Devil May Cry 5
PC, PS4, Xbox One
Ah, merry old London – the red phone boxes, the plastic garden furniture, the road signs and erm, the demonic tree-thing whose gigantic spiked branches have torn all those grand old buildings to shreds. Red Grave City isn’t quite London as we know it, but the inspiration is obvious, and we spend a little too much of Devil May Cry 5’ s opening hours playing this fast-paced action game completely wrong, not sprinting but strolling, gawking at familiar roadside furniture and Tube-station ad posters. Capcom researched England in surprising depth, as we explained in E326’ s cover story, though perhaps it missed a few of the finer details. Nice as it is to see a dinged-up Transit van in a rotten hellscape, we could have done without the road sign pointing towards the local ‘beer factory’.
The real disappointment, however, is how fleeting it is. Devil May Cry 5 may be grounded in a reality pleasingly close to home, but it doesn’t stay there for long. A little too much of the game is spent running around on bits of demon tree, as our protagonist trio descends deeper and deeper to cut the infestation off at the source. This is a handsome game, starring three handsome men: Dante the silver-haired badass; Nero the young beefcake; V the heavily tattooed, rake-thin goth repping the SoundCloud generation. All are wonderfully rendered and animated, the RE Engine proving itself highly capable once again. If only the backdrops were of the same high quality throughout.
Still, that’s a rare black mark on a thrilling action game that, while faithful to its roots, innovates on the series formula in some delightful ways. Perhaps the most effective is that Dante no longer feels like the out-and-out star, his two playable companions every bit as enjoyable to take into battle as the man around whom this series has been built. There are three very different playstyles on offer here: Dante, up close and personal, a whirlwind of stylish aggression; Nero a more considered, tactical kind of brawler; and V a vaguely slapstick summoner who does his best work when running away from trouble.
Nero, who carried the first half of Devil May Cry 4 while only ever feeling like the warm-up act, has been greatly fleshed out here, though it’s a particular absence of flesh that most defines him. His Devil Breakers, mechanical prosthetics made from bits of defeated demons by Nico, an NPC ally who is approximately 95 per cent midriff – the other five is a permanently curled top lip – give him a level of flexibility in combat second only to Dante himself. Some Breakers offer devastating attack power up close, others pin enemies down from range, and others still afford greater mobility. And while you can take a certain number into battle, their order in your loadout is key. They can’t be switched between, the next only equippable once the current one is destroyed.
V represents an even greater departure from the series template, since he attacks using summonable pets. The crow-like Griffon moves in from the air, unleashing furious electrical attacks in among its talon swipes. The ground-based Shadow is a teleporting big cat that turns itself into a whirlwind of demonic spikes. And where Dante has his Devil Trigger, V has Nightmare, a hulking colossus that forces bosses to pick on something their own size, and simply lays waste to everything smaller. While the minions do the wet work, you need to keep V safe, moving in only to administer the killing blow on enemies, which the pets can’t do themselves. Keeping him out of harm’s way is easy enough in open play, since he’s as mobile as Nero or Dante. Yet he can refill his Nightmare gauge by reading aloud from a book of demonic verse – which slows his walk dramatically, and will be cut off by a jump or dodge. V offers an entirely new way to play Devil May Cry 5, and honestly quite a silly one. We love it. And then, of course, there is Dante. Director Hideaki Itsuno knows better than to mess with such a proven formula, and so this is essentially the DMC3: Special Edition character with bells on. His four styles are switchable in realtime with D-pad directions; melee weapons are rotated with the right trigger, and guns with the left. Cycling through them all, watching the sparks fly as you climb the style ranks is, as ever, a delight, rendered even more so by the RE Engine kicking into seemingly ever higher gears as things get more and more absurd. V and Nero are more than capable companions, but the game is nonetheless at its very best when Dante takes centre stage – particularly late on, when Itsuno adds a thrilling new dimension or two to his most beloved creation.
Devil May Cry has always been a frighteningly technical game, and that’s certainly the case here: reaching and maintaining a coveted SSS rank will require a near-perfect mix of planning, execution and reactions, as always. Yet rarely has the series felt quite so welcoming. While move lists are enormous, the most complex input in the game is back then forward on the left stick, and its most spectacular moves are performed by simply holding down a face button. It’s a wonderfully generous game, one that rewards the novice buttonmasher with a raucous spectacle, then offers even more to those prepared to experiment.
With all that’s going on in the foreground – a relentless firework display of alpha effects, hit pauses and demons being cleaved in twain – perhaps it’s churlish to complain too much about the quality of the backdrops. London’s influence may fade a little too soon, but this is a right old knees-up from start to finish, a classic reborn in wonderful style. Capcom’s hot streak continues apace.
Reaching and maintaining a coveted SSS rank will require a near-perfect mix of planning, execution and reactions