Stream below or right-click and download here You can also listen on Stitcher and iTunes. Why not subscribe to us on RSS ?
Introduction
0:00:09 Aaron "Cellar Monster" Mullin Returns
Feature - Devil May Cry 3
0:01:46 It's Influences and Place in the Series
0:08:43 Discussion of Bosses
0:18:40 Level Design
0:38:57 What's to Come in DMC4 and 5.
0:42:30 "Remember Console Wars?"
0:43:19 Overrated?
0:52:45 Weapons Discussion
0:58:00 Fighting Styles
1:02:25 Music
1:09:55 Story and Characters
1:20:20 Dante Voice Acting
1:26:00 Tom's and Aarny's Score
1:30:00 Broader Discussion of the Genre and Aging
First Impressions
2:04:10 Astral Chain (and back to DMC)
Outro (The views and opinions expressed by Aaron Mullin do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of The Game Under Podcast) 2:10:40 VGPress and Defamation
Transcript
Tom: Hello and welcome to episode of The Game Under Podcast.
Tom: I am your host Tom Towers, and I am joined by the ever-present Aarny.
Aaron: I'm always here, never leaving.
Aaron: I'm the Cellar Monster that you bring out for Devil May Cry news.
Tom: You've never missed a show that is about Devil May Cry at least.
Aaron: I fucking hope not because, you know, if it's just chatting, but it's, you know, unearthed me, like, unlock the door and let me out.
Tom: And I think this episode is episodes late.
Tom: I think we were meant to talk about Devil May Cry in episode
Aaron: Yep.
Tom: That was our prediction.
Aaron: Well, that's your fault for taking so long to, you know, play
Aaron: So don't make any predictions at the end of this episode about Devil May Cry
Tom: Let's predict we'll be doing that by episode
Aaron: Yes.
Aaron: Okay, that's reasonable.
Tom: But hopefully not specifically episode because then we may have to hold it back.
Tom: But I will preface everything I say about Devil May Cry because judging by the notes, it could be misinterpreted by saying that I thought Devil May Cry was very, very good and one of the best beaten ups I have played.
Tom: And certainly a huge return to form after the second game.
Tom: But to me, the first in the series remains by far the best.
Tom: And you could argue, I think quite easily, that the mechanics in are a lot deeper.
Tom: They're certainly with the style switching much more depth to them in that there's more ways to play.
Tom: Dodge works in a much more dynamic and fun way now, similar to basically all modern beat-em-ups.
Tom: Was Devil May Cry the first that had such a free-flowing and easy-to-use dodge mechanic?
Aaron: I'm not too sure about that, because I think Ninja Gaiden came out before it, and it did have like a proper role.
Tom: Okay, yeah, if Ninja Gaiden was before it, then that would definitely be the one.
Aaron: Yeah, but then Devil May Cry came in and kind of refined that again.
Tom: Yep, from what I remember of Ninja Gaiden, the dodge, the animation was a lot longer than in
Tom: So in you can basically instantly go back into combat, whereas in Ninja Gaiden, you had to really think about your timing beyond just avoiding the enemy's attack.
Tom: And you also moved a further distance, from what I can recall as well.
Aaron: So what you're saying is Ninja Gaiden is the Dark Souls of Beat-em-ups?
Tom: Yes.
Tom: I think that's what most people say, but why Dark Souls isn't the Ninja Gaiden of Action RPGs, I don't know.
Aaron: That's more like it.
Tom: But so the style switching adds a huge amount of depth to it, from the dodging to the one which basically gives you an extra attack button as well as your standard attacks.
Tom: The one problem with it is, and apparently this is solved by mods on PC and later games in the series, you can't use them all at once.
Tom: So it feels more limited than it should, and you can't take full advantage of the added depth because later game, later beat em ups essentially have all the stuff you get from the style switching in Devil May Cry but allow you to do it all at once without having to switch between the styles at the statues or at the beginning and end of levels.
Aaron: She'd probably say as well that they just announced the switch port of Devil May Cry is going to have style switching.
Tom: Yes, they did.
Aaron: And it's going to have like you can use most weapons, they're all weapons instead of just two each.
Aaron: I think it announce that too.
Tom: That'll be another massive improvement.
Aaron: And there's a third announcement waiting.
Aaron: You know, they haven't announced it yet, obviously, but it's coming, you know, and it's got maybe a week or two and who knows what that's going to be.
Tom: So what else can they add?
Aaron: That's what I secondize it.
Tom: What the like a like a boss rush or something like a bonus character Bayonetta.
Aaron: You can play it here.
Aaron: You can play as Lady, maybe like in Devil May Cry
Aaron: Spoilers.
Aaron: Special Edition.
Tom: Possibly.
Aaron: Maybe.
Aaron: Well, who knows?
Tom: Is Lady the Bazooka chick?
Aaron: Yes.
Tom: Forgotten the name.
Tom: Yep.
Tom: You got the bazooka at least in this.
Tom: Yeah.
Aaron: Catalina.
Aaron: That's a weird, weird, weird weapon.
Tom: But it was quite effective against the fucking dolphins.
Aaron: Dolphins?
Aaron: Who are the dolphins?
Aaron: Oh, from...
Tom: That's the Blobber Boss.
Aaron: Arkham's boss, yeah.
Aaron: Which everybody...
Tom: Attacks you with sperm dolphins.
Aaron: Everybody agrees that that's one of the worst bosses in the series.
Tom: I ended up liking it because it was so...
Aaron: Shit.
Tom: Mind-blowingly stupid.
Aaron: Now, try playing that in Dante most Dying mood, and then you'll be like, OK, this is a fucking train, right?
Tom: I can imagine.
Tom: But speaking on the bosses...
Tom: Actually, no, before we move on from the mechanics, I've seen a lot on the internet that people think the combat feels much better in this than in the original Devil May Cry.
Tom: To me, other than the addition of dodging, which completely changes how you can approach combat, and the extra attack is also quite useful, I didn't really think that it felt significantly different to the original Devil May Cry in terms of satisfaction and tactility.
Tom: To me, it just had significantly more depth rather than feeling a huge amount better.
Aaron: I would argue that it's like, one's the more tactile kind of, you know, you have a certain arsenal of things, and it's limited, but you can use it in flashy ways, but three's got more of like, here's a fucking metric shit ton of things you can do, so you can go crazy with it, so it is more about being flashy and being dancy, rather than like one that's meant to be like, here's the best way, you know, it's not as flashy, but it's more, it's less show-body, but it's more like restrained in a kind of way, obviously because it's, you know, it's of its age too.
Tom: Which to me I think probably ended up feeling a little more satisfying, just because you are limited, and it makes it feel more difficult, even though obviously getting a high ranking on Devil May Cry requires a lot of skill and finesse.
Tom: Due to the greater freedom it affords you, it ends up feeling less satisfying when you actually do it, or it did to me at least.
Aaron: See, I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, but like I think 's combats, you know, you know yourself and people listening to this, you should know as well, is still my favourite game of the series.
Aaron: You know, so I'm not saying that 's better than by saying this here, but I would, encounter by encounter prefer the general gameplay of over
Aaron: But again, 's just got a satisfying, every hit just kind of wallops the enemy.
Aaron: It's got a nice impact, especially when you're using Efra.
Aaron: That kind of and onwards don't have, because it's kind of just more quick and flashy, and less kind of impactful in a way.
Aaron: Maybe that's just down to like animations and sound effects at the same time.
Tom: Yep, and I was referring specifically only to the mechanics there, rather than the encounters as well, than the boss battles.
Tom: However, when it does come to the enemies and the boss battles.
Aaron: This is where it falls apart for me as well.
Aaron: More anime-based, but...
Tom: Yeah, I don't know what the fuck happened in Devil May Cry
Tom: Again, it's certainly an improvement on but in my estimation, it does not compare to the original.
Tom: There are some boss battles in it that are absolutely spectacular and tremendously enjoyable.
Tom: Like the second Virgil boss battle.
Tom: It's the second one, right?
Aaron: He has used that one.
Aaron: He has the Beowulf gauntlets and Cynic Circle and Sade Ring.
Tom: Yeah, that is like the greatest boss battles in Bayonetta and where it is like you are playing a standard D fighting game, except it's in three dimensions and it's less restricted than a fighting game.
Tom: Not that that's an issue in fighting games, but it has that same feel to it where you've got to learn every single move of your opponent, all their little shows as to what attack they're going to be using, and also have a strategy to respond to each of those, which is something that a lot of Bayonetta bosses do exceptionally well.
Tom: And this is a pretty new thing to the series, and it does it as well as the best bosses in Bayonetta here.
Tom: But, yep, but a lot of the other bosses, to me, they had interesting patterns sometimes, and were often visually quite interesting, like the boss battle against the Bat Guitar Lady, and what's the Cyclops boss battle as well was kind of funny, where you could basically blind him, and just completely fuck him up.
Tom: But to me anyway, it didn't really feel like you had to pay too much attention to learning what they were doing.
Tom: Once you kind of got a general idea of what they were meant to be doing, you could pretty easily combat them, and sometimes the freedom of what you were doing, like in the mechanics, but in the boss battle, sometimes it didn't quite work to make them interesting.
Tom: Some of them, for instance, the...
Tom: is it Cerberus, the ice boss?
Tom: To me, that was just way too easy to knock him down and then just completely destroy him in a few attacks, or completely cheese it by just standing off to the side and slowly killing him.
Tom: But both...
Tom: one of them in theory requires skill, where you just did so much damage to him with some cool combos, you knock him out, and then you can basically just kill him before he wakes up again.
Tom: In those moments where you figured out a thing like that in The Original Devil May Cry, or you figured out a strategy of cheesing a boss that was difficult, those were actually really satisfying.
Tom: Again, because you kind of had to pay more attention to what they were doing, because they were more dangerous and because the mechanics were more limited, that Greater Freedom here, to me, didn't produce as enjoyable an experience in attacking them.
Tom: Again, if you just want to play it like you were in the tutorial of a fighting game and just doing ridiculous combos, I can see that that would be an advantage.
Tom: But to me, that isn't as interesting as attempting to do something stylish while also having to deal with an enemy that is actually dangerous and that you have to figure out how to deal with.
Aaron: See, that's what I said in my review of DMCwhen I kind of said how some of the enemies in and I'll just stick to for now, they take away your ability to...
Aaron: I describe it as an expression through action, through stylish action.
Aaron: These games are for you to show off what you can do with the weapons and the combos and all the abilities and stuff.
Aaron: So when there's an enemy or a boss that restricts you and puts you into a pinhole of you have to do this very specific thing or, you know, to beat it...
Aaron: like Gigapede, you know, the big fucking millipede motherfucker...
Tom: That flies around in a circle?
Aaron: Yeah, he is like...
Aaron: I would consider him restrictive because obviously he's completely gone for sections of it, like he's in the tunnels.
Tom: Yeah, you've got a very limited time in which you can actually attack him.
Aaron: And then when you're just standing there, you're just like, yep, okay.
Aaron: And then when he's back, obviously you can jump on his back and then go to town on him, but it's a different thing than when an enemy is there and you're countering it, like Virgil, for example.
Aaron: That's a good example because he is, I would consider him one of the best design bosses in Devil May Cry history basically, because he's got like...
Tom: Absolutely.
Aaron: He's right on you at all times.
Aaron: He's completely offensive.
Aaron: You have to keep your eyes open.
Aaron: You have to keep the offensive, keep damaging him.
Aaron: And it's a one on one battle the whole time, but there's no like kind of beating around the bush, like Gigapede and like Guryun, the big fucking time horse.
Aaron: That's another kind of annoying one.
Aaron: Like, what the fuck are these bosses that are just...
Aaron: It's just him circling around.
Aaron: Running around in a circle.
Aaron: And you're like, what the hell do I do when I'm...
Aaron: I know you can like trickster dash at them and stuff like that, but you still feel like you're chasing after them rather than having an actual battle.
Tom: Yep.
Tom: They're all really passive, and you're basically the one attacking them rather than them attacking you so that you have to both defend yourself and counterattack.
Tom: Yeah.
Aaron: So that's, you know, again, like the Hellvanger, that's technically the first boss.
Aaron: It's the one you fight in Mission
Aaron: It's the big...
Aaron: It's the big fucking...
Aaron: It looks like death.
Aaron: Like it looks like the Sin Scissors from the first one.
Aaron: I consider that a lot of great boss because it attacks you.
Aaron: It flies around, but it also attacks you while it's flying around.
Aaron: So you have to keep dodging and stuff like that.
Aaron: That's an offensive boss.
Aaron: And then when it's defending, if they work away around, like around, when it's defending with its safe, like it's blocking your attacks, you have to think, how do they deal with this right now?
Tom: And I do have to mention the opening to Devil May Cry which climaxes with that battle, is just absolutely incredible.
Tom: The tutorial, literally the tutorial is one of the most, for many other action games, would be one of the most intense moments in the game as a whole, and it is the tutorial.
Tom: And it begins with an absolutely hilarious cutscene as well.
Aaron: It's just Dante annihilating his shop, his own shop, for no reason.
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: That's the same, see the first, see the first like, I'd say, seven missions, they're like perfect.
Tom: Yeah, and then it really loses momentum badly.
Tom: And, go on.
Aaron: No, I was just going to say, we'll get the level design in a minute.
Tom: Yep, I was going to say, before we move on, the boss is another example of a boss that was slightly more aggressive, not so much because the boss itself was, but just because there were two of them, is the Aarny and...
Aaron: Rudra.
Tom: Ifrit, or Rudra, yes, Aarny and Rudra boss battle, where you're fighting against two enemies at once, very reminiscent.
Tom: A lot of these bosses, you'll notice, are straight out of Souls games, like the Chariot boss in Dark Souls and the fight in Dark Souls as well, where you're against two dudes.
Tom: They're both out of Devil May Cry
Aaron: The Aarny and Rudra?
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: There's a boss battle in Dark Souls that is pretty much identical as well, where you're against two dudes with two different weapons.
Aaron: I can't remember.
Tom: I think one has an axe, and the other a spear or a sword.
Aaron: You're thinking of the first game when you fight fucking Ornstein and Smough, the big fat guy and the skinny kind of guy.
Tom: Did I get up to that in Dark Souls ?
Tom: I thought I didn't get very far into it.
Aaron: I got those.
Tom: Maybe there's a version of it in
Aaron: One of those guys is in but he's just by himself.
Tom: Well, I definitely fought two enemies at once.
Aaron: There's plenty of bosses in that game that are just like nine enemies in a room, and you're like, this is a great design game.
Tom: Just two that were straight out of three.
Tom: But in any case, whichever game it is from, Souls is clearly very inspired by Devil May Cry in general, but two bosses from three, they basically just plagiarise.
Tom: But the boss battle, Aarny and Rudra, is another example where the boss battle is much more enjoyable again, because although neither boss is particularly aggressive on its own, because there are two at once, it obviously doubles the lack of aggression resulting in minor aggression in total.
Tom: But yeah, the level design and the design of a lot of the normal fights, I have no idea what happened here, because the problem with the bosses of very passive enemies is really notched it up to
Tom: There are so many moments where you just have these fucking, a bunch of archer dudes just spitting at you from a distance that is so easy to avoid.
Tom: Or those floating dudes that just float around the level in a completely preset manner and basically offer no threat to you whatsoever and are just kind of awkward and annoying to attack and not interesting to attack.
Tom: And again, even if you do do a cool show-off combo against these things, because they're basically just standing there, it's of no interest.
Tom: It's like they took the statue games, the statue enemies from the original game, and they turned them into literal statues that rather than transforming themselves from statues into an enemy that attacked you, they just remained a statue that you just attacked at will.
Aaron: Who are the statues in the original game you're talking about?
Tom: I'm sure there were a couple, weren't there?
Aaron: No, I don't think so.
Tom: No, maybe, no, no, no.
Tom: I'm just thinking of the puppets, for instance, when they first appear, are just hanging around in the level.
Tom: And I think another enemy, one of the statues transforms into a ghost or something like that.
Aaron: The The Sin Scissors comes out of a painting.
Tom: Yeah, yeah.
Aaron: But I'm looking at the list of the enemies here and other than the Seven Hells, aka the fucking Grim Reaper looking motherfuckers, I would get rid of every single one of these other enemies.
Aaron: Like you've got the you've got the RO guys you're chatting about, the enigma, the Chessman, I fucking hate the Chessman, the Blood Goyle.
Tom: The one thing I will say for the Chessman, it doesn't apply to the fight towards the end.
Tom: In one of the bonus fights in the ridiculous maze level, you enter a very thin corridor slash room, similar to the area where you've got a few corridors and a lot of them appear.
Tom: It's like that except there's four or five times the amount and there's so many of them that even though they attack you every seconds, kind of like the doubling up of a boss, you actually have to kind of be paying attention here.
Tom: And that was super satisfying.
Tom: And you were really rewarded for being stylish.
Tom: That's the other thing, because the enemies are so passive and pathetic, your only reward for actually playing well and showing off and being stylish is in the rank you get.
Tom: Whereas in Devil May Cry if you were not doing that, you were punished by the enemies doing better against you.
Tom: Here, the only reward and positive reinforcement for it is literally just the score you get, which again removes a lot of the satisfaction, at least for me.
Aaron: Yeah, it kind of ties back to what I was saying about the Gigapeed.
Aaron: Like if you're not styling against it, you just kind of stand there.
Aaron: But in one, if you're not styling against fucking Nilo Angelo, he's coming at you with his giant broadsword and fucking taking away % of your health in one fucking hit.
Tom: Yeah.
Aaron: You know what I mean?
Tom: Exactly.
Aaron: All the enemies.
Tom: Rather than just floating off and hiding.
Aaron: And just looking at you going, oh, you can get me, couldn't you?
Aaron: And you're like, aye, this is fun.
Aaron: See, I'm thinking of the Angel motherfuckers, you know, those guys.
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: And they literally just float around and you're like, this is just not bad.
Aaron: I just don't like any of this.
Tom: Yep.
Tom: And the level design, again, the original Devil May Cry is basically a masterpiece of level design.
Tom: It is one of the most intuitive and natural feeling areas in any game ever.
Tom: It's on the level of something like the Resident Evil Mansion.
Tom: Even though it's really linear, it manages, and though later on you do sort of explore a bit on your own, but the way it pushes you through the level, it somehow makes you feel like you are exploring it yourself.
Tom: And it just rewards you with little bits of mystery and foreshadowing moments throughout it as well at the same time, and the backtracking through it, again, they change up little things about it that just makes it interesting the entire time.
Tom: And it all makes sense as you would expect an actual architectural thing to be.
Tom: And Devil May Cry was, God knows if there even was any level design in that, but is only marginally better than
Tom: A lot of it is really convoluted.
Tom: None of it makes sense as actual architecture.
Tom: And when you were backtracking, they don't really throw in particularly interesting things.
Tom: There's also hardly any foreshadowing.
Tom: And it's just that there is nothing interesting in exploring it or the illusion of exploring it.
Tom: You're just sort of going through it to get to the next fight or to solve an arbitrary puzzle.
Tom: And the visual design of it, again, is completely uninteresting compared to the original game as well.
Aaron: I would say I would agree with most parts.
Aaron: Let me just say something about DMC
Aaron: It just goes to show you how good the level design is because the only thing people can say about it that's bad is the fucking water level.
Aaron: And you can finish those two missions in about like two minutes maybe.
Aaron: But anyway, I have to disagree with you about saying like you don't really explore because remember that towards the beginning of the Tim Negru Olympic Tower, there's like certain doors that you can't go through and there's one actually covered in fire.
Tom: Let me rephrase that.
Tom: Because there was actually more exploration in this than in Devil May Cry
Tom: But for the most part, due to the convoluted nature of the levels, it's just a chore most of the time.
Tom: And secondly, the rewards for exploration are often not very interesting.
Tom: So you might find some of the orbs and secrets and so forth and the secret levels, etc.
Tom: But in the original Devil May Cry, that was worked into the natural intuitive layout of the levels.
Tom: And you would see areas that you thought there might be something up there that you can't get currently and you'd return to it and find out that you could.
Tom: Here, because the areas are designed in a much less interesting manner and more convoluted.
Tom: To me, where stuff was hidden was kind of completely obvious for the most part, with the exception of some of the secret missions, of course.
Tom: But even then, the secret missions often were really signposts compared to the original, which was probably a quality of life thing they designed.
Tom: Because on first playthrough, to begin with, I missed a huge amount of the secret missions until I was really looking for them and paying much more attention to my surroundings in the first one.
Tom: Whereas this stuff was much easier to find.
Tom: That's probably a quality of life thing, but it made exploration much less interesting.
Tom: And because the encounters themselves were often, and the enemies were uninteresting, to me anyway, exploration was then inherently less interesting and enjoyable, because one of the fun things about exploration was finding new enemies and random encounters.
Tom: And that reward is then gone from the level.
Tom: And the maze level is the best example of this, though it did give me the one fight I thought were one of the best fights.
Tom: But when I was going through the maze, I just wanted to get through the fucking thing.
Tom: And exploring it was just a complete and utter chore.
Tom: And the one other thing I'll add on the exploration as well is because of the less realistic architectural design, you're basically just going through a series of basic corridors that lead to different rooms, and sometimes the corridors are pretty big areas themselves that basically constitute an area with lots of enemies and that sort of thing.
Tom: Again, like what I was saying before, you can basically see where everything is immediately.
Tom: So even if you will see something you can't get to now, you can kind of figure out that it will be coming soon or it will take a little bit longer due to the arbitrary and basic way that the levels are constructed.
Aaron: Yeah.
Aaron: Are we still talking about number one compared to three?
Tom: Yep.
Tom: Which is perhaps unfair to Devil May Cry in and of itself, but it is a game in the series and it is held up to be on a similar sort of level as one I'm pretty sure by a lot of people anyway.
Aaron: See, the best example of that is see when you first get to the castle and you walk into the castle and obviously the door shuts behind you, you can look all around that main foyer with the fucking statue and I think there's two exact doors, like there's a red one, the blue one, and then if you look, there's a shot you can see above you and there's like a walkway that's like two stories up and you maybe look at that and go, you know, not think twice about it, turns out like four missions later, you're walking across that walkway and then you're looking down, oh, I was there, look, I've progressed, I'm in new different places in this weird castle and it's like, it's the Dark Souls thing of like, if you look at somewhere, yeah, oh, I've been there, I remember over there and then you feel like you're in this living, I think it's a living, breathing kind of world, instead of just levels of a structure, but they're not really connected at all, so it just feels like levels, instead of you're progressing in a world.
Aaron: And I think the main...
Tom: It feels like you're playing through levels of a game that doesn't have a overall architectural structure to it, yet it's shoved into a architectural structure.
Tom: So you kind of lose the advantage of perhaps tighter pacing in an individual level that you will get if you didn't have an overarching world without the benefits of having an overarching world where it feels natural and you can feel like you're progressing through the area itself.
Aaron: Like that's obviously progressing through games and accomplishment in itself.
Aaron: Like you feel I'm leveling up, I'm progressing, I've beat this game or whatever.
Aaron: But just to see that you've like quote unquote conquered like a previous section of the game, by just being there and like looking down at it.
Aaron: Like say if you're at a vantage point that you couldn't get to before and you're looking down, I walk, I was there and I've, you know, I'm past that part now.
Aaron: Yeah, and like I said, progression in itself along with, you know, the actual progression of the game itself.
Aaron: Like it's just a, it's a similar layer of just, you know, it gives it like a player a sense of like fulfillment instead of just kind of going, ah, level, you know, six beats the way you did it.
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: And there's one thing I will say.
Aaron: Every time I play Devil May Cry I think, oh, I know this game.
Aaron: And then every, every level comes up, I'm like, oh yeah, oh hell yeah, this bit.
Aaron: I love this bit.
Aaron: Like, you know, until the end of the game.
Aaron: And then Devil May Cry it starts off, the first eight levels, I'm like, hell yeah, this bit.
Aaron: I love this bit.
Aaron: And then it starts getting to the certain sections that I'm like, oh, fuck this bit.
Aaron: Like the maze bit you're talking about.
Aaron: I was like, oh, for fuck's sake.
Aaron: Like I played it, I think last year, I played it the year before.
Aaron: Replayed it, obviously.
Aaron: I was getting gear in for TMC
Aaron: And I was like, oh shit, this bit again.
Aaron: Like the maze bit.
Aaron: And then it got to the bit where you have to, you know, the big toggle switch and it switches the whole, like the level, turns the levels upside down, you know, that section.
Aaron: And I was like, this bit fucking sucks ass man.
Aaron: Cause you get lost too easily.
Aaron: And like you end up backtracking through the whole fucking level.
Aaron: And you're like, wait, why am I back at Dante's fucking crib?
Aaron: I should be in the goddamn fucking castle.
Tom: It should really be like levels long because once you get up to the, imagine this was pacing, you're going along, you get up to the second Dante fight.
Tom: Then it basically skips to, yep, sorry, Virgil.
Tom: Then it basically skips to where you're up to Blob or around there.
Tom: And just continues to the end.
Tom: Because basically the first seven or eight levels significantly better than the rest of the game until you get to the last few levels.
Aaron: I think it's, if I remember right, this is just me going off spitballing memory, it's...
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: Missions to about that just reek of ass.
Aaron: And then like everything, you know, some levels have their problems in between that and like after that and before that, but like they're okay enough so you can kind of just glide past them.
Aaron: But those specific levels are the ones that you're like, oh, backtracking, oh, new enemies that just float around and flew away from you.
Aaron: Like, oh, at least bosses are fun to play as, you know what I mean?
Aaron: Because I think it's exactly-
Tom: That would be probably a fairer summation than mine.
Aaron: So what is the mission?
Aaron: or at Dante gets his devil trigger.
Aaron: It's or and then it's Leviathan's, like, you know, obviously Leviathan.
Aaron: It's when you get back to the time they grew and then it starts getting a bit, like, sideways and it's just getting a bit convoluted.
Aaron: And you were talking about, like, what was it that you described the secret missions as in this one?
Aaron: Like, they're designed to be this more apparent to everybody, even though they're fucking secret missions, but whatever.
Tom: I said they're much more signposted.
Aaron: Signposted.
Tom: Find them so much more easy.
Aaron: Like the game itself is designed that way, so you can kind of, it's what it's supposed to be in a way, but like, maybe it's just us being fucking stupid, but there's certain missions where it's just so easy to get lost.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: Well, that's one of the weird things about it is cause they signpost things like the secret missions, much more than in the first game, but then some of the missions, you have no idea where you're meant to be going, and it's just a complete chore to navigate.
Aaron: See, that's the thing about-
Tom: And figure out what you're meant to be doing.
Aaron: I said this in the, I assume I said this in the previous podcast, but when you're backtracking in Devil May Cry as you said, it doesn't change the architecture too much, but it blocks off places that you shouldn't be going.
Aaron: Like it completely gets rid of doors, because this is a spooky mansion.
Aaron: You know what I mean?
Aaron: It blocks those places off.
Aaron: So, oh fuck, I know where to go, but it's this giant new door that I'm looking at, like opens up whole new sections of the mansion.
Aaron: And this is meant to be the backtracking parts.
Aaron: It's like, it's fantastic.
Aaron: And obviously in this game, when you backtrack, everything looks the exact same, and the same enemies, you have the same enemy encounters, so it just gets confusing.
Aaron: Like I've been here, but is this new?
Aaron: Is this like, is this old?
Aaron: I can't tell anymore.
Tom: Confusing and repetitive.
Aaron: Yes.
Tom: Boring.
Aaron: So that's my-
Tom: Trifecta.
Aaron: Yeah, me and problems with-
Tom: And part of that gone.
Aaron: We're about to be schooled by the VG press, Devil May Cry guys, because we're slagging here.
Aaron: That's just, that's the main, I've always said that's the people that asked me, I've always said that the DMC's major problems are a lot of the enemies are fucking shit.
Aaron: And the level design just tanks like towards the end.
Tom: And part of the big issue with the navigation stuff, like with how it's signposted yet gets confusing is, that's something that a lot of games, in my experience anyway, that going for this sort of middle ground between a completely unrealistic world architectural design, yet an overarching sort of area run into.
Tom: And the funniest example of it is the Uncharted series in Last of Us.
Tom: It's not as bad as in Last of Us, but it's hilarious in Uncharted.
Tom: Well, Uncharted isn't an overarching world.
Tom: A lot of levels are designed in that sort of way because they're pretty big and long.
Tom: But in Uncharted, they colour where you're meant to be going differently to what you would expect the colours to be.
Tom: Yet inexplicably, half the time, there will be areas that they haven't done that with, or because this completely ruins their colour palette in the design of the level.
Tom: Things they've coloured to look different won't look different.
Tom: So in their attempt to make things quality of life to death and signposted, you actually end up with stuff that is more confusing precisely because it does not make sense because they've tried to over explain something in an area that inherently doesn't make normal logical sense.
Tom: And I think Devil May Cry is definitely suffering from that sort of design issue.
Tom: The only game I can think of that does this sort of thing without an issue at all is Mirror's Edge.
Tom: And that is because while Mirror's Edge colours things differently where you're meant to be going, one, it aesthetically makes perfect sense and fits the minimalist general design of the level.
Tom: And two, it's actually kind of arbitrary because in Mirror's Edge, you can basically climb on anything you can logically climb on and go wherever you're physically capable of going.
Tom: So it's basically a perfectly logical and intuitive architectural design with this signposting just added on top of it in a completely arbitrary, meaningless manner.
Tom: And that's not to suggest that signposting and stuff doesn't work, but it usually does not work if you are caught in the middle ground between an intuitive logical architectural design and a contrived architectural design, which is where you find yourself in Devil May Cry and Uncharted and so forth.
Tom: Devil May Cry rather.
Aaron: Well, I'll just you wait till you get to DMC
Aaron: You think it's bad, no?
Aaron: Oh, golly, better than me.
Tom: So it's all down here until DMC?
Aaron: Yep.
Aaron: And in certain ways, like people, you know.
Tom: In DMChave they combined the different fighting styles yet?
Tom: Or just that you know in the In ?
Aaron: You can, it's the D-pad, D-pad's, you know, up's trickster, right's sword master, down is royal guard, I think, and left is gunslinger.
Aaron: And that is overwhelming when you first pick it up.
Aaron: Because you're like, oh, yeah, I got all these, I have all these abilities, but then you try and combine them all and you just kind of fall flat on your face.
Aaron: So you have to kind of take them one at a time and then learn the ins and outs again of, oh, fuck this, does that, trickster does this here.
Aaron: Swordmaster has all these weapons.
Aaron: Then you don't touch Royal Guard because nobody touches Royal Guard.
Aaron: And anybody that says that they use it or either.
Tom: They're lying.
Aaron: They're lying, but it's a fucking Royal Guard.
Aaron: See, when I finally figured it out in DMCI was like, oh my God, Royal Guard is where it's at.
Aaron: I love Royal Guard.
Aaron: Fun fact, actually, the last time I played DMCI predominantly used Royal Guard.
Aaron: I used Swordmaster for the first three levels and then switched to Royal Guard for the rest of the game.
Aaron: And that was a weird play through.
Tom: But how can I believe you when you just said everyone who says that is lying?
Tom: Or does that only apply to DMC?
Aaron: It only applies to people that are new to the game.
Tom: Okay.
Aaron: Or like, you know, if they're just the first time players, cause they'll maybe switch between, they probably just keep it on Swordmaster cause it's the easiest one.
Aaron: Cause it's got more moves for your sword.
Aaron: You know, don't you get it?
Aaron: And Gunslinger's kind of useless in and now.
Aaron: Well, you know, quote unquote useless.
Aaron: Everything has a use in these games, you know.
Aaron: You need to watch-
Tom: For instance, keeping combos going.
Aaron: Yeah, exactly.
Aaron: But anybody that says, like, my first time playthrough, I did.
Aaron: Royal Guard, no, you didn't.
Aaron: You're lying.
Aaron: Of course you didn't.
Tom: So what you're saying is when I play GMCI have to play Royal Guard just to prove you wrong.
Aaron: No, I want you to play as every single one of them.
Aaron: Like, switch between all four of them just at all times.
Aaron: Like, I never used to do that in Devil May Cry
Aaron: And then when I'm on my third playthrough of GMCI finally started doing that.
Aaron: And I felt like I become the one from The Matrix.
Aaron: I was like, oh my God, I am the king.
Aaron: It's the most satisfying thing just to be like, trickster dash, sword master, a certain sword master thing, royal guard block, like block nine attacks in the one go, switch to gunslinger, shotgun slide across the map, and then switch between three more while you're doing that.
Aaron: It's fucking crazy.
Tom: But that was immediately what I wanted to do when I discovered that there were multiple styles in three, then I found out you couldn't do that.
Aaron: Yeah, but just, you know, that's the thing of the, that's the limitation of the time,
Aaron: Pro-E PlayStation could not get.
Tom: Probably, they had to, wasn't four PlayStation or was that three?
Aaron: No, that was, three was PlayStation four was meant to be a PlayStation exclusive, and then like one of the first trailers, it was like Xbox and then everybody was like, oh, fuck.
Aaron: Because you remember Console Wars?
Tom: Yes.
Aaron: Good times.
Tom: Now we have anti-exclusivity wars on PC.
Aaron: Now we have anti-Consoles on PC, it's PC and Switch for life.
Aaron: That's not me, I'm just-
Tom: The Switch isn't a console.
Aaron: Games are fucking shit, that's what I'm saying, games are overrated.
Aaron: He says, is he-
Aaron: I say that as I'm looking at fucking my Steam page.
Aaron: I Devil May Cry I would argue-
Tom: All of these games suck.
Aaron: You know me, I love Devil May Cry
Aaron: Like I've said that, I've said it in the previous two podcasts.
Aaron: But-
Tom: You love them all except two, right?
Aaron: I don't really love four that much.
Aaron: But, it is overrated.
Tom: Four or three?
Aaron: Three, three.
Aaron: Because people forget about these problems, these little problems with the enemies that don't, like all the stuff we've talked about before.
Aaron: And then they just kind of let the gameplay and the story kind of overwrite their memories.
Aaron: Or not overwrite their memories, they probably know everything about the games at this stage.
Aaron: But they let that kind of cloud them a little bit, I think.
Aaron: Like it's the greatest game in the world.
Aaron: It's not that great if the fucking level design kind of shits itself towards the end.
Tom: And the level design, I think, they can potentially just ignore that.
Tom: But I think fundamentally, so basically all of the enemies are shit.
Tom: And so many of the bosses are.
Tom: I don't think you can just dismiss that in a beat-em-up.
Tom: Like you would with level design, if you're being a, this is all that matters, type of dickhead, where surely the enemies and bosses also matter.
Aaron: Because you can go to bloody palace mode and just fucking fight enemies if you don't care for the levels that much.
Aaron: I've done it myself.
Aaron: But then I remembered, oh, fucking the blood guiles.
Aaron: Oh, shooting them repeatedly until they turned to stone and then you have to attack them.
Aaron: It's just like, Jesus, I don't wanna fight these guys.
Aaron: It's just like, God damn it.
Aaron: Like, Devil May Cry fucking won.
Aaron: Like, if a plasma appeared, I was like, hell yeah.
Aaron: Fucking plasma.
Aaron: Wait, this guy turns into like nine different people if I don't attack them quick enough, oh shit.
Aaron: Every enemy is like, oh, you know, I love fighting this guy.
Aaron: But then every enemy in fucking, I would say every, but like, it's % of the enemies in three are like, they have.
Tom: Not this dickhead again.
Tom: Why, why am you wasting my time with this?
Aaron: They're either, there's a tiny thing I don't like about this, or there's a major flaw with this whole enemy, like the faun, or the doula hand, the fucking shield guy.
Aaron: I hate that shield guy.
Tom: That's the one that just floats around the levels, right?
Aaron: It just floats around.
Aaron: And the only way you can get hurt by him is if you jump straight into the front of him.
Tom: How is that interesting?
Tom: I don't understand.
Aaron: Like what's that meant to, this game play, this flashy game play that you're meant to fucking beat the shit out of like enemies at the same time, like doing these mad tricks.
Aaron: Like what the fuck is a floating enemy that doesn't really even attack you?
Aaron: Like Adam, you know what I mean?
Tom: Again, it's literally like just the tutorial mode.
Tom: Half the enemies are like the tutorial mode in a fighting game.
Tom: I don't get the appeal.
Aaron: What about the weapons?
Tom: I don't expect of it.
Aaron: What about the weapons?
Tom: What's that?
Aaron: The weapons.
Tom: Before the weapons, I just want to say one last thing on the fights, and that is we were mentioning the secret levels.
Tom: This was a massive flop to me.
Tom: Some of the best moments in the original Devil May Cry were the secret levels, or when you backtrack to an area, was for instance, the fight where you are against two of the cat dudes.
Tom: Was that technically a secret level that you entered, or was it just a thing you encountered when you were backtracking?
Aaron: That's a backtracking thing, because there is a secret level, I think there's two secret levels actually, to deal with the shadows.
Aaron: There's one where you have to find three hidden, quote unquote hidden ones around the mansion, and they're pretty close to one another, and then there's one, it's in the spiky conveyor belt place, when you're around where you get effort, and when you fight Griffin, you have to fight two or three at the one time, and it's fucking insane.
Aaron: But so the bit you're talking about that, is it just a backtracking area, or if it's...
Tom: The one where you're fighting several of them at once, in a really cramped area.
Aaron: If it's a spiky room, then that is a secret mission.
Aaron: But if it's a roomy fight, Nilo Angelo, that's just backtracking, or a hard mode.
Tom: Well, either way, well, I was...
Tom: It was the first playthrough, so it wouldn't have been on hard.
Tom: I don't think you can select.
Aaron: No, you can't.
Tom: Can you?
Aaron: No.
Tom: Okay, so it's the secret mission.
Tom: Secret missions like that, for instance, that fight was one of the best moments in the entire game.
Tom: That fight was not only incredibly challenging, and you had to basically figure out how you're gonna attack them in the area you were in, as well as dealing with them.
Tom: And then you add the layer of trying to get a good combo score as well.
Tom: It was just some of the best, most satisfying moments in any game I've played.
Tom: And even weird ones like the jumping to a huge height on top of the skulls, multiple enemies.
Tom: Yep, skulls.
Tom: None of the secret missions that I played anyway are in three.
Tom: Even came close to reaching those heights.
Tom: They were, half of them would just kill a bunch of enemies that was basic enemies in a fast amount of time, which you did have a couple at the very beginning of Devil May Cry, one that were like that.
Tom: But you had much more interesting ones than that.
Tom: The only one that kind of did something interesting, and I know a lot of people hate it, I think you hate it as well, that was at all doing something creative and interesting, like the original Devil May Cry was the one in the second last mission leading up to the boss fight, leading up to the blob boss fight, where you are having to climb the circular room with the moving boxes with just double jump.
Aaron: Yes, that one is torture.
Aaron: I thought you were actually going to talk about the elevator, where the elevator, if it has too much weight on it, it falls down obviously.
Tom: That one wasn't bad either.
Aaron: I thought that was an interesting one, but it's a fucking...
Tom: Super awkward.
Aaron: Super awkward.
Tom: So that's like two, neither of which really come close to the heights of the secret missions in...
Aaron: But even the secret, even the kill a certain amount of enemies ones in one, it's like the first two missions are literally kill these little baby spiders.
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: But those aren't actual enemies in the game.
Aaron: Like you don't fight them enemies.
Aaron: So it's unique to like the secret missions.
Aaron: So the secret mission has got a specific new enemy.
Aaron: And you have to figure out a way to deal with this brand new like quote unquote enemy.
Aaron: It's not really an enemy because it doesn't attack you.
Aaron: And then it's like, what other ones are there?
Aaron: There's a, you have to use the sin scissors to climb on their heads to reach the orb in the middle of the sky and stuff like that there.
Aaron: Like those are interesting.
Aaron: Cause it's not, as you said, it's not just kill this amount of guys within like seconds.
Aaron: And you're like, you know, it's kind of boring.
Aaron: And it is kind of like, like if they're all sign posted, it doesn't make them that secret, you know?
Aaron: Cause you feel like a genius for, and some of the fucking missions in one are like literally, if you activate this specific, like if you put that scepter in this here, three doors back, if you go through that three door, three doors back, that'll be a secret mission, but you're not even gonna think about going that way because this new door opened up in front of you and it's like, what the fuck?
Tom: Why would I go back there?
Aaron: Exactly, but like, you know, any guy that goes back there, secret mission, happy days.
Tom: Exactly, and by about a third or halfway through, I was often just randomly backtracking when new areas opened, just to see if I could find a secret mission.
Tom: I'm doing weird things as well.
Aaron: Hey, let's step up over two secret missions, which were just the Bloody Pals mode.
Tom: Yeah, I did like to then just decide, I'm just gonna try and get through this game as quickly as possible.
Aaron: Which even if you're not trying, it's still, it's only like two...
Aaron: Did you play Lucius mode?
Aaron: Or is it just Dante?
Tom: Yes, I did.
Aaron: What?
Tom: I did both.
Aaron: So that's just about six hours of gameplay.
Tom: Yeah, her party is shorter than Dante's.
Aaron: His is about four hours from my last play through of it, sadly, but I just know that off by heart.
Aaron: And hers was two hours, which is crazy.
Tom: So six hours of torture that you submitted yourself to.
Aaron: DMC one's not that long either, so it's six or seven hours.
Aaron: You can blast through that.
Aaron: Yeah, last time I played, I blasted through it in fucking three hours and minutes.
Aaron: And DMC three, that's like nine hours, or or some shit.
Tom: But you mentioned the weapons.
Tom: And this is an area that is certainly worthy of praise.
Tom: Compared to both, I mean, two's weapons were just atrocious.
Tom: Half of, like all your ranged weapons were basically literally the same.
Aaron: The close weapons were the same as well.
Tom: I was about to say.
Aaron: There's your normal sword.
Tom: Didn't Dante's have a slight difference?
Aaron: No, he has a sword.
Aaron: He has a big fat sword, and then he has a thin long sword.
Aaron: Yeah, that's right, yeah.
Aaron: But they all attack the same combos.
Tom: So, in two, you literally have one weapon.
Tom: In three, not only do you have, how many weapons are there in total?
Aaron: Okay, there's Rebellion, the Nun Chucks, Cerberus, Beowulf, which are the Gauntlets, and Nevan, the Guitar, and that's, what else, like Melee Combat?
Aaron: I think that might be it, or Messam something.
Aaron: Agni and Rydra, forgot Agni and Rydra.
Tom: Yep, there we go.
Tom: So, basically, the Gauntlets are pretty much the same, with the exception of your end combos.
Tom: And some of the swords are pretty similar, too, with the difference being speed and that sort of thing.
Tom: But Agni and Rydra are obviously very different.
Tom: But you then have random shit like the Guitar that is just-
Aaron: But there's only one sword.
Aaron: Like, Agni and Rydra's two swords, and they control very different over Rebellion.
Tom: And Virgil has two, though, doesn't he?
Aaron: Yeah, but he's a-
Tom: And that's all he's got.
Aaron: He's an extra character.
Aaron: He's got Rebellion and Yamato.
Aaron: Yamato and Beowulf.
Aaron: So we don't count him.
Aaron: We're counting Dante.
Aaron: We'll just say it.
Aaron: He's got a sword, gauntlets, a fucking electric guitar, two big fucking Schmittars, and a fucking pair of nunchucks.
Aaron: Like, that's an eclectic collection of fucking weapons right there.
Tom: And they're all completely different in how you use them.
Aaron: Yep, which is fantastic.
Tom: Which is just awesome, absolutely awesome.
Tom: And the electric guitar has to be one of the most ridiculous and yet perfect weapons for a beat-em-up ever.
Tom: I was terrible with it, but whenever I used it, it was just absolutely hilarious and super fun.
Aaron: That's one of those weapons where you get it and you're like, oh hell yeah, electric guitar, and then you go to use it and you're like, wait, how the fuck, wait.
Aaron: And then it takes a lot of practice, even I'm still not very good at using Nivan, to be honest.
Aaron: I think you need Swordmaster on for the Nivan.
Aaron: But even then.
Tom: So the weapon gun.
Aaron: And then there's the guns.
Aaron: You got M&M Avery, you got fucking Artemis, the laser weapon, you got Catalina Anne, the shotgun of course.
Aaron: What else, what else?
Aaron: There's another one.
Tom: You got a sniper rifle.
Aaron: Sniper rifle, yeah.
Aaron: Yeah, Catalina Anne.
Aaron: You know, again, all very different.
Tom: Yep.
Tom: Where in the original you had the pistols, the shotgun, was there anything else?
Aaron: Pistol shotgun and nightmare B, the laser weapon, which is very similar to Artemis.
Aaron: And three.
Aaron: It's, and the first one is three melee weapons, three guns.
Aaron: Well, there's-
Tom: So again, if you just combined this with exceptional bosses and, or even decent bosses, rather than just a couple of decent ones, a couple of exceptional ones and a lot of crap ones, and more than one decent enemy, the variety of weapons you have would just be amazing.
Tom: Which I'm hoping five is basically the culmination of what three and four were leading up to.
Tom: What did I play for?
Aaron: Yeah, four, that's the one thing I'll say before it's good.
Aaron: It has less weapons overall, as far as I remember, than three, but every weapon is like, what the fuck is this thing?
Aaron: And we'll get, you know.
Tom: So it's more polished.
Aaron: I would say, I would say polished, I'd just say more diverse.
Tom: Okay, so there's greater differences between.
Aaron: Every weapon's like, there's a sword, and I kinda don't wanna spoil it, but you'll get there.
Aaron: But there's like a sword, and then there's this completely different thing, and then it makes, for me, it made the combat flow kinda weird compared to like for example, cause 's got like, Nunchucks, you know how to fuckin use Nunchucks, they're kinda more close range than the Rebellion, but you can still kinda use them in like, like you can use them with Rebellion to do certain things and stuff like that there, but like some of the combos in but like odd, but I've seen, again, I've seen gameplay videos, you can see gameplay videos for every fuckin Devil May Cry where some guys just made this work and you're like, holy shit, this is insane, but you're like, I'm never gonna get that.
Tom: What about ?
Aaron: well, you know, I've said that, you know, you can read my review at gameunder.net gameunder.net to figure that out.
Aaron: 's got like a good balance of like, this thing's fuckin weird, but also I can use this, I can, even I can understand, because I'm not a top tier player and I'll know, not even fuckin close, but I say I'm better than like the average, but like there's certain weapons and like I'm like, well, and then has got the weird ones, but it's also got like, they're easy to use, well, easy enough to use and compare like, with something else.
Aaron: Like, so if you're a rebellion, the fuckin two motorbikes and stuff they got there, you know, like they're big juggernaut weapons and they're slow, but they're heavier and stuff they got.
Aaron: You know what I mean?
Aaron: That gets got more of an ease of access, like to, you know, mix and match the weapons and stuff they got.
Aaron: I was gonna say the, what about the styles in ?
Aaron: Do you think they added a lot of variety?
Aaron: Did you switch between them much?
Tom: To begin with, I mainly just used dodge because I was so happy to have a dodge in the game.
Aaron: Trickster, you mean?
Tom: Yep, Trickster, but as I progressed, probably after the first thought, third or so, I started using Swordmaster as well.
Tom: What were the other ones?
Aaron: Gunslinger.
Tom: One of them was the bullet time.
Aaron: Oh, well that's the, those are the unlockable ones.
Aaron: There's Gunslinger, the four main ones are Gunslinger, Swordmaster, Trickster and Royal Guard.
Aaron: And then you unlock Doppelganger and Quicksilver.
Tom: Yep, so I basically used Royal Guard never.
Tom: I used a reasonable amount of Swordmaster, particularly in some of the latter levels where it was very useful.
Tom: A lot of Trickster and a little bit of Quicksilver, Gunslinger and a tiny bit of the bullet time, but it seemed rather pointless in the other styles.
Aaron: The two unlockable ones are a bit gimmicky, I'd say.
Aaron: Like, you unlock them, you're like, oh, this will be interesting for a later playthrough, but not right now kind of thing.
Tom: Yep, absolutely.
Aaron: Especially when they suck the life out of your Devil Trigger.
Tom: Yep, well, that's the thing that kind of ruins it for you.
Aaron: Mm-hmm.
Tom: And makes it a bit pointless.
Tom: Though Devil Trigger was not at all as important in this than it was in the original.
Aaron: No.
Tom: But even so.
Tom: But yeah, that, like the weapons, definitely adds a layer.
Tom: And again, like I said, that's why I was really hoping I could switch between dodge and extra attack.
Aaron: Mm-hmm, on the go.
Tom: Or that would have, what's that?
Aaron: I like just on the go, like you like to just dodge and then switch and then be able to...
Tom: I would have added several extra layers of satisfaction to be able to do that sort of thing.
Aaron: Well, that's the one thing that'll fucking make four amazing for you, you know, while the rest of it falls apart around you.
Tom: Absolutely.
Aaron: Because that's the thing about, see the first half of that game with Nero, who I'm very curious how you, you know, how you feel about Nero, like Nero when you play as him.
Aaron: That's gonna be fun.
Tom: As a character or in terms of his moveset?
Aaron: Both, I'd say.
Aaron: Because he's, yeah, you'll see it.
Aaron: It gets very, I don't know, I'll say nothing, but we'll get there.
Tom: Okay, I'm looking forward to something.
Aaron: Because he, I've always said that he is like a, before DMC, Devil May Cry, was announced, the reboot, he was like the Dante, you know, everybody went like, fuck Nero, I fucking hate Nero.
Aaron: And then DMC, Devil May Cry came out and everybody was like, I wish I had Nero back.
Aaron: You know, and then obviously when came out, everybody loves Nero now, because he's actually fucking unreal in that game.
Aaron: I don't mind him in -Wheeler, of course, but he is a bit, like it felt like he's the new main character.
Aaron: Because he is, like, first half of the game, some, if he didn't know that, sorry for the spoiler.
Tom: You just ruined it for me, I don't need to play it.
Aaron: That makes it when you finally get Dante a lot more enjoyable.
Aaron: Plus, his role in that game is fucking fantastic.
Aaron: Dante's, I mean.
Tom: I'm looking forward to it.
Tom: And we'll get now to, I think, the last two aspects we haven't really talked about.
Tom: And I think probably even more controversial than our previous aspects of what we talked about is the music and the story.
Tom: Oh, hell yeah.
Tom: Both of which, to me, again, a massive improvement on two, but they pale in comparison to the original game, particularly the music, with the exception of, and you'll know the title of the song, one of the greatest and funniest cheesy, heavy metal tracks in history.
Aaron: Are you talking about the intro, like the one that plays, yeah, as Devil Never Cry, or whatever it's called?
Tom: Yeah, it is just absolutely amazing.
Tom: It fits a cheesy beat-em-up better than possibly any song in history, including anything in the first game.
Tom: It is just absolutely amazing.
Aaron: That's fantastic.
Aaron: I would disagree when you say it peels in comparison to one, because one has some fucking great soundtracks.
Aaron: It's one of my favorite soundtracks ever.
Tom: No, just that song, just that song.
Aaron: No, but DMC's soundtrack overall is like right there.
Aaron: All the songs that...
Aaron: Because there's so many songs in the soundtrack that sound exactly like Devil Never Cry.
Aaron: It's just that one guy going, I do you do, but I do don't be, that do the bamba be a bamba.
Aaron: You know what I mean?
Aaron: It's like, yeah.
Aaron: And that's all you hear in the background.
Aaron: Like when you're fighting enemies, all you hear is that guy fucking scatting, basically.
Aaron: It's amazing.
Aaron: It's like the best hype.
Aaron: He's the best hype beast ever.
Aaron: And also you can't wait.
Aaron: Now you've heard it.
Aaron: You've heard like TMC
Aaron: I'm talking with TMC
Tom: I thought you said in four, that's what the soundtrack mainly consists of.
Aaron: Four is like an extension of three soundtrack.
Aaron: People love a certain track from four, almost as much as they love like the rest of the games.
Aaron: It's called Never Something.
Tom: But other than that single song, which is amazing.
Aaron: But again, I'm talking about the whole soundtrack.
Aaron: That song is just, it's like the single for the album that sounds like that because every song in that game, being a part of the orchestral shit, sounds exactly like that song.
Tom: Yeah, but they're not as good as that song.
Aaron: They're not quite as good, but they're up there though.
Tom: But they're not good enough.
Tom: You got to hit that level to really knock it out of the park because Devil May Cry 's weird synth pop and orchestral combination is just absolutely amazing.
Tom: That's great in a non-cheesy way.
Tom: I would listen to that music when I'm not playing Devil May Cry.
Tom: Other than if I'm just randomly looking it up on YouTube, I would not listen to even the greatest track in Devil May Cry
Aaron: I play that song all the time.
Aaron: I just have it on.
Aaron: I'm like, give me that song right now because you get to the bit where later on with the clear guy singing, like the bridge and then he starts singing and then the mean gruff guy comes back in and you're like, this is what we need in life.
Aaron: That song is the song in the first trailer that was released, the one I spent about five hours buffering on the GameSpot website when I had dial up internet.
Aaron: And that's just hype, just hype the whole time.
Aaron: I was like, oh my God, this song's amazing.
Aaron: The gameplay looks amazing.
Aaron: For three, obviously, I'm still talking about it.
Aaron: Now, fuck that man, the soundtrack's on now.
Tom: I'm not saying it's bad at all.
Tom: I'm just saying Devil May Cry is just an incredible musical achievement.
Aaron: Yeah, that soundtrack's like a weird mix of like techno fucking like industrial Nine Inch Nails with weird pop shit and then just a random orchestral tint, as you said.
Aaron: And you're like, what the hell is this mix?
Aaron: But like it all weirdly just works.
Tom: Yeah.
Aaron: And there's so many songs off that soundtrack that are surely, if you hit the Jooks Box and as we say, Episode and Mission Devil May Cry.
Tom: Some track in some action games, outside of Bayonetta, which isn't on the same level at all and is much less of a weird mix of things.
Aaron: I'd say it's more of a jazz-pop kind of twinge.
Tom: But it kind of combines weird orchestral elements as well.
Tom: So it's working that into it in an interesting and similar way to Devil May Cry
Tom: But outside of potentially Bayonetta, what game is there that has had the balls to attempt to copy Devil May Cry 's soundtrack?
Tom: I can't think of any.
Aaron: I wouldn't say Devil May Cry 's soundtrack, and I wouldn't even say it sounds similar, but in the similar vein and the similar idea is Metal Gear Rise and Revengeance's soundtrack, which is just dubstep mixed with fucking...
Aaron: It's the same bop metal kind of sound that Devil May Cry soundtrack has, where it's just some guy going, yeah, yeah, ba-ba.
Aaron: And then these fucking riffs in the background, and then just dubstep playing deeper in the mix.
Aaron: And you're like, this is just amazing.
Aaron: This fits the game so perfectly.
Aaron: That's another fucking game.
Tom: This is something that is super underrated when it comes to Platinum, and clearly Clover and the Capcom dudes that are all in the same sort of thing.
Tom: The soundtracks in these games, and Devil May Cry is, in my opinion anyway, their masterpiece, all just completely bonkers and original as well.
Aaron: It makes me wonder what the fucking, like, the office space in Platinum games sounds like.
Aaron: Like, if they're all listening to music, what is it, just like five of them are playing different songs at the same time.
Aaron: And then Kamiya comes in and he goes, that's a great soundtrack, who's playing it, what is that?
Aaron: And then they go, I love this song.
Aaron: I love this song.
Aaron: Mix all that together into the one song.
Tom: He just thinks it is the one song.
Aaron: Yeah, and then they're like, oh shit, we need to make a new genre for this because he's not gonna be impressed.
Aaron: Oh my God.
Aaron: Oh my God, I think we just cracked up.
Tom: That's definitely how it works.
Aaron: Some guys playing fucking orchestra.
Aaron: Some persons playing jazz.
Tom: Somebody's just got Wagner on someone, nine inch nails.
Aaron: Someone nine inch nails just, and then he's like, yeah, yeah.
Tom: Someone Marshmallow, someone Miles Davis.
Aaron: Oh my God, somebody, he's Shazam in the song cause he's like, I love this tune.
Aaron: And then it just comes up with the fuck are you, what is this?
Tom: We've got Scatman John, clearly the greatest influence of Devil May Cry
Aaron: That's, you know, devil's never cry.
Aaron: It's just Scatman John.
Aaron: It did a full body dicky idea.
Aaron: All right, great soundtrack.
Aaron: Fuck it.
Tom: Absolutely.
Tom: So the last point we're going to get through, and again, one of the most controversial is, people seem to like the story.
Tom: Again, just let me preface this by saying the story is hilarious.
Tom: The stuff with the bazooka chick and her father is brilliant, particularly the twist towards the end, just so funny.
Tom: And him turning into the blob is just one of the weirdest and stupidest moments in games history in the best possible way.
Aaron: Arkham this like very like, used to be, I'm Arkham, turns into this fucking, he gets Alistair, you know, Sparta sword and he's like, blah ha ha ha ha.
Aaron: Like he has a complete of a character turn.
Tom: Yeah.
Aaron: And he just turns in his blob, oh, I got the power of Sparta.
Aaron: And you're like, what the fuck happened?
Tom: I just got into a blob that, it's not a blob, I just realized it's clearly a single giant testicle.
Aaron: It's Sparta's testicle.
Tom: And it's dirty with its dolphin semen.
Aaron: Because it's Sparta's testicle because he looks like Sparta and then this human can't handle the power of Sparta.
Aaron: So he turns into Sparta's testicles.
Aaron: So are we trying to say that the semen dolphins that come out of him, are they like, if they found a womb, they turn into Dante and Virgil's next brother?
Tom: I think so.
Aaron: What the hell are we talking about?
Aaron: I need to preface this because I actually quite like the story.
Tom: What you're doing there is basically killing off your sibling in that boss battle.
Aaron: This is the new fanfic?
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: I should say that I do really like the-
Tom: It's not fanfic, this is clearly canon.
Aaron: Fuck that fanfic for a second.
Aaron: I do really like the story for Devil May Cry
Aaron: I actually really like it.
Aaron: And I think it, because all the characters, there's like fucking five of them, but like again, they're all done, I think very well, apart from Arkham's like weird.
Aaron: But then again, he always had that kind of weird side to him obviously, because he turns out to be Jester.
Aaron: Not that anybody didn't see that coming, because it's like, he's so fucking blatantly him.
Aaron: You know, Dante's got his character beats and then obviously he becomes less a fucking asshole towards the end of the game.
Aaron: Lady slash Mary, she goes from this hard ass fucking, I'm just gonna shoot Dante in the fucking head, which by the way, that moment is amazing.
Aaron: She shoots him in the face and he's like, you shot me in the face.
Aaron: And then obviously she learns that not all demons are like bad and Virgil learns here, maybe I should open up to my human side a little bit.
Aaron: Like every character has like a little, you know, journey that they go on and not many fucking video games can say that, I think.
Aaron: Obviously it's all wrapped in a very anime, anime extreme over the top.
Tom: Very pulpy, to say the least.
Aaron: Yeah, very pulpy things.
Aaron: So that's where the hilarity comes from, where it's just so over the top at the same time.
Aaron: But that's what you want.
Tom: But, yep, you do.
Tom: But to me again, it can't compare to the original story, which while it isn't as deliberately funny as Devil May Cry it has some completely crazy shit in it, particularly for a game, that a lot of the best pulp in other mediums do, like the whole incest angle with the chick looking like his mother, and stuff like that.
Tom: You don't get that sort of crazy, completely unexpected yet perfect stuff in Devil May Cry
Tom: You can argue that it's more polished, but it's a more polished, less interesting, easier story to tell.
Tom: The more over the topness of the characters, I think it's easier to do as well.
Aaron: It's more polished, but less jank, especially helped that they have actual, like Capcom obviously had from like to like the worst voice actors in the world, you know, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry
Aaron: Even though Drew Combs or whatever he's called, I actually quite like him when he's not screaming that, like I should be the one to fill your dark soul of light line.
Aaron: Like when he's just Dante, like kind of speaking to the bosses and stuff and being a little smart ass, I think he's actually really good.
Aaron: And actually, I think his stinger was a weird thing to say.
Aaron: You know, when you use the stinger move, you know, the stinger moves, you dart forward and stab like straight in front of you.
Aaron: His like, yeah, is like the best, yeah, in all five of those games.
Aaron: And because the guy, what's his name?
Aaron: The guy in the three, four and five, he is unreal at being this like the smarmy, Ruben Langdon, the smarmy kind of jokester, DMCDante, like the young bratty kind of one.
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: But when he's like, I obviously like him now, because he kind of have to, but in four and five, he still has that kind of, he's an older Dante, but he's got the bratty, he's still got that bratty voice, if you know what I mean.
Aaron: Yep, definitely.
Aaron: But he doesn't have that age voice, but again, he's a better voice actor overall for carrying scenes and not being so like, hammy and stuff like that.
Aaron: So I like, 's got just better voice actors overall, can actually carry like a decent quote unquote story, but again, that comes back to like, there's less ham and cheesiness then, there's less kind of early s jank to.
Tom: I'd say there's more ham and cheese in these.
Aaron: But it's deliberate ham and cheese, you know, it's a ham and cheese sandwich.
Tom: Yeah, but that's what I'm saying.
Tom: That's an, it's easier to make a ham and cheese sandwich than it is to make a more complicated sandwich that accidentally has ham and cheese in it, yet has greater, more gourmet ingredients, such as the whole incest subplot.
Aaron: Like accidental incest subplot?
Tom: I don't think that was accidental.
Aaron: I think it was like, like, the cameo didn't realize that.
Tom: No, there's no way that was accidental.
Tom: When you take into account the general aesthetic of Devil May Cry and for instance, the, even the character designs in one compared to three, it's doing much weirder, crazy shit the entire time.
Tom: And you look at any other cameo game as well, like Bayonetta and so forth, all the games he's directing are doing weird religious and other thematic references that you don't get in Devil May Cry for instance.
Aaron: Well, that's, well, okay, it's good job you said Devil May Cry there, because foreshadowing, there's a religious side to fore.
Aaron: I just made a pun, foreshadowing.
Aaron: That's disgusting.
Tom: You did indeed.
Tom: You know, go and wash your mouth out with soap.
Tom: But again, you look at the characters, and you can say that one may be more janky, but three is definitely taking the easy option and being more generic.
Tom: You've got much more basic boy band look at the time that is obvious, which two was kind of moving in that direction as well.
Tom: Again, to me, it's doing something easier better rather than doing something hard in a weird way.
Aaron: I'm just saying they should bring back Dante's tan from Devil May Cry
Aaron: He had a tan, he had a brown, he was like bronze.
Aaron: Cause it made his white hair just pop, but they kind of peeled him.
Aaron: He looks now like he was in his fucking office just playing guitar for the last six months.
Tom: They took the brown antichrist that was Dante and turned him into white antichrist, just like they did to Jesus.
Tom: Outrageous.
Tom: Outrageous.
Aaron: Devil May Cry, am I right?
Aaron: What does that even mean?
Aaron: What did I just say?
Aaron: I don't know, I say-
Tom: Devil Mayo Cry.
Aaron: Devil Ham and Cheese Cry.
Aaron: And that's it.
Tom: There's the most agey reference is Devil Mayo Cry Ham and Cheese Sandwich.
Aaron: That's the title of this podcast.
Tom: It's gotta be called Devil Mayo Cry.
Aaron: I quite like Mary slash ladies design.
Aaron: The school girl, but she's fucking got like a hundred guns on her and a bazooka and she's like armed to the teeth.
Tom: And rides a motorbike.
Aaron: And she rides a motorbike.
Aaron: And her scene when she fights the, I think it's just like the common fodder guys in a certain area of the game towards the start, she's just like fucking, and then like reloading and like doing fucking flips using one of their safes to like flip up in the air while they're reloading.
Aaron: I guess so, like obviously The Matrix was a giant inspiration with all the cutscenes in that game.
Aaron: But that one in particular.
Tom: And the music too.
Aaron: And the music too.
Aaron: But that one in particular is fantastic.
Tom: And the carriage in the sign as well.
Aaron: Yeah, the leather.
Aaron: Leather for everybody.
Aaron: What about Virgil?
Aaron: What about Virgil's design?
Tom: He was basically an edgy goth Dante.
Aaron: Yeah, boy.
Aaron: That's what you want.
Tom: He was the emo band Dante, and Dante was the boy band.
Tom: Sorry, Virgil was emo band, and Dante was a boy band.
Aaron: That's perfect.
Tom: Basically.
Aaron: That's probably exactly what they're going for as well.
Aaron: What do you think of Dante?
Aaron: Dante's voice, his new voice, and because, you know, again, two doesn't really, he says like four things in two.
Aaron: He's like, I'm gonna flip this coin, and I could be voiced by anybody.
Aaron: But compared to the guy in one, what do you think of Dante?
Aaron: And then specifically, this is my question, what do you think of Virgil's voice?
Aaron: Very curious about that.
Tom: I think the Dante here, I think worked really well in terms of voice acting.
Tom: He really nailed the just annoying teen brightness of him.
Tom: And yet when it started going into his brother issues, and that sort of stuff, he managed to just not be the same annoying dickwad, basically, which I think is pretty impressive, given the material he was working with.
Tom: And Virgil, I think, was a pretty good, arrogant dickhead throughout.
Aaron: I agree with the Dante.
Aaron: He's got a nice variety and like, he's got a nice, not just like a bratty guy saying these sad lines.
Aaron: It's like you can tell this character's kinda going through the, make his change as the story progresses.
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: And Virgil's voice is, I think, he's got a nasally, high-pitched voice, but weirdly enough it works for that character.
Aaron: I don't know why.
Tom: That's cause he's an emo, so.
Aaron: No, but it's so odd.
Aaron: Like apparently he, Daniel Southworth or whatever he's called, he's a Power Ranger, fun fact.
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: Oh, so is Dante's voice actor.
Aaron: He and Nero's voice actor coming up, they're all Power Rangers.
Aaron: He had a cold when he was filming, or when he was recording Virgil's voice, fun fact.
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: So in, when he's in four special edition, like the later one they made in when they re-recorded Lines, it didn't quite sound the same, but he sounds.
Tom: I think the nasalliness works, cause he's meant to be kind of an upper class, arrogant, pretentious dick.
Aaron: Looking down at Dante.
Tom: Oh yes, I just read the NIR.
Aaron: I am not going to this party, Dante.
Tom: It works perfectly.
Aaron: That's too, even that was too deep for him.
Aaron: He's a really high voice.
Aaron: Yeah, those two guys as well, they did all the mocap work for the cutscenes.
Aaron: Most of the mocap work in a way, like the design of like the fight cutscenes you see in between, obviously, those voice actors did all that shit.
Tom: So they basically did everything.
Tom: They designed the game and the music.
Aaron: They lived that fucking, they lived those characters, is what I'm trying to say.
Aaron: Which is unreal.
Tom: It was a passion project for them.
Aaron: It's because Ruben Lagden, he lived at the time, I don't know if he lives anymore, he lived in Japan at the time and that's how he got the job.
Aaron: So he was there, you know, pre-vis and all the stuff, like getting the characters, like traits and walks down and stuff like that.
Aaron: Like he was there, he was the one that designed, I'm not sure if he designed it obviously, but he was the one that carried it all out when it came to like recording the motion capture and obviously recording the voice lines because there's a couple of special features when you complete the game, like in the bonus movie section, you can actually watch the making of a few of those cut scenes and it's actually really cool if you like that kind of shit.
Tom: I'll link me that after the show for sure.
Aaron: Why not link it now and you get your live reaction?
Aaron: It's just you going, oh, okay, this is okay.
Tom: We'll turn it into a reaction podcast.
Aaron: That's how you get clicks, man.
Aaron: The next podcast, it should be just us recording while you play the MC
Aaron: And you're like, who's this fucking brat?
Aaron: Who's this guy with, he looks like Dante, but they don't explain why.
Aaron: It's not really spoilers, is it?
Aaron: That kind of spoilers.
Tom: Probably spoilers.
Aaron: Yeah, fuck it.
Aaron: You'll forget that, man, because you won't play the game for like another six months.
Tom: That's true.
Tom: And then it'll take me six months to play as well.
Aaron: Yeah, true.
Aaron: Because you'll be like, fuck it.
Tom: The reason three took so long, was partially the fucking trawl that was the middle final section of the game.
Tom: Because I blazed through like the first seven levels and then slowed down slightly until, like you said, about the th or th level mark.
Tom: Then it was just a massive slog to get through to the last few levels.
Tom: And that took up the majority of the time that I was playing, not the actual playing of the game, but the time period in which I was playing it was getting through that fucking slog first.
Aaron: I can remember talking to you and saying, I had to look it up, I had to look it up because I didn't know if I heard it.
Aaron: I was like, right, as soon as you get the list mission, it's all, you know, sort of smooth sailing from then.
Aaron: You know, so I was like, just batter on until you get to there and then that'll hopefully, everything will hopefully get better for you.
Aaron: And then I remember you slowly doing that then.
Tom: As I was playing the game, I kept mentioning to you stuff that I thought was going to happen that will be awesome.
Tom: And you having to break the bad news to me that though there were moments that appeared to suggest this cool moment would occur, that it wasn't going to occur.
Aaron: Hey, what can you do?
Aaron: What would you rate Devil May Cry Dante's Awakening?
Tom: I would probably give it a, it's hard to score because unfortunately I gave Uncharted an out of at some point.
Aaron: So I'll tell you prayers.
Tom: So I now feel like anything that is good, I need to give at least an even.
Tom: If I hadn't given Uncharted an out of I wouldn't probably give them an out of
Aaron: But when was that?
Tom: That was a long time ago.
Aaron: So that's defunct, throw it in the trash.
Aaron: Your now is not your then.
Tom: Okay, excellent.
Tom: Then I would probably give it a out of or a out of
Aaron: That's good, that's a pretty damn good score.
Tom: I'm gonna go with a out of
Aaron: Because I would give it about a or an
Aaron: And I love that game.
Aaron: And that's just me being real.
Aaron: Like that's just me going like, I'd say okay, I'll lean towards
Tom: So you're an and I'm a
Aaron: Yeah, so on the first time, I asked you your first time playing, so I think it's a pretty fucking damn good score.
Tom: Yep, some of my favorite games ever, I've given s, so.
Tom: I actually use the scale.
Tom: So that's the thing to remember, except when I rated Uncharted apparently.
Aaron: That was, again, that was a weird scale you were using back then, some last day.
Aaron: That's the to that's what you were using.
Tom: I think it was the to scale.
Aaron: So it's basically shut down, here's what you're saying.
Tom: Perhaps, you're right side.
Aaron: I've got, again.
Tom: Uncharted is all right, it's the best one in the series.
Aaron: That's not a fucking high bar, is it?
Tom: Yeah, but it's the one enjoyable one, I would say.
Aaron: As I said with Devil May Cry I've got a lot of nostalgia for, specifically and
Aaron: I remember, I didn't actually know it was out, but obviously I was hyped for it and stuff.
Aaron: I was watching, again, those dial-up trailers on GameSpot and stuff like that.
Aaron: And then one day, I was up in a game store in a town near me, obviously it went around when it came out, and it was on the shelf.
Aaron: And I was like, what the fuck, is this out?
Aaron: And then I was like, parents, help me buy this motherfucker.
Aaron: And then surprisingly they did, because they wouldn't usually do that sort of thing.
Aaron: They'd make me kind of save up for it and stuff.
Aaron: I got off, obviously I was, when's this, when did it come out, ?
Aaron: So I was
Aaron: And then I took that shit.
Tom: They'd seen the Etrailer as well.
Aaron: They probably saw the fact that I was bosing for it.
Aaron: I was like, look at that shit, look at that shit.
Aaron: He can fucking jump on enemies and surf them.
Aaron: That's crazy.
Aaron: Got that shit home, played the first mission and was like, oh my God, this gameplay is fucking phenomenal.
Aaron: Like just the feel of it was light years.
Aaron: But again, I was around the time I still liked
Aaron: I didn't know any better.
Aaron: But even then I was like, holy shit, this is so much better than fucking already.
Aaron: Like this is insane and I got so many good memories from just the first time playing that game, getting to like the strip club, being able to spin around the pole.
Aaron: First time you get Agni and Roger, the first time you get the nun chicks.
Aaron: Obviously that's like third mission in the game.
Aaron: Like a lot of nostalgia for that game.
Aaron: But again, I'm trying not to let that cloud my vision by me objectively going.
Aaron: Some of these missions are fucking awful.
Aaron: A lot of them, these are fucking awful.
Aaron: And I mix it like every time I go to replay it, I'm like, ugh, stop it.
Aaron: So I can like, us talking about this is making me want to play one again, more than anything.
Tom: Yeah.
Aaron: Cause it's just, cause I can know I could bang it out in another three hours.
Aaron: I can start it now and be done.
Aaron: You know, I'll be done a fucking quarter to five in the morning, but it'd be.
Tom: If you started when we were recording, you would have been halfway through.
Aaron: If I was doing it in normal mode, I could, I would be more than halfway through, I'd say.
Aaron: Cause.
Tom: So you should have done that.
Tom: We could have been doing a Devil May Cry reaction podcast.
Aaron: No, it would just be me, it would be a waste of time cause it would be me going, look at this bet, this bet's unreal.
Aaron: Look at this bet, that bet's great.
Aaron: I love this bet.
Aaron: It's like, oh, does he like this bet?
Aaron: Yeah.
Aaron: You know, I'll just say, I'll save you, I'll save you a fucking three hour play through.
Aaron: That game's unreal.
Tom: Summarised.
Aaron: Anybody.
Tom: The entirety of your long play there.
Aaron: Yeah.
Aaron: What a great game.
Aaron: Every time I think about writing an article about the MC one, I'm like, that would just be fucking words of me basically jerking that game off.
Aaron: And I could just-
Tom: Do it.
Tom: I would read it.
Aaron: And I know, but I'm like, cause there's none, it wouldn't even be words, cause you would need more than words to say every single thing in that game is good.
Aaron: That's insane.
Aaron: So I need to make just an article about the weird things that are good, like the things that you don't really know about.
Aaron: Like the fact that you can one shot sin scissors and stuff like that.
Aaron: How to deal with certain enemies in certain ways and stuff like that.
Tom: Speaking of weird thing, one creative, somewhat creative level, bonus missions was not really that fun.
Tom: It was at least creative.
Tom: So I'll give it some credit.
Tom: One of the secret missions in Devil May Cry your surfing reference reminded me the mission where you have to surf enemies around the area where there's basically two sections of stone floating in the middle of nowhere.
Tom: That secret mission I found pretty funny and somewhat creative like the climbing mission as well.
Aaron: I don't even remember that mission at all.
Tom: Okay, basically you have to attack the first enemy, surf it up a couple of steps, then I think you have to switch to another enemy and surf that around to the end in basically a mini race of surfing.
Aaron: Oh, that sounds tough.
Aaron: Did you finish it?
Tom: Yes, I did.
Tom: It took me probably more attempts than the climbing one did.
Tom: I didn't actually find the climbing one that difficult, weirdly.
Aaron: Maybe that's why it took you so fucking long to finish the game.
Aaron: You're doing that fucking mission.
Aaron: That sounds like a train wreck.
Aaron: That's one of those, like, I think, like I did with one when I played three, I played it with a walkthrough dude.
Aaron: Let's do these secret missions I have never done.
Aaron: You know, I don't really give a shit about it.
Aaron: You know, people go like, why is he using a walkthrough?
Aaron: I was like, sir, it's my, like, th time playing this fucking game I can do what I want.
Tom: Yeah.
Aaron: So I was like, let me find these missions I've never, I've never done.
Aaron: And then, I play, like, I play, there's so many wee ones like that.
Aaron: I like, I can't even remember that one, but there's so many missions.
Aaron: I was like, you know what, fuck this mission.
Aaron: That's mission.
Aaron: Because it was actually my first time playing it on the Steam version too, so like, some of those, probably most of those secret missions, they're a lot easier if you have a fully upgraded character and if you have certain weapons.
Tom: Yeah, particularly some of the ones that used guns, you really needed a reasonable gun and to be using gun slinger or, I think quicksmith affected your attack speed, right?
Tom: Yep.
Tom: So you pretty much needed to be specialized in some areas to do many of them.
Tom: Something about a secret mission, I believe you were gonna say.
Aaron: Yeah.
Aaron: There's the mission, there's a couple missions where you can't touch the ground or like, we'll just use the one you were talking about, the cube one, for example, they have to climb the cubes, the moving cubes.
Aaron: If you have Nivan and you have Aerial Rave, which is a, you know, obviously that's an ability from the first one and not Aerial Rave, what's it called?
Aaron: Aerate, Aerate, sorry, or you can fly.
Aaron: Obviously you can do that in the first one for Alistair.
Tom: Isn't Aerate the double jump?
Aaron: Aerate, it's, no, it's the, it's like you get the wings and then you can fly, you can kind of hover.
Aaron: Nivan has that, obviously, it's an electricity weapon as well, you know, obviously Alistair was as well in the first one.
Aaron: If you can fly like that, or even if you have double jump, as you said, like I mixed the game a lot easier, but it costs like orbs to unlock the double jump for every single weapon.
Tom: Yeah, upgrading definitely seemed to take too long.
Aaron: That, because in four and five-
Tom: Given the variety of weapons you got.
Aaron: In four and five, if like the double jump's its own, it's like a character ability, it's not a weapon ability, if you know what I mean.
Aaron: So you pay money to-
Tom: Yeah, you've got to do this for every single weapon rather than-
Aaron: And three, it's a weird, like weird choice.
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: That's the fun about replaying these games, like you don't let you find little secrets.
Aaron: You find little secrets and you try like little other things that you have never tried before.
Aaron: And like you have all your new weapons from the start of the game.
Aaron: So you can try all these different weapons for missions you've already played.
Aaron: And you can try hard mode when you feel like the normal mode is too easy.
Aaron: These games are all about replaying and replaying.
Aaron: The first playthrough is obviously a great playthrough.
Aaron: It's unreal.
Aaron: And it should be the one to tell you like, I want to play this again.
Aaron: But you play a great one.
Aaron: If you replayed one, you'd be like, hell yeah, there's so much more to this game now than there ever was.
Tom: Absolutely.
Aaron: Just saying, always, even if this, well, you can give it a fucking seven.
Aaron: So that's a fucking great score.
Aaron: You know, you'll play it again sometime, I assume.
Tom: I need to play the first one first.
Tom: And then I'll see if I'm replaying three at some point.
Tom: I certainly won't be replaying two.
Tom: I can tell you that much.
Aaron: No, that's a terrible, terrible idea.
Tom: I think three, particularly on PC, with the style switching mod would be a better way for me to replay it at some point in the future.
Aaron: Or apparently the Switch version.
Aaron: Do you have a Switch, don't you?
Tom: No, I don't.
Aaron: I'm just making stuff up now.
Aaron: You have an Xbox One X, don't you?
Tom: I've got games for Xbox Live on Windows which I think is essentially the same thing.
Aaron: Yeah, it is.
Tom: But at a significantly lower price.
Aaron: I kind of hope they patch the...
Aaron: Like after like six months or something, they patch the old versions of DMCbecause no harm to Nintendo.
Aaron: I'm not fucking buying that shit for the Switch.
Aaron: Just for a fucking no pun intended, a Switch for my abilities.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: But you can mod the PC one to do that kind of thing.
Tom: I doubt they'll be patching the PSversion.
Aaron: No.
Aaron: But hey, the port of is a pretty good port, like that PSand the PC HD version.
Aaron: They're all very good ports.
Aaron: You know, and are...
Aaron: And then 's got a lot of missing artifacts, as I think I detailed in that podcast.
Tom: Yeah, that's, when you look at the video comparisons, really disappointing.
Aaron: Yeah, cause I was like, oh, I remember what looks like and then I replayed it.
Aaron: And I was like, is that a cleaner?
Aaron: And I remember, but like not in a good way.
Aaron: Like there's a lot of, a physics one's off here.
Aaron: And I looked that up and I was like, oh shit.
Aaron: Like there's so much motion blur and all.
Aaron: And I'm not a big fan of motion blur, but you need it for when Dante's devil trigger and then the first one, cause it has like a level of like, he's too quick to see a human eyes.
Aaron: But yeah, three's basically exact same as far as I remember.
Aaron: So you got the full package that I bought you eight years ago.
Tom: And thank you.
Aaron: I think it was
Aaron: There was something around then.
Tom: Probably, I think so.
Tom: It was a long time ago.
Aaron: A long fucking time ago, holy shit.
Aaron: I mean, you finally beat it.
Aaron: You finally beat my gift.
Tom: It only took me eight years.
Tom: That's less than one game every two years.
Aaron: And now because you're Steam sharing my library, you can, there's a new gift for you, Devil May Cry Special Edition, or just Devil May Cry
Tom: So I've got, there's three games left in the series now.
Tom: Isn't there four, DMC and five, right?
Aaron: Yeah, I forgot about DMC.
Tom: So I've got until to get through that.
Aaron: Yes.
Tom: And then I can start replaying.
Aaron: I'm sure, I'm sure you can bite her through them pretty quickly.
Aaron: Like three, or three, DMC, Devil May Cry.
Aaron: It's a pretty, again, it's a bite, Rob.
Tom: I think DMC, if it's anything like Enslaved, I'll get through pretty quickly because-
Aaron: It's, yeah.
Aaron: It's pretty-
Tom: What do they call it?
Tom: Is it Team Ninja, right?
Aaron: Team Ninja, yeah.
Tom: Yeah, they're very easy to just blaze through.
Tom: While they may be lacking-
Aaron: No, it's not Team Ninja, it's fucking, that's the Dead or Alive guys.
Tom: Okay, yeah.
Aaron: What the fuck was that?
Tom: That was an accidental compliment there.
Aaron: Yeah, that's a, I don't know who we're slagging.
Aaron: Ninja Theory.
Aaron: Close enough.
Tom: Close enough.
Aaron: Ninja Theory, who have gone on to make games based on ladies.
Tom: Yes.
Aaron: And ladies only.
Tom: Well, I'm pretty sure Enslaved also, you played as a lady half the time.
Tom: Probably not half, but like a third of the time.
Aaron: Heavenly Sword as well.
Tom: Yep.
Tom: Isn't Heavenly Sword entirely you as a chick?
Aaron: She looks almost identical to the girl in Enslaved.
Tom: And also, what's the latest one?
Tom: Heaven's Blade, Hellblade.
Aaron: Heaven's Hell, Senua's Sacrifice, and then there's a second one coming out.
Tom: She looks the same too, just a different hair color.
Aaron: No, she's got weird.
Aaron: She kind of looks different because she's got like bug eyes.
Aaron: But anyway, Devil May Cry, the DMC Devil May Cry, that'll be an interesting one too, just because it's so different compared to the first four, obviously, just by the fact that it's a reboot.
Aaron: And like Dante, he knows, not Dante at all, and Virgil, he knows, not Virgil.
Aaron: And there's this girl, Kat, and I'm going to be very curious.
Aaron: But again, you can, you know, you've got all these games, Curtis Aimee.
Aaron: You've got the original Devil May Cry
Aaron: You've got Devil May Cry Special Edition.
Aaron: Not much difference, you know, obviously, you know, if you're just playing Neymar and Dante, there's not much difference, is what I meant.
Tom: Yep.
Tom: And I plan to attempt to beat Devil May Cry this year at least.
Tom: I think the actual playing of the three games took me about a year and a half.
Aaron: That's pretty good.
Tom: So the issue was that I just took seven or six years to start.
Aaron: I remember when I bought you, and I was like, when are you gonna fucking play this shit?
Aaron: And then after like two, three years, I was like, I'm not even gonna ask.
Aaron: He'll do it whenever.
Tom: You just gave up.
Aaron: I was like, fuck it.
Aaron: That's a lot.
Aaron: I think it was the last gift I ever bought you.
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: Oh, I can finally buy you new gifts.
Tom: Never again.
Aaron: Never again.
Aaron: You never bought me a gift, you fucking bad.
Aaron: You never bought me a trilogy of games.
Tom: No, but I think I put you with something on Steam.
Aaron: Trilogy of my favorite games.
Aaron: Here, play this, you'll love this.
Aaron: Eight years later, I could finally grow half a beard.
Aaron: I was when I bought you those games.
Tom: And I would have been or
Aaron: And I am
Tom: And I'm
Aaron: Me, how was, how are you?
Tom: So that's basically a third of your life and nearly a third of mine.
Aaron: And Jesus, she said, oh, I don't like this.
Aaron: The last minutes of this podcast just stops having a fucking meltdown.
Aaron: Oh my God, we're sold.
Aaron: It took you so long to play that game that Devil May Cry was announced and released.
Tom: In the same period of time.
Aaron: Yeah, like Devil May Cry was released in no, I think it was eight, yeah.
Tom: I'm pretty sure you bought it for me after was out, though.
Aaron: Yes, I did, or so, or
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: And they rebooted Devil May Cry, made the special edition of and then made Devil May Cry and the time that it's taken you to complete the first three hems.
Tom: And we had the Bayonetta series.
Aaron: And the whole, well.
Tom: As well.
Aaron: The second one.
Tom: I played Bayonetta and before.
Aaron: Yeah, which is an odd decision.
Tom: Devil May Cry to
Aaron: I would have done it the other way around.
Tom: That could be logical, but I still, I don't know, I wonder which one I like more because I really need to play, replay Bayonetta for a proper comparison because it will be close between, even though Bayonetta is my favorite in the series, is my favorite in the series until I've replayed and found if I can deal with the QTEs, or that pisses me off too much.
Aaron: The QTEs are my favorite.
Aaron: It's the QTEs that can bring that all down because even though I've played that game four times since it's fucking released on PC, I love that game.
Tom: And every time you hate the QTEs.
Aaron: Oh yeah, every time I'm like, fuck.
Tom: It would be between Devil May Cry and Bayonetta for my favorite beat-em-up that I have played to completion once or twice.
Aaron: Those are two of the, those are top of the line games to have as like your favorite, so, you know, whatever.
Aaron: If it were weird if it was that, what's like that?
Aaron: What's that Ninja Gaiden, kind of ripoff game that was all green in the skyscraper?
Tom: No idea.
Aaron: What the hell was that game called?
Aaron: Ninja Gaiden type, let me Google it, type game.
Aaron: What was it called?
Tom: It's first result Dark Souls, new was the first result.
Aaron: And then no, it's not new.
Aaron: Oh my God.
Aaron: What is that game called?
Aaron: Ninja Blade, this fucking knockoff.
Aaron: I'll link it to you here.
Aaron: And that game, that's like, I'm weird if that game was your favorite.
Aaron: You know what I mean?
Aaron: I'd be like, wait, what?
Aaron: Ninja Blade?
Aaron: Not even Ninja Gaiden?
Aaron: No, man, Ninja Blade, Ninja Blade's where it's at.
Tom: Ninja Gaiden is another one I need to go back to at some point because I've only played the entirety of the demo and basically a couple or a few levels of the full game.
Aaron: Fun fact, I have never, ever played Ninja Gaiden.
Tom: Definitely give it a try.
Tom: It is, it really reminds me of, from what I remember of it anyway, Dark Souls, just with way more complexity to the combat.
Tom: But it's a similar, from what I can remember, sort of speed with, but with moments that are much faster than the Souls games.
Tom: But it has a similar sort of slow and weighty feel to it, from what I can remember.
Aaron: Yeah, and I've seen gameplay videos of Ninja Gaiden where it was just a fucking, it just looked like madness on the screen and I was like, holy shit.
Aaron: But then again, that's like watching videos for Devil May Cry and then going, mm, that doesn't look like the game for me.
Aaron: But you know, you play those games like the way you want to play them, you can play them slow and steady and kind of as normal, kind of focusing on just completing it or you could go fucking balls to the walls.
Tom: Insane.
Aaron: Yeah, that's the beauty of those games.
Tom: And I was terrible at it, so that's why it was slow.
Tom: No doubt.
Aaron: Probably.
Aaron: I'd love to actually watch you play it so I could be like, oh, this is why he doesn't like this game.
Aaron: Obviously he liked the game, but like, this is why he didn't like it that much.
Aaron: And then she like walking into the wall.
Tom: This is why he didn't continue playing it, you mean?
Aaron: Yeah.
Aaron: It's just you fucking walking into a wall or just shooting at them until they all die.
Aaron: And I'm like, are you serious?
Tom: I just, I walk into walls in every game.
Tom: So that's me in any game.
Aaron: That's how you know, that's the way to find.
Tom: That's how you find the secret missions.
Aaron: That's how you find the illusory walls in Dark Souls
Aaron: You walk into a wall and press A until it fucking opens up.
Tom: So my floor in gameplay ability is in some games actually a skill and an important skill of that.
Aaron: Yeah, you're shit at games and I think games are shit.
Aaron: I'm just shit, so it all works out.
Tom: Perfect.
Tom: So did we have anything else to say about Devil May Cry ?
Tom: I don't believe I do.
Aaron: Unless something comes up, we can maybe have a DLC podcast somewhere down the line that if you like give like Virgil a proper try and like the bloody piles and stuff like that.
Tom: Well, actually I should mention Virgil because I did actually start a replay as Virgil on the harder difficulty you unlock.
Tom: And disappointingly, the difficulty didn't really make enemies any more aggressive.
Tom: And I don't know if it's just cause I had improved as the game went on or Virgil was a little bit more powerful, but I couldn't tell any difference in the difficulty whatsoever.
Aaron: It's a bit of both because he is a wee bit more powerful.
Aaron: But that's also just a factor of you being more familiar with the combat and the enemies themselves.
Tom: And the enemies too as well.
Aaron: Yeah, exactly.
Tom: Yeah.
Tom: But that didn't really encourage me replaying the game because again, the convoluted level design and replaying the bosses, like the section, the level in the end game where you have to beat three of the bosses you've already fought and you can fight every boss again if you want.
Tom: I certainly didn't do that, but I don't think that Devil May Cry really encourages, it didn't with me anyway, an immediate repeat play through whereas when I finished Devil May Cry if I didn't have another game that I was waiting to play, I would have happily replayed that immediately.
Aaron: At the time of me first beating it, I obviously beat it again and probably a third time or a fourth time for life, I don't know, it was obviously so many years ago.
Aaron: But I can understand like this kind of climate of games just being fucking thrown at you left and right and there's no, like we can all afford games now because they're that dirt cheap these days.
Aaron: Like brand new games are like, you know, cut in half by about a month later.
Aaron: Like you're always just kind of going here, I'll go on to the next game.
Tom: And over the years we've accrued a gigantic backlog as well.
Aaron: Yeah, so I understand like not one, they jump straight back into it.
Aaron: I think it's a factor as well that they are, you know, as fucking unreal as DMC one is.
Aaron: It's short, which helps.
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: It's a short ass game, especially if you play it twice.
Aaron: You play it the first time.
Tom: It's got no sections that drag.
Aaron: Nah, it just goes, man.
Aaron: Every mission is like minutes long at most.
Aaron: The math on that is not right because that means the game will be two hours long.
Aaron: Wait, could that be like-
Tom: That's just because the cut scenes are so long.
Aaron: To be fair, that's probably what actually sped it up last time for me, because I skipped every cut scene, because I know the fucking story by now.
Aaron: But yeah, fair enough, if you didn't want to replay it.
Aaron: It's just one of those things.
Aaron: If it were worse, if you wanted to replay it too.
Tom: As I said, one, I would have been perfectly happy to replay immediately, but it's something else I was meant to play.
Tom: But three, and obviously two, did not encourage an immediate replay.
Tom: And when I was originally playing it, I was planning to play through the entire game again, as Virgil, because I was very excited to play as him.
Tom: And as I said, I started it.
Tom: But after the first couple of bosses, I was just like, do I really want to go through all of this again right now, after just playing through it once?
Tom: And no, I did not.
Aaron: I remember actively saying that you maybe shouldn't do that because you might get burnt out and then by the time DMC rolls around you, be like, ugh, let's all do this again.
Tom: Fuck this entire series.
Aaron: Yeah, pretty much.
Aaron: I replayed, obviously I just said, DMC immediately, and then immediately again.
Aaron: And I rarely do that shit.
Tom: That, from the tiny bit I play, and again, your review suggests it suffers from not so many problems as and apparently
Tom: That sounds like where it would just encourage that.
Aaron: It just goes here, play me again right now, and you're like, yes, sir.
Aaron: You got it, mister, cause I can't say anything with but it's one of those things where, obviously at the end of you've got all these new weapons and stuff, but at the fucking very end of it unlocks a completely new, I can't even describe, it just unlocks something completely new, like you're like, oh my God, I have to replay this right now because I need to test this out on the earlier levels.
Aaron: And then you just kind of go here, fucking, let's play it again, they fuck.
Aaron: You'll get what I mean when you play it eventually.
Tom: I'm looking forward to it in or so.
Aaron: Yep, that'll be sad, cause I really want you to play that one.
Aaron: That one's great, that one's fucking great.
Aaron: Four, not so much.
Tom: Yeah, I'm apprehensive when it comes to four.
Aaron: Which might make it help easier.
Aaron: Cause you might go and they're going.
Tom: Well, I mean, I was expecting two to be complete crap and that didn't help.
Aaron: No, cause it's like, it's a game that actively wants you to turn it off rather than replay.
Aaron: Like you get two missions deep, you're like, it's like, no, stop playing me.
Aaron: It's no good.
Aaron: And Devil May Cry is the best game in the series.
Aaron: Arguably.
Tom: For trying to get you to stop?
Aaron: Not just, you know, arguably, it's the best game in the series, just in general.
Aaron: It'd be a hard argument.
Tom: What?
Aaron: It's not my argument to make.
Tom: What would be the argument?
Aaron: I don't know, it's for somebody else to make.
Aaron: It's not me, but it is an argument.
Tom: It's for a master debater to make.
Aaron: That's someone that really can debate about anything.
Aaron: I would argue, here's the best thing about that I said-
Tom: You need to be a great devil's advocate to make that.
Aaron: Ah, there we are.
Aaron: God damn it.
Aaron: I would say I said this in the last podcast, it was the paving stone for because a lot of the little moves got turned into, from got turned into like Trickster and Gunslinger and Swordmaster.
Aaron: Obviously, you know.
Tom: That is true.
Aaron: Obviously, expanded upon greatly.
Aaron: has the dodge button, which kinda Ben Rana ran away with, like a dedicated dodge button.
Aaron: It's got great hair physics.
Aaron: Dante's got a pretty sweet coat in it.
Tom: Not to mention his diesel outfit.
Aaron: His diesel outfit, oh my God.
Aaron: What the bet, the tie in that no one asked for.
Aaron: Devil May Cry and diesel.
Tom: That everyone wanted, even though they didn't know it.
Aaron: Yeah, and that's it.
Aaron: That's all that's good about that game.
Aaron: The soundtrack's okay too.
Aaron: It's like a out of
Aaron: The game itself's out of
Tom: I give it a out of
Aaron: The game or the soundtrack?
Tom: No, the soundtrack.
Aaron: Oh, thank God, I was like, oh shit, he's lost.
Tom: I think we scored that on the podcast, but I can't remember what I got.
Aaron: I think you give it a
Tom: Okay, well it is Devil May Cry so that may be why.
Aaron: You know, in the Devil May Cry obviously it gives it a
Tom: Yes.
Aaron: And then obviously s were finally hit.
Tom: Devil May Cry gets a for the
Tom: Yes.
Tom: A there as well for some reason, because it is Game in the Devil May Cry series.
Aaron: Exactly.
Tom: So it makes perfect sense.
Aaron: And then Devil May Cry is finally average.
Aaron: And DMC doesn't-
Tom: It's all uphill from
Aaron: Yeah, slow increments.
Tom: I can't wait for Devil May Cry when they return to the same quality.
Aaron: It's just that, like, you know, the Resident Evil remakes they're doing.
Aaron: It's just a Resident Evil remake of the first one.
Aaron: So you're like, oh my God, yeah, out of again, happy days.
Aaron: Yeah, is pretty fucking good.
Aaron: To summarize, it's got its problems, but it's damn good.
Tom: That's why it gets a out of and an out of
Aaron: I can't wait for the VG press guys to be like, what are you talking about, Devil May Cry is a masterpiece.
Aaron: And you're like, well, for its time, it was.
Tom: Yep.
Tom: And that's the other thing.
Tom: I think if you play this before, for instance, a Bayonetta that does a lot of the dynamic stuff that they really implemented well here and were sort of flirting within too well, it would be a very different experience.
Tom: I think.
Aaron: I think it's just one of those things where.
Tom: Much more mind blowing.
Aaron: I think but you need to kind of put yourself in the like the brain, you have to kind of think this game is from this era.
Aaron: So you have to.
Aaron: It's like watching Sadistic Game or watching like fucking High Noon or something.
Aaron: You can't go.
Aaron: This isn't like films now, so I'm going to say this is shit.
Aaron: You know, you have to kind of go.
Aaron: This is a s film or this is a game.
Aaron: So it's it'll feel like this and this could because it's around this time and this is what it did for this genre.
Tom: But I think the difference is you can have something that is inventing a technique and not doing that technique particularly well, as is the case in Devil May Cry for instance.
Tom: Not that the technique itself is being badly done, but the stuff around it is badly done.
Tom: And that be different to a film that is from the era and is doing everything else exceptionally well.
Tom: A better comparison would be that simply it was limited by the technology, as you said originally, would be I think the only argument in defense of it at the time.
Tom: Because there's no excuse for the crappy...
Tom: That's just in regards to the style switching solely.
Tom: There's no excuse for the crap enemy design and crap level design and crap boss design.
Tom: There's no reason that you can't do that well in that era.
Aaron: Well, I just mean like for it being like...
Aaron: In terms of the gameplay and stuff like that and then you going back and being like...
Aaron: Because I remember you were saying about that, and you also said earlier obviously, but the Virgil boss battle being very similar to the boss battles and being at a one and two.
Aaron: And then I said...
Tom: As I said, it's amazing in Devil May Cry
Tom: That's one of my favorite moments.
Aaron: Three?
Tom: I'm giving that as much credit as I have in Bayonetta
Tom: And obviously it deserves even more credit for doing it first.
Aaron: Yeah, but as I'm saying, it doesn't really matter what order you've let them in, because you just need to know this one came first.
Aaron: So this is the one that laid the foundation.
Aaron: And again, just because it's old doesn't mean you can't ignore it's flaws.
Aaron: As you said, it's flaws even back then.
Aaron: But some people wouldn't even argue that these are flaws.
Aaron: Some people would say that these enemies are finally designed, like they're tuned just right now, but obviously we're not ones to agree.
Tom: That's because they like playing the tutorial of fighting games and don't realize that there's the ability to play other people or even the AI when the AI attacks you.
Aaron: Yeah, they like flying monsters that literally have a shield.
Tom: Yeah.
Aaron: Well, fun fact, one of the best enemies in has a shield.
Tom: Does it just float around?
Aaron: It flies, but it fucking comes right at you.
Aaron: That's amazing.
Aaron: It's a great boss battle.
Aaron: It's a great boss battle in my ass.
Aaron: It's a great fight.
Tom: Excellent.
Tom: So they take the idea from and actually use it.
Aaron: Again, stepping stones.
Tom: That's actually kind of a weird vibe I got from a lot of the level design in just a weird aside.
Tom: It felt kind of like stealth game design.
Tom: If you look at the areas with the floating enemies, that sort of design would make sense if your goal was to avoid the enemy rather than have to attack them where they've got a pre-designed scripted route through the level that they just blindly follow until they see you.
Tom: Except here, it's even a step below a stealth game because here, if they see you, they just continue along the same route.
Tom: The boss battle against the Bazooka chick, that reminded me of the boss battle against the rollerblading fat dude in Metal Gear Solid and also the level in Metal Gear Solid where you are against Revolver Ocelot.
Tom: Those are basically very similar designed levels with the way you move through them and the kind of non-aggressive attacking of the boss.
Tom: And again, it kind of makes sense in what is essentially a stealth game.
Tom: And it's also kind of an interesting switch around as well in Metal Gear Solid where rather than the enemy looking for you, you're kind of looking for the enemy.
Tom: But it just makes absolutely no sense in a beat-em-up to me anyway.
Aaron: I thought you were actually going to mention we should stealth and ignore enemies, the chess pieces that are like faded looking and when you go towards them, obviously they turn on or activate or come alive.
Aaron: But there's so many enemies, there's so many little chess pieces you can just be like, nah, I'm not fighting him.
Aaron: Fuck him.
Aaron: I'm just going to jump past him.
Tom: I'm just running past.
Aaron: But like, this is a game that, it's an action game, it's a stylish action game, I shouldn't feel that way.
Aaron: You know what I mean?
Aaron: I shouldn't be like, fuck this enemy.
Aaron: I could march with this guy.
Aaron: You want to go, hell yeah, let's fight this motherfucker.
Aaron: Yeah, but anyway, I think that's it.
Tom: I think it is indeed.
Aaron: Devil May Cry zero out of ten.
Aaron: Wouldn't play again.
Tom: Worst game ever.
Aaron: Worst game ever.
Tom: It's the worst Devil May Cry game since Devil May Cry that's how bad it is.
Aaron: That's pretty much how people like, they would hear all of our arguments and all, and then they'd be like, are we giving it an eight and a seven, I give it an eight, obviously.
Aaron: It's fucking insanely high.
Aaron: But all they hear is zero out of ten.
Aaron: Shit.
Aaron: Yeah, it's the worst Devil May Cry game since Devil May Cry
Tom: And that's our final word on Devil May Cry.
Aaron: That's the synopsis there.
Tom: That's what we're sticking as our quote on the front page of Game Under.
Aaron: Speaking funnily of action beta mops slash character action games and stealth sections.
Aaron: I was playing Astral Chain for the first time in like four months last night.
Aaron: And I got to a mission, mission six, I think it is, out of
Aaron: And it was like, you can't be alerted by these enemies.
Aaron: So try not to get alerted.
Aaron: And I was like, are you serious?
Aaron: In this game?
Aaron: Like this fucking game with like attacks at all times?
Aaron: Like it's the most explosive fucking anime-esque game I've ever played.
Aaron: And you're literally asking me to just sneak by people.
Aaron: And then I got caught and I got caught.
Aaron: And obviously it's a platinum game, so you get greeted with every fight.
Aaron: And because I got caught and then chose to attack the guys instead of just going back to the checkpoint and then starting again and trying to sneak through, I got a D.
Tom: So it's the worst Devil May Cry game since
Aaron: It's the worst Devil May Cry game since DMC Devil May Cry.
Tom: So even worse.
Aaron: That game's not that bad.
Aaron: People will be...
Aaron: People...
Tom: So which is worse, DMC Devil May Cry or Devil May Cry ?
Aaron: DMC Devil May Cry.
Aaron: Overall, overall, I would read it one...
Aaron: One and then a little gap, five, three, a decently sized gap, DMC Devil May Cry.
Aaron: So I'd give like a .
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: Or pushing it, really fucking pushing it.
Aaron: And then obviously two somewhere in the fucking abyss.
Aaron: That game's just got a lot of...
Aaron: It's cause of the fucking story.
Tom: Two in the next continent.
Aaron: Yeah, pretty much.
Aaron: It's cause DMC Devil May Cry's story is just aggressively shit.
Aaron: And the characters are like...
Aaron: They scream at you about like how much they're like pricks.
Aaron: And it's hard to ignore that when you're obviously playing a game.
Aaron: It's like, you know, Ninja Theory's...
Aaron: Ninja Theory?
Aaron: Team Ninja?
Aaron: What are those fucking...
Aaron: Whatever, one of them...
Aaron: Those games, a lot of games, obviously, are very story driven.
Aaron: And you know, DMC is no fucking different.
Aaron: So this isn't a game you can ignore the story for the gameplay.
Aaron: It's pretty good gameplay for a character action game cause, you know, I'm not gonna say no to a character action game, I'm gonna enjoy it.
Aaron: It's pretty simple for a Devil May Cry game, but it's still fun, flashy and fun.
Aaron: But the story just like tanks the whole goddamn thing.
Aaron: And you'll see, you'll watch it and you'll see why.
Aaron: You'll watch it, you'll fucking...
Tom: I'm looking forward to it because it looks hilarious.
Aaron: You may enjoy it, you may enjoy it.
Aaron: How like schlocky and like cosy and people are screaming at each other, fuck you back and forth.
Tom: I enjoyed the enslaved story, but that had the Gollum dude in it.
Aaron: Yeah, and that's a far cry from this story.
Tom: Okay, and I don't think that the Gollum dude is in this anyway.
Aaron: He's not.
Tom: So it wouldn't be the same.
Aaron: Enslaved has like a layer of subtlety, but DMC Devil May Cry is like a...
Aaron: It's like Lailove, but Lailove doesn't have any subtlety.
Aaron: It's so blatant about what it's trying to say.
Aaron: Obviously, because it's a John Carpenter film starring Roddy Piper.
Aaron: But this makes Lailove look like this most subtle film in the world.
Aaron: It's just insanely blatantly on the nose about consumerism.
Aaron: Because it's all about...
Aaron: It's like the Futureham episode where the slugs are making mind control schlurm.
Aaron: Have you seen that episode?
Tom: Yes, I have.
Aaron: That plot is in that game.
Aaron: Like, almost exactly.
Tom: It's the goth emo non-comedy version.
Aaron: Yeah.
Aaron: But you'll get to that eventually.
Tom: I'm looking forward to it.
Aaron: But you should definitely play that straight after.
Tom: I'm playing the series in order of what they came out.
Aaron: It all leads to another like their stuff.
Aaron: Obviously, DMC is a simpler version of everything that happens in like four.
Tom: But if four has the problems of three and is even worse, it may actually be the perfect palate cleanser.
Tom: True, yeah, that's the way I'm going to make me not want to never play a Devil May Cry game again.
Aaron: Yeah, because it will cleanse the palate, and because there's a lot of changes and stuff that are just like, it feels like its own game in many respects.
Aaron: But they do take a lot of the small, I thought, I felt like refined things from that game and put them in five, which I was like, okay, let's, okay, that's, that's useful, you know.
Tom: Five aesthetically actually looks quite similar to DMC Devil May Cry.
Aaron: Yeah, that's just a bit, this is not quite as ugly.
Tom: Yeah, but it's clearly, it's got that, yeah, it's got that look.
Tom: Especially because, which I'm pretty sure when it was first announced, a lot of people were pissed off about that.
Aaron: Actually, it's just because of how drab it kind of looked.
Aaron: But the game itself is pretty colourful, so it makes up for it.
Aaron: It doesn't have that Nero kind of looks like.
Aaron: It could be Dante from Devil May Cry, the Remake's brother.
Aaron: He looks very similar to him.
Aaron: BFI think gameplay wise, you'll really enjoy
Aaron: I think level design wise, that in the last half, it'll be, first half, you'll be like, okay, this is fine.
Aaron: And then you'll like, okay, I didn't like it enough to play it again.
Tom: So I'll blaze through the first half, then six months later, I'll finish the game.
Aaron: You'll finish Dante's half, yeah.
Aaron: It's so sad because Dante gets a fucking short stick in that game.
Aaron: It's so shit.
Aaron: But well, that's another story.
Aaron: That's another story for us.
Tom: That's another podcast.
Tom: See you in episode
Aaron: Yes, hopefully.
Tom: Okay.
Tom: So I think that pretty much wraps up our commentary on Devil May Cry the worst Devil May Cry game since Devil May Cry unless you had any closing comments.
Aaron: All I want to say is that soundtrack is banging and that's it.
Tom: I agree.
Tom: I agree.
Tom: And it is banging, but not as banging as Devil May Cry 's.
Tom: Which brings us to the end of episode of The Game Under Podcast.
Tom: Hopefully, Gargan will be able to join us for Devil May Cry as well, so that we can have the VG Press Devil May Cry drama live on air.
Aaron: It's just us two going, no, I think he might agree about though.
Tom: No, he is, I think, massive on as well.
Aaron: What the hell?
Aaron: Fanboy?
Tom: The only thing he cares about is attacking things.
Tom: Again, he claims to be good at fighting games and beat them up and learns them and all this sort of thing.
Tom: But I've known a few people who have said that and every fighting game I've played against them, I have thrashed them.
Tom: But I would not at all consider myself good at fighting games.
Tom: But the people who do consider themselves good at fighting games that I've played against and that have put in huge amounts of effort and learned all the moves and been very pretentious about it, in actually fighting them, I have discovered that they are full of shit and crap.
Tom: And again, if you are full of shit and crap, it would suggest that you would want to, again, just be fighting against enemies that don't attack you and just stand there and let you use cool moves at will.
Aaron: So I'm very curious.
Tom: My theory is that it turns out Gargan is actually shit at being marksman fighting games.
Aaron: I would love...
Aaron: I can't look at it right.
Aaron: I'm trying to...
Aaron: While you're going on that rant, there is like looking up to see if I could compare my scores and Devil May Cry to him.
Aaron: And I can't because I don't have it installed yet if they go in the actual game to find out.
Aaron: But I'm very curious now.
Aaron: What my score...
Tom: Don't you have super internet?
Tom: Surely you can just download it.
Aaron: It's pretty fucking big, is it not?
Aaron: Like it's actually, it sounds like gig...
Aaron: Nah, it's not happening.
Aaron: Plus this whole podcast, you turn into a robot if that happened.
Tom: Yeah.
Aaron: Cause I remember when I was playing it, my friends, one of my friends, he played it and he was playing it on like the human difficulty, like the easy mode.
Tom: Yep.
Aaron: And I was like, what the hell are you doing?
Aaron: Playing normal mode, and he played in the normal mode.
Aaron: And then his scores are like, like a quarter of my scores.
Aaron: And I was like, not saying that's a bad thing obviously, cause that's just, that's a normal person's scores and like, you know, this type of game.
Aaron: It's just like, I was just like, am I that much better at these games than these people?
Aaron: It makes sense though, cause these are like, these are my games.
Aaron: These are like the ones that I love the most, other than the NASCAR Rally games, of course.
Aaron: Cause I'm a big NASCAR fan, no.
Aaron: So I just wanted to know what the scores were like there.
Aaron: Just to see, so if I could, you know, in case I could rub it in.
Tom: We'll have to check this and include it in the show description.
Aaron: Cause if I can rub it in, that'd be great.
Aaron: But if his scores are higher than mine, that means he's a loser.
Aaron: You know what I mean?
Aaron: So there's no winning.
Tom: So check the scores.
Tom: And if you beat him, we'll include that in the show description.
Aaron: And if I don't bet-
Tom: If you don't, we'll just pretend, we'll edit this part of the podcast.
Aaron: No, include the whole thing.
Aaron: Just then call him out for being a fucking loser.
Tom: Fucking nerd.
Tom: All he does is either suck at Devil May Cry or play Devil May Cry.
Aaron: Or play anime games for losers.
Tom: Fucking weeaboo piece of shit.
Aaron: I agree.
Aaron: This is Lavel, no?
Tom: What was that?
Aaron: This is what?
Aaron: Not label.
Aaron: What do you call it?
Tom: Defamation.
Aaron: Defamation, yeah.
Tom: If he was Australian, he'd sue us.
Tom: Defamation is very popular amongst politicians and public figures.
Aaron: What about normal Australians like you?
Aaron: You know, quote on quote normal.
Tom: Probably not.
Tom: But he wouldn't be a normal Australian.
Tom: He'd be a weeaboo nerd piece of shit.
Aaron: I mean you, yeah, I was talking about you.
Aaron: I was about to start slacking you too.
Tom: I haven't sued anyone for defamation, so.
Aaron: No, this is the-
Tom: I haven't even been sued for defamation.
Aaron: That's surprising for you.
Tom: It is.
Aaron: Holy shit.
Tom: Very surprising.
Aaron: But I have to conclude Devil May Cry sucks ass.
Aaron: Compared to one.
Tom: Only dumb ass weeaboos defend it.
Tom: Who have no life and just spend their entire day playing fucking fighting game tutorials.
Aaron: Play bloody pals levels one to five over and over again.
Aaron: Cause he sucks.
Tom: Sucks.
Tom: Oddly pathetic.
Tom: Pathetic.