Lest we forget this is also a video game: Devil May Cry is in fact a greatly entertaining character action game, as fast-paced and diverse as I could have wanted. That the characters here do so much to uplift Devil May Cry’s ridiculous premise is a testament to both the capability of performance-capture technology and Ninja Theory’s use of it. As before, the success at selling you on the plot simply comes down to all the subtle eye movements and shoulder shrugs and skilled line reads that add up to real, believable performances, the kind of thing you get when you go into a performance-capture facility and fill it with people who can, you know, act. Where Enslaved had a lot of heart, Devil May Cry offers an equal amount of middle finger, but it still manages to lend an appreciable level of gravitas and some occasional poignance to its tale of saving the world from demons who have enslaved the human race with… soda. After the dramatic triumph of Ninja Theory’s last game, Enslaved, it shouldn’t surprise you that I’m back to devote another paragraph to the characters’ performances in this game, which do so much to sell what, again, probably should have been a complete joke of a storyline. The game also knows when to rein it in, though. When acting is required, it’s amazing how effective real actors can be. The best sort of dumb fun is the kind that knows how dumb it is, and I consistently got the sense from Devil May Cry knew that the entire time I was playing it. Dante talks a constant stream of shit to Vergil and just about anyone else who gets in his way, and there’s something uncomfortable and a little dissonant about a 50-foot ancient grub-demon screeching “FUCK YOOOOOUUUUU!!!” right back at him.
And he makes a great foil for his brother Vergil, who’s more of an uppity, refined ideologue fighting the good fight against the demons. Dante may be a smirking wiseass, but his lines are witty enough and delivered with so much panache, you quickly grow to like him anyway. I think it became easy to like Devil May Cry because it seems somewhat aware of itself the game is so damn committed to having fun with its absurdity, you can’t help having fun along with it. Then later I gave up the guilt and just flung myself wholeheartedly into the cyclone of nonsense. I pretty much went into the game consciously expecting to hate all of this, or at least view it as the sort of eye-rolling embarrassment video games are usually so good at delivering.Then, oddly, I started feeling a guilty pleasure at how much I was actually enjoying the spectacle. And then there’s Dante, remade in the image of a club-kid layabout who’s so sneeringly self-satisfied he defies any attempt you might make to identify with him. As a character action game, it hits all the notes–fast, robust action, marvelous visual style, and a tremendous sense of attitude–you could want in this type of game.To be fair, on paper, everything about Devil May Cry sounds like the tritest video game pap: a bloody war between angels and devils, endless hordes of demonic enemies straight from your favorite ’80s heavy metal album art, and all of it punctuated by Scandinavian “hellektro” outfit Combichrist’s thudding soundtrack. Everything in this new game exists in service of making it a great game in its own right, not in stoking your nostalgia for the games you played over the last decade. Names like Dante, Vergil, and Mundus return, but the world they inhabit and the roles they play out are only passingly similar to what you knew of them before. The reborn Devil May Cryfrom Ninja Theoryexemplifies what it is to really get down in the dirt and reimagine a hallowed franchise from the ground up, bringing back only the broadest character traits and relationships but leaving behind everything else about the old that gets in the way of creating a singular, cohesive new. There’s enough combat variety here to support multiple playthroughs.
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