Let’s talk, good folks.
It has been a long while since I’ve played and enjoyed a DMC game. Prior to the DMC4 release in 2008, the last time I’ve saw a Devil May Cry game in person was at the 2007 Tokyo Game Show, where the Capcom was demo-ing it on the PlayStation 3. The line stretched out of the convention center door when the public was let into the mix. To say the game series has a big, consistent following would be a gross and embarrassing understatement. At TGS the game was nothing short of an action rush. It acted like a sugared up kid on a playground, who would was frightfully in control of his/her every move. Wild, wacky and precise fun that echoed the great elements of the past series.
And, of course, some flaws were also quite obvious.
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Fast forward nearly eight years and Capcom has brought its action-packed beauty back out with some updates attached to make this edition truly special.
While the initial core gameplay from the original DMC4 release is very much intact with the special edition version, the added characters give motivation to play it over again. Capcom has added into the mix Vergil, Trish and Lady as playable characters. Each bring their own origin and story to the mix (though, fans will certainly be familiar with them). Each also bring a variety of different costumes to the gameplay, which I’m sure fans will care about immensely (I personally don’t care — not since Street Fighter II – Special Edition in the arcades).
Characters aside, the gameplay has improved a bit. The fighting seems a bit more balanced, though the amount of enemies and their responsiveness to Nero (or whoever) can be a bit ‘easy’ at times when fighting. The gameplay does offer to ramp things up with the Legendary Dark Knight mode (not new to the PC, but new to the PlayStation 4/Xbox One worlds), which would increase the amount of enemies, but being the wuss that I am in action games like this, I didn’t use that option outside of reviewing/testing. I have played Dynasty Warriors ‘Fill-in-the-Blank’ and had no real desire to carry that mode through the review process. With that said, I could certainly see where Capcom had left plenty of open/empty space for that mode. For example, it’s quite obvious when you’re hanging around in the snowy mountains of Mission 4 that it was built for big parties of baddies. There are at times some empty levels where enemies should reside, though I have to credit the developers for allowing an uneasy creepy factor to sink in when these areas aren’t populated. It felt like Resident Evil during some missions. I liked that a lot, as it created a healthy amount of uncertain atmosphere to the game.
To get back to the point, the gameplay seems less draggy and out of control when compared to the original release. It might be the small things that can’t be seen under the hood that Capcom and Access Games helped to clean up, but whatever the case might be, it helped the gameplay quite a bit. I certainly had a lot more fun with this DMC4 than the first time around.
Anyway, gameplay smoothing aside, you can expect some of the same gameplay element upgrading as you found in the first title. There are power-ups laying around to improve weapons and attacks. For an action game, I find the added depth in these power-ups to be intriguing. You don’t get a lot of depth like this in typical action titles, so it’s refreshing still to see this sort of stuff intact for a button-mashing game like DMC4. Players who have never experienced this gameplay before will probably be pleasantly surprised by what Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition has to offer.
Overall, I think the gameplay certainly improved when compared to the previous version, which makes the experience a little more fun. The core gameplay from the one released in 2008 is still intact, so you won’’t have a lot of internal or control changes with it. The added characters and smoother gameplay will make a huge difference when you’re trying to figure out why you should purchase this game.
On the presentation side of the equation, I have and will always find the game to be quite over-the-top when it comes to acting/writing and action. The DMC series has always been something between a modern day martial arts film with extreme and unnecessary/awkward camera angles. It also contains some outrageously enormous, yet cool looking enemies to match its action drapes. The world that Capcom put together with DMC4:SE is big, though restrictive in construction. It’s a little open, but linear most of the time. Regardless, it feels bigger than it is (twss), which is a credit to the proper design of the world built for Dante, Nero and crew to live and die in. In short, it has got a lot of things packed in that make it great, but most of it is for show and is less real substance.
Still, I can dig that without much complaint.
In terms of special edition upgrades, the textures, details, shadowing, shading and lighting have all been upped from their 2008 origins. My wonderful, yet sometimes flawed Lenovo packed with an NVIDIA 840m (4gb of DDR5) handled all of these things wonderfully — once I got it to recognize the game. While I will probably just write this up as a Lenovo issue, I did have some problems with DMC4: SE recognizing my NVIDIA card. Capcom and their wonderful PR crew helped solve the problem, which was just asking my ridiculous computer to recognize the NVIDIA card over anything the built-in intel graphics chipset. Should you run into that issue, open up the NVIDIA control panel and make sure to tell it to manually select the NVIDIA card over everything else. I’m sure you awesome PC folks out there will have no issues, but noobs like me are still picking up the PC pace on these things. Be kind to us. It takes a while to shake the console out of our heads (though, some of us still have a stash).
Anyway, everything is upgraded in terms of gameplay visuals. You’ll see shadows fall beautifully, and accurately, across staircases. Lighting give proper proportion to the shadows it cast. Detailed textures that make up the water, enemies, protagonists and stunning structures. You’ll find the surroundings in the game visually intoxicating, inside and outside buildings. The resolution sticks at 1080p, while I found the frame rate hanging around in the 40s (according to the DMC4SE built-in performance test). For the PC folks with beasts for machines, I’m sure you’ll be pulling better results with bigger specs than me.
For comparison sake, my specs on the Lenovo read like this:
– i7 (top-of-the-line) intel chip
– NVIDIA 840m with 4gb DDR5
– 16gb of RAM
– 512 SSD
– Windows 8.1 (BLAH)
Generally, my machine performs pretty well under pressure and is almost never short on performance. DMC4: SE was a bit of a struggle, even with the NVIDIA card in charge, though not too much to take away the upgraded and improved parts of the special edition (sans the 60fps, which is important to most gamers these days).
Regardless, the presentation upgrade in the game is worth your time and money. Capcom and Access Games did a great job with making sure this 2008 game got its proper treatment.
With all of this said, where does this game land in terms of fun and value? The game is still fun as hell to play, and more so with added characters and smoother gameplay. While it certainly can be pointed out that this game is nearly 10 years old, it should also be pointed out that the age of it doesn’t detour from the fact that it’s fun as hell. DMC 4 was certainly a refreshing release back in 2008, and it’s still the same type of game in 2015. The added value to the original release makes this more than worth the $24.99 asking price. For those of you who have never played it before, it will be like a brand new experience — and it outshines some current generation games. I don’t know whether that is awesome or sad (or both).
Anyway, it’s worth your time and money. Capom and Access Games did a great job with porting over and up to current generation systems, especially on the PC. I’m beginning to buy into this ‘PC elite’ idea. Sadly, my wife probably won’t.