Devil May Cry

An absolute gem of a game. The gothic and demonic tone and style of this game reminds me of something that would be plucked out of a Clive Barker story. The combat is fluid as all get out and the story is pretty good, too; what keeps you here is the combat and environments, though.

I'm sure most of you have noticed that this game is somewhat linked to Dante Allighieri's Divine Comedy! I mean you have Dante, Virgil and Trish (Beatrice)! This is one of the few games I know that REALLY deserves a movie. An excellent cast would be Gary Daniels or maybe even Jean Claude Van Damme to play Dante. Dante in the game is strong, a great hand to hand fighter and also an excellent marksmen, wielding hand guns and many other items. One of the most stylish characters since Spawn!

PS2 owners may be lamenting that the Nintendo GameCube is getting the exclusive rights to Resdient Evil (although Sony's huge lead, if it continues through Christmas and beyond, will force CapCom to probably release RE games on PS2), but I don't care, because PS2's exclusive series, Devil May Cry, is much better and CapCom should make this series its focus.

Players control Dante, a man with a mysterious past. His father was a demon who fought with the humans to rid the world of Mundus. He then lived with mankind and married a woman, who bore him two sons (Virgil and Dante). Two millenia later, Dante works as a P.I. dealing with supernatural phenomena. A woman named Trish asks him to go to her castle to rid it of ghosts and spirits, but she is only baiting him in going so Mundus can return and eliminate him so his path to world domination will be clear. Dante's job is to make sure that doesn't happen.

The game has several control set-ups. I chose the Easy mode that eliminates all the guesswork. Yeah, it might be wimpy, but my hands aren't as good as they were before. With this mode, you'll have tons of fun destroying all sorts of entities, from marionettes, reapers, and spiders to huge bosses. You can collect gems to buy health aids or gain new powers as you collect new swords. Also, you can gain more power by going into Devil Trigger mode, which will allow you to use the specials you've collected.

With superb graphics, haunting sound effects and music, and tough enemies, the game delivers. There are also special hidden missions to attempt, plenty of toys to play with, and cutscenes to keep the story moving. The only problem with the game is that it's short. You can try more difficult modes, though, if you beat the game on normal.

Another must buy - although if you have a lot of time to spare on this game, you might beat this one in a week rental, but if you have other games in your collection, you should own it. ****1/2 out of *****

With it's RE4 vibes this franchise was born to be the best hack & slash of all time, Dante and Vergil as one of the best duo/rivlary.

Devil May Cry is as much as a stylish thriller as it is an intense action game. There are many graphical nuances that enhance the experience as well, such as entering a mirror and having this alternate world appear blurry. Numerous attacks are portrayed with ultra fast and smooth animations, contributing if nothing else to how much fun the game is to play and how much fun these battles are to be involved in. Dante can also hover in the air after a jump and fire his handguns, gaining even more bonus points in the 'damn that's really cool' category.

Unfortunately the game ends a bit quickly. The game can easily be completed in under ten hours, longer only if the player wants to complete the game on all the difficulty settings and earn the highest ranking on each mission. Otherwise, you're looking at a game that will satisfy most with only a rental. However, it's the type of game everyone should have in their collection. It's one of the few elite games that have graced the PS2 so far.

Devil May Cry Rocks. 10/10