Bishies

Finished Playthrough 1 of DMC2

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So far this year I’ve completed both Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. Now I can add hack n slash Devil May Cry 2 to my list. Just like the others though I’ll have to go back and play it again as Lucia. I may also have to play again anyway just to stream it, I feel like it would make good commentary fodder just because of how bad it is. :v:

I have to say out of all of the Devil May Cry games I found DMC2 to be the easiest one to play, and also the most off-putting as I referenced in an early impression of the game. On its surface it seems like a promising game, but between the even weirder camera, the lackluster combat, broken-ish boss fights as well as lame enemy designs (what were they even smoking when they were making possessed infected tanks and helicopters?), boring level design and the super serious Dante I just wasn’t impressed. Perhaps if I play it on hard it might make the gameplay more of a challenge, but from what I’ve been reading I’m not entirely sure.

Some of the bossfights are just outright broken. For example this pile of shit right here! This is a collection of every single boss you’ve fought already in other chapters all forever trapped in a pile of dung. If you kill any one of the monsters they’ll melt back into the pile, and from there you can stand slightly out of reach and finish them off with a rocket launcher. I did it single handed, I’m guessing this was intentional so the developers could wank off during play tests. :zorak: In other DMC games the bosses seem really difficult, to the point that I have to look up a tutorial for how to defeat them once in awhile, but in this game I haven’t had that kind of trouble. If anything I had to look up tutorials for how to solve a couple puzzles or where to go. For example in mission 9 you need to get out of a building in a certain amount of time before you die, and some of the doors were a little too well hidden to the point of frustration. Fortunately there was a video I found by IGN that helped me get out of there. I’m the kind of person who hates breaking down and using tutorials or walkthroughs to get anything in a game accomplished, but I don’t think I would have ever figured this one out without one.

There were also inconsistencies when it came to going to other rooms. Some of the doors you walk up to automatically transport you to the next sections, some others require you to press a button like in the other games. When I entered the demon world I tried to go through the elevator and it wouldn’t let me walk through. After exploring a bit more I went back up to it and pressed a button on my controller and sure enough I was riding the Hellevator!

If it’s any small saving grace I did like the character designs. Dante still looks really cool, it’s just unfortunate that his personality was replaced with a wooden plank. Even with the bad voice acting in DMC3 he at least had more of a personality. But here he’s just super serious all the time, and on the off chance he makes a smartassed remark it just doesn’t feel like what I’ve played of the other games.

The ending could have been done better too. After defeating the final boss, Dante rides his motorcycle (that I’m guessing he pulled out of his ass just like in other random cutscenes) deeper into hell with no further explanation, then the game tells me what I’ve unlocked and to play the Lucia Disc (I guess the PS2 version had Dante and Lucia separated on two different discs and they never bothered changing it out for re-release on other platforms).

Overall I am glad I finally got to play this, but at the same time it’s nice to know I never missed out on anything. I always heard DMC2 was terrible, now I have a full understanding as to why.

Devil May Cry 2 lives up to the not hype

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I always heard that Devil May Cry 2 (unless you count the reboot with a Justin Bieber’d Dante) was the worst game in the entire series, and after playing it today I can see where people are coming from.

The Devil May Cry series is notoriously known for stylish hack n slash, and encourages you not to use the same moves over and over again to defeat your enemies. In Devil May Cry 2 however it seems the best way to defeat enemies is to do just that… So far all of the boss fights I have encountered have been rather simplistic, a chop here and gunshot there, definitely seems off-putting compared to the other games. I mean I knew something was amiss when I realized I wasn’t getting my ass handed to me on a silver platter. :v:

I can’t say it’s a terrible game, but at the same time I have to say it comes off really lackluster. I still have a bit of a hard time with the other games, but when I finally defeat a difficult boss it feels much more satisfying than anything I’ve encountered thus far. The last boss I fought was an infected helicopter, which was basically a helicopter possessed by a demon. To get through that boss battle I mainly just kept shooting the shotgun over and over again. Another boss was a giant gorilla orangutan hybrid demon. The game seems to have a thing with monkeying around as I’ve also found small monkey looking demons, as well as other animals and abominations.

Dante’s personality also seems too serious to me. In all of the other games he has a laid back personality, even tries to eat pizza while being stabbed at by a bunch of monsters, but in DMC2 he’s all serious all the time, and has the whit and charm of a wooden plank. No sarcastic lines, no comical retorts, no terrible puns that make me want to throw a shoe at my computer screens. It’s no wonder they made DMC3 similar to DMC1.

I guess now my remaining question is which is really worse? DMC2 or DMC: Devil May Cry (The Reboot)?

Lets Rock Baby

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So, over the last week I’ve mainly been playing Metal Gear games, Okami, and today it was The Devil May Cry Trilogy. I’ve been on a Japanese game kick, what can I say? :melon:

When you’re beside yourself.

I’m finding that for me the Devil May Cry series lives up to its difficulty curve, you simply don’t wave your sword around like an idiot (my default strategy) with most of your enemies. The best way I’ve been able to think of it so far is that Devil May Cry is like an extreme game of Simon, an extremely deadly version of Simon. When this enemy attacks here do this. When enemy runs after me press left and Y. I left off at a point now where I need a second Rusty Key, and I didn’t feel like continuing any further due to the traditional sweaty hands and tired button presses. #FirstWorldProblems

Man Candy from the PS2 era.

I remember when I tried to play Devil May Cry 3 from the 2006 PC port and being extremely disappointed. Granted you could mod it to fix some of the issues, but it still wasn’t quite right. While this HD remake isn’t perfect DMC3 in this years remaster is definitely a step up with better controller support and resolution up scaling. I definitely like the combat in both games, although if I were to complain about anything it would be the camera. I’m sure I’d still have the same problem if I played on console, but in certain areas of each level the perspective changes, and sometimes the direction you’re running may or may not change when you want it to. This makes it really annoying for me during boss fights, I’m actually surprised they don’t list the camera as a final boss for the game. 😛 Of course if I can learn when what position shifts to which angle I can eventually figure it out. Streaming this publicly would be an embarrassment for me, though I could say that for just about any hack n slash… or most games I’ve played.

I keep telling myself I’ll stream more public stuff one of these days, and I think it’ll happen. The planets just haven’t quite aligned for me yet.

Process of emulation

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I’m not sure why, but lately I’ve been on a bit of a kick with emulators. Not just DOSBox but some other ones as well, mainly for the Playstation 1 and 2 and a bit of the Wii. Tonight I decided to play a bit of Devil May Cry, which never got ported over to PC and I always wanted to see what started the series. So far the game and the emulator have been pretty straight forward. It’s quite nice running these older games at 1080p with none of the console blur., something that always annoyed my eyes during the PS1 era. It works nicely with my F510, haven’t tried the Steam Controller because I wanted to go for a “familiar” experience.

dante

As far as game play goes Devil May Cry is quite enjoyable, it feels like DMC4 to me minus some features. The controls are easy to get used to, although using Y as the jump button in place of A or X seems weird, but not really that awkward. I’m sure it’ll get hairier the further I get into it, but that’s fine. I’m not much for things that are too easy.

If they did a proper remaster or port for PC I’d definitely buy it. I’m not sure why they would leave the first two games in the series out (although I’ve heard rumor that the 2nd game was ass). You start with Devil May Cry 3 on PC, and because of Capcom’s shitty porting from the mid 2000’s you can’t really enjoy it unless you heavily mod it via nexus mods. Honestly at this point I’m not sure if I should try the mods or just do a full blown emulation. I’ll probably look into that when I finish the first game and attempt to try the second.