Dante wasn't written to have substance, he was designed with style, to take advantage of the then-new PlayStation 2's graphical capabilities. The gameplay was strong and Capcom turned the hodge-podge into a solid action game in the same way developers and publishers have salvaged projects since the industry's earliest days: it started making shit up on the fly and tidying up afterwards.ĭevil May Cry was a great game and so were its sequels, but the franchise's fiction and canon is not among the great works our industry has produced it's all style and no substance.
See, Dante's universe was starting to wear thin. A single auteur makes a better headline, see.Ĭapcom went to Ninja Theory not because it couldn't make a Devil May Cry game itself, but because it looked at the developer's body of work, probably paying particular attention to the excellent Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and decided it wanted that kind of creative force to reinvent Dante's universe. The teams that stay behind still have all the knowledge and expertise they used to build the games they are almost never given any credit for. When celebrity individuals depart, companies like Capcom don't lose ground. Sure, Kamiya was not on board - but Kamiya is just one man and, newsflash: games are made by dozens if not hundreds of people. As it should be it was built in close consultation with the team of action experts at Capcom who oversaw the rest of the much-praised series. Look, kids, the verdict is in: DmC is a lot of fun. Ninja Theory has kept its sense of humour. But that's the mental picture I come up with in-between rolling my eyes so hard my skull shakes whenever I read some embarrassing comment about how Dante's hair colour means DmC: Devil May Cry isn't a solid, excellent game well-worth your time. According to this measure, the "gamer" kind is sexist racist homophobic reactionary unable to spell almost exclusively male hasn't read a book since See Spot Run probably dramatically under-equipped in the genital department incapable of basic self-care like hygiene, cooking and housework and covered in Cheeto dust.Īlright, I'm extrapolating a little here. Like all comment threads and forums everywhere, gaming websites tend to be dominated by vocal minorities keen to espouse their insanity and ignorance. You read the comments and you draw conclusions about what kind of people "gamers" are. You start believing that this relatively tiny group of people who know and care about video games with an unusual level of passion are a solid, cohesive unit. It's easy to do when you hang around sites like VG247.
(It will soon be impossible to microwave a TV dinner without scoring points, updating your Facebook, killing off a boss and unlocking an UBER EPIC 5000 armour set.)īut we all occasionally subscribe to the myth that gamers are a thing. The people who play games are just people who play games, and that arbitrary grouping is becoming even more diverse as gamification creeps into every aspect of our lives. There's a stereotype that gamers are all pathetic shut-in misanthropes with the social grace of pubic lice (pre-endangered species status) and adjustment disorders so pronounced they are visible from the moon. Dante's had a dye job and legions of devoted fans have sworn off his triumphant return to the forefront of action gaming.