Devil May Cry 4 review

I’ve never properly played through a Devil May Cry game. It’s always been a game I should have got round to playing but there was always something else going on at the time. Well, with the 4th in the series I made a point of playing it properly and it ain’t half bad let me tell you.

We all know that Danté is the main man in the DMC games but in this one, at least to begin with, you play as Nero – a guy who looks like he’s off to a fancy party dressed as Dante from Devil May Cry, only with a weedier gun and a handy hand that’s actually got some demon powers.

This ‘arm of doom’ is called the Devil Bringer and you can use it to grab enemies from afar and bring them to you, throw them around and grapple onto certain parts of the levels to pull yourself to new heights. If you’ve played Onimusha 3 or God of War you’ll know the mechanic by now. As well as your double-barrelled pistol and your arm you have a sword which you’ll use most of the time to hack, slash and stab your opponents and try to get the coolest combo possible – and they all count because when you finish a level you can upload your overall score based on items found and used, fighting variety and speed of completion for all to see on Xbox Live.

If you’ve ever been put off by the difficulty of the series, this time you may want to give it a try because you can play the game on human or devil hunter mode (easy or hard depending on the challenge you want), and also set manual or automatic combos and even let the game level up Nero for you instead of doing it yourself at various points in the game.

If you’ve played other games from Capcom you’ll know the drill – fight lots of monsters through a level, maybe solve the odd puzzle then beat an end boss to get through the 20 levels. This formula doesn’t really change so if you like variety, maybe this isn’t for you. There is some replayability if you want to go back and get better scores and you can choose to play as Danté or Nero in earlier levels once you’ve unlocked him, finding new things to do previously inaccessible to Nero on the first play through the game.

Looks-wise, the cut-scenes are very impressive as always and the game looks nice enough, but does fall short compared to other games of its ilk in lesser detail such as blocky shadows. And the music – well it’s ok but plays the same death metal track with vocals during every fight which does grate a bit if you’re not into singing to make your throat bleed.

This one’s action all the way and if you like that sort of thing – and maybe you want to choose how tricky your hardcore action games are, this one’s worth a look. Devil May Cry 4 gets a very good 7 out of 10 – but remember, on the PS3, you’ve got to cope with that long install time when you first play it.