do anything. I never really felt the overwhelming sense of accomplishment and pride that comes with beating a big boss in something like Dark Souls, but I sure felt badass while doing it, and I think that’s intentional. The game definitely knows that’s what you’ll get out of this too; every final hit of an encounter has a downright filthy slow-mo effect that had me exclaiming something inappropriate more times than I can count. That’s not to say the game is without challenge (it’s worth noting that my time with the game was mostly spent on the game’s equivalent of Normal difficulty) as the bosses’ reward honestly requires that you become familiar with their patterns to find an opening. The normal mode is pretty forgiving, but each subsequent play-through unlocks more challenging difficulties, so there’s definitely quite a bit of replay value.
Story-wise, there’s really not a whole lot here to write home about. It’s incredibly corny, over-the-top bullshit that you would expect a game about demon invasions and cane-wielding poets to have, and it’s honestly great. With so many games lately that are incredibly deep, meaningful narratives, it’s refreshing to play a great game that doesn’t take itself seriously at all. Playing Devil May Cry V made me feel like I was watching martial arts movies with my friends; we didn’t care about the story, the story is just a vehicle to show you some dope action sequences. It’s a nice reminder that there’s room in this medium for games exploring what it truly means to be alive and fucking up demon bugs with your twin motorcycle hammers.
In closing, should you play Devil May Cry V? Honestly, yeah, you really should. It’s a downright blast and just when you expect it to cross the line for how ridiculous it can be, it full-tilt sprints right over it and doesn’t even bother drawing a new one. I do take some minor issues with some things like giving one playable character too many tools, some random difficulty spikes, and the padded length of each play-through from having to focus on what every character is doing at a certain point in time, but I can easily forgive Capcom for that, because as an experience, I think Devil May Cry V is unrivaled. It’s engaging, gorgeous, and most importantly, almost every aspect of this game is just pure dumb fun. What’s not to love?
Kam is one of the hosts of the Gamer Heroes podcast, produced by the Heroes Podcast Network, head of content at GGKC, and a passable Dave Grohl look-a-like. Read more of his pretty okay words at his blog, or keep an eye on his regular attempts at humor on twitter @TheKamdyman.
Music:
- District Four Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
