Devil May Cry 4 Hands-On Demo Impressions (Xbox 360)

by Dan Landis on January 25, 2008 at 7:15 am

After about an hour of repeatedly playing the just-released demo of Devil May Cry 4, I’ve found myself effectively shot in the face with action-packed delight. DMC4 really is a return to form for the series, even though the protagonist is an all-new character.

Before I even begin, let me say that if you have broadband and access to the Playstation Store or Xbox Live Marketplace, go start downloading the demo right now. It’ll be a third of the way done by the time you finish reading this, and you’ll thank me for it.

Moving on.

There are two missions available in the demo: Exterminator and Executioner. Exterminator is a 10-minute timed game that basically involves running through gothic architecture while dicing up demons. Executioner is not timed and involves running through gothic architecture in the snow in order to get to what I think were mini-bosses, called Frosts, and then finally to the big fiery demon, Berial.

Nero finds the ripten logo to be quite sexy.

I played Exterminator first. I wasted about four of my ten minutes just screwing around, getting used to the controls, and just kinda looking at the environment. The first thing I noticed was how absolutely silky smooth everything ran. The framerate and animations were incredibly fluid.

The graphics themselves aren’t really what I would call “breathtaking”, but they were made all the more impressive by crisp textures and an overall lack of jaggies. The opera house where you begin the mission is plastered with intricate detail and shimmering gold trim. I futzed around with the camera until I could get to a position where I could see the textures close up, and they surprisingly still looked nice and not as blurry as most games tend to look.

Yeah, that little speck on the bridge is you.

I then ran off to find some bad guys to see if the engine can handle the extra stress. Again, the game really showed some muscle. Not once was there any slowdown or stuttering — it stood strong in the face of adversity.

Going into battle was easy as pie — whoop-ass pie, and my enemies were the filling. Right bumper locks onto targets, which shows a blue ring representing both the enemy’s health and the simple fact that you are locked on. The face buttons then have your sword and gun attacks, jump, and Devil Bringer.

The Devil Bringer is the only thing here that really needs an explanation. Basically, it’s some crazy mystical gauntlet that allows you to pile-drive enemies into the ground, snatch them from afar, and zip across gaps Legend of Zelda grappling hook-style. To be honest, I felt the grappling hook ability to be a usable gameplay mechanic, but somewhat clichéd and not really fitting in the context of the game. Maybe that’s just me.

Continuing on, I found myself surrounded by demons as the timer hit zero. I’m treated to a “Coming Soon” screen before being booted back to the main menu. I guess I’ll try out the other mission now — Executioner.

The mission starts on a snowy cliff-side path to a castle gate. I start heading down the path and this is where I notice another nice little feature. Running in one direction for about 3 seconds or so initiates a sprint. It makes it considerably less arduous to navigate around these huge environments when it doesn’t take so damn long to do it. Nice touch, Capcom.

I come to a bridge, which obviously has to collapse when I walk on it, and I fall to the ruins below. Two icy creatures, apparently called Frosts, appear in the obligatory cutscene, I fight them off with great skill because I am awesome. Upon their inevitable deaths, they unlock the guarded-by-red-demon-essence path, and I enter.

This takes me to a bridge, which I cross, and on the other side lies a huge castle door. Entering somehow transports me to a wooden old-west-looking shanty town, where a huge fiery four-legged demon, named Belial, appears and proceeds to set the entire place aflame by his mere presence. A nice conversation ensues, after which he totally destroys me and sends me back to the Main Menu.

I purposely did not include the scene where he kicks my ass.

Now, out of curiosity, I load up the first mission again to see how far I can get in the time limit. A few times I completely ignore some of the bad guys because I’m not obligated to kill them to move on, as I do have a time limit.

During this playthrough, I notice that Nero is too cool for ladders. Near the end of the stage, there is a switch you have to hit, and it has a ladder leading right to it. I try to use the ladder, I guess because I’m just an ordinary guy using ordinary guy logic, but Nero won’t have it. I instead have to jump onto a platform, and from there jump up to the switch. Using a conveniently-placed ladder is apparently not something a bad-ass would do. Okay, then… Anyhow, I hit the switch and run to the end of the stage.

Coincidentally, making it to the end of the Exterminator mission within the time limit actually starts you on the Executioner mission, albeit with absolutely no chance of actually fighting through it because of the time limit. That doesn’t really matter, though, since you can just start the Executioner mission over from the menu and not be restricted by the timer.

At this point, I’m pretty sure that these missions are not pulled right from the game. What I mean is, I don’t think there is a snowy cliff-side path on the other side of a door in a watery city, and I don’t think a door in a snowy castle courtyard would lead to a flaming wooden town. Maybe that just seems obvious, but the way these kooky storylines go, you never can be too sure.

I really only have one gripe about the game, and that’s the camera. Like pretty much all games that feature the dynamically shifting, completely uncontrollable camera angles, I find the transitions somewhat disorienting sometimes. Going around a corner and having the camera shift a full 90 degrees while you’re still moving in the same direction is uncomfortable.

I move forward while holding up on the analog stick, only to have the camera shift views and make it so that if I continue to hold up, I’m now going left. Maybe it’s my auto-correcting brain raised on role-playing games where confusion attacks reverse your controls, but this camera issue makes me walk in undesired directions, sometimes take hits that I should have avoided, and occasionally go back to an area that I had just transitioned out of.

I’m sure die-hard fans of these types of games don’t have this issue, but I do and I’m sure others do as well. It’s certainly not a deal-breaker, and doesn’t really detract from the game other than a few minor unnecessary frustrations.

So, minor annoyances aside, I think the demo overall can best be summed up with the words “fucking awesome”. To be completely honest, I wasn’t overly excited to play another Devil May Cry game. This demo, however, makes me feel like I’m playing the first Devil May Cry all over again, except it’s new and different from last time. You owe it to yourself to at the very least check out the demo now (it’s free and should already be partially downloaded, right?), if not the full game when it releases this February.

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