Devil May Cry Review

The New Dante

We are taught never to judge a book by its cover, but sadly that's what "Devil May Cry's" fanbase has been doing to the new reboot in the DMC series. You'll hear whiny fanboys complain "It's not Dante," or "This game has been ruined." To tell you the truth, I kind of felt this way too until I actually started to play the game and, well, to those who shared my old sentiment I bring this message: Shut up and sit down to play this amazing game!

Dante is back in Ninja Theory's reboot of the "Devil May Cry" franchise, and while he looks a bit different he's still the same badass we've come to know and love. This game retains all of the old "DMC" traditions while adding some new ones to the mix.

"DMC" is a new take on the series starring Dante as a demon-slaying badass who is repeatedly dragged into the world of Limbo by monsters out to kill him. He soon meets up with a medium named Kat, who is part of the Order run by Dante's long lost brother Vergil. Together, they seek revenge on the demon king Mundus for murdering their mother and banishing their father.

The storytelling here is top notch due to the fact that every cutscene is motion captured and read live. It all helps immerse you in this new retelling of Dante's origin. The dialogue, while well written at times, can be just a joke. Dante meets one of Mundus's generals and they proceeds to have a "F@ck you" competition with each other. Not exactly the best work of the year, but it does get across the point that this is a younger and more brash Dante. Still, it could have been worked on a bit more. Don't worry, there are still a lot of classic "DMC" lines so it's all good, fanboys.

Kat joins the roster of DMC women

The gameplay has been reworked a bit while still keeping the foundation the previous games have laid. Dante has access to his trusty sword Rebellion and his duel pistols Ebony and Ivory along with new weapons he'll pick up along the way. The control scheme has been reworked, so switching between demon and angel weapons is just a simple hold of the trigger and release. This adds so many layers to the combat the I felt was always lacking in the previous games.

Aerial Combat has been re-vamped 

The combat is amazing, making you feel like a total badass when you switch weapons and lay down unholy death on these demons. The style-point system is back as well and adds a bit of replayability when you're trying to go for the highest combo score out on the leaderboards. The thing with the style system is now it seems way too easy to get the coveted SSS rank that you would have to strive for in past games. In fact, it's like this for the combat in general. In the past games, I would have to moderate myself in attacking then dodging, but now I can just hack away and get praised for it. To counteract this, "DMC" has seven - yes seven - difficulties.

The visuals of the game are gorgeous. While almost greyed out in the human world, once you hit Limbo the visuals come to life. Limbo has a wide assortment of bright colors to show off the lunacy of the world. Bits of the city are torn apart as the demons continue on their quest to stop Dante. As you walk through the levels, you'll also notice the floor rotting with grime, webs and blood making you want to get out of their as soon as you can. It's something that has to be seen. Limbo is like art. Mind you, art made by the mind of a mad man.

Kickin' ass in Limbo

The bosses themselves add  to the visual aspect by being sick, twisted creatures of demon lore. Just wait until you see the succubus and try not to be disgusted.

The soundtrack reflects the visuals as well, ranging from hard-hitting tracks from the band Combichrist to electro-dubstep from the trio known as Noisia. All the tracks work well with what's happening, adding a sense of urgency and just plain badassery.




Dante may be starting over, but he sure did hit the ground running. "DMC" has instilled new life in a franchise that hasn't been seen since the launch of this generation of consoles. While this game is a bit easy, and its dialog can be a bit juvinile and lackluster, the reworks to the game make it easy to look over that fact. That's why it's easy to give "DMC" an 8/10. Clearly Ninja Theory has hit the jackpot here.

Surviving the dead: a review of ZombiU

No one seems to be interested in that sale back there.

The thick shadows press down on your field of vision. The flashlight is running out of batteries, and that means that even if you turn it on you'll only have a few seconds of bright relief before being thrown back into the inky blackness. Their heavy breathing can be heard practically all around you and the radar on your Prepper Pad is sounding off multiple targets so quickly that it is almost mimicking your heartbeat.

No more bullets, one medical pack, a candy bar and the trusty cricket bat that was given at the beginning of your long trek into the dingy London Underground. Hardly an arsenal. How much longer can you hold out against the pressing darkness and the thought of the fiends shambling towards you, invisible, before you crack and run back the way you came? Or how much longer before one of them sneaks up behind you in your moment of indecision and panic and ends it altogether?


"ZombiU" really throws you hard into the survivor role. It never lets up, never gives you a break and sure as hell never stops. All that sounds like the game is full of sprinting undead, like those of "Left 4 Dead." No, I'm talking about the speed of your heart and your thought process. The dead in Ubisoft's new game don't move that fast, but that slow gait makes for a tension that riles you up.

As you see them approach, you mentally gauge the distance between you and them, whether or not your bat can reach them or not. Are they too far away for the bat? Do you have time to switch to your gun? Do you have enough bullets in it? How good of a shot are you to put them down quickly? All of these questions run through a player's mind, all the while the zombies continue to move towards you.

Not only are items and inventory a worry when fighting the enemy, but health and damage must be monitored as well. There are really very few hits that a player can take from the zombies before they are food. Not only that, but a player can die instantaneously if the zombies are too close and grapple them.

This insta-death spawns you as another survivor who has been drawn in by the mysterious Prepper, a man who is bent on finding ways to survive the apocalypse and full of theories as to how it happened. This serves two-fold, though. The ability to lose your survivor so easily means that the attachment the player places on the character can either draw them to be reckless and take many risks or be severely cautious.

Knowing that if the survivor dies the new character can kill the previous's risen corpse and retrieve the lost loot seems to give the player a bitter-sweet taste, knowing that not all survive in these scenarios, but if you do for so long you feel extremely proud of yourself and accomplished.

It's scary when those fuzzy hat guys actually move, isn't it?

There's something to be said for a first-person perspective in a game like this. "Dead Island" had a more fast paced and open feel to it, so the player was able to take in the scope of their surroundings and plan out how they would tackle a situation. Of course, there are times when close-quarters combat happens, which is more the style of "ZombiU."

Enclosed spaces in apartments, the London Underground, a supermarket and on and on. There are very few places where the player can move back and regroup away from the oncoming hordes. Not only that, but the limited perspective heightens tension and freaks me out to no end in all honesty.

How does this compare to games like "Resident Evil?" Well the open field of vision allows for more zombies to be in the area, giving the player larger numbers to deal with. It helps that the game also gives the player much more ammo and firepower to deal with the hostile forces. "Left 4 Dead" does a similar thing, though their weapons and ammo are much more powerful and plentiful to compensate for the first-person perspective.

"ZombiU" is a solid game. With or without the story it has some very well put together mechanics, decent graphics and works well in compatibility with the Wii U gamepad. The survival gameplay is well done and many will find it enjoyable. There are some clipping issues, some confusion with how to read the radar and it did in fact freeze on me twice while playing. Sometimes the player will get lost or not know how to get to certain locations without a little help from outside sources.

All in all, the game is a 7 out of 10. An excellent launch title for the Wii U, lacking in some qualities but performing admirably when creating an environment of fear and tension. A very well-done zombie game.

Indie Spotlight: FTL

You all remember that game “Oregon Trail,” right? You get a family, you try to travel all the way across America to the promised land of Oregon, all the while trying to ration food and making sure that nobody died from dysentery. “FTL” is like that but with space pirates and giant space spiders. A Kickstarter game that was released in September of this year, I thought it would be a perfect choice for our first Indie Spotlight.

“FTL” is not a realistic looking game, nor is it a game that touts revolutionary gameplay. It has a simple idea, with simple graphics, that is absolutely fun. You pick a ship, name it and your crew then fly off to try and warn your fleet of the impending danger that is following you through the 8 space sectors in which you have to travel. Each map, randomly generated for every game that’s started, randomizes encounters available to you. Your ship might jump to a sector that is directly next to a sun and have to worry about solar flares lighting some of your cabins on fire. It might jump into a nebula that can play havoc with your sensors, making it difficult to tell if your ship is damaged during a fight. Whatever the case may be, there’s always something happening in “FTL.”

Battle encounters happen in real time, but they’re not fast twitch style fights and it’s even possible to pause everything while it’s happening. This helps since repairs may need to be made during the fight, and boarding parties might force you to rethink who is manning which station on the ship. At the end, the rewards are ammo, fuel, drone parts and scrap metal.

Scrap metal can be used to upgrade your ship. These upgrades can go into shields, getting more and more levels which make it harder for enemies to actually damage the hull integrity. Engine upgrades make it more difficult for enemies to hit you, and can even be used to evade encounters altogether or successfully navigate asteroid fields. More weapon power levels allow for more weapons to be active on a vessel during an encounter. Each system can be upgraded like this and they all have their benefits to surviving the dangerous trip.

Types of crew members help as well. Throughout the journey, it’s possible to get different species to join your crew from the various ones found throughout the sectors of space. Slugs have mental abilities that can show where enemies are on a ship and can help defuse situations with other aliens you might encounter. Engi, organic and artificial beings, are immune to certain sicknesses and might be able to help hack into artificial intelligences. There are more aliens, but you get the picture.

The reason I wanted to talk about “FTL” is because of how simply brilliant the game is. Not that it is so obviously brilliant, I mean that its simplicity makes it brilliant. It isn’t graphically intensive, its focus is not the visual but the easy to pick up and put down gameplay. “FTL” is great if you have some time to kill and you don’t want to get involved in something so deep that you’ll need half an hour to save, complete a quest and then quit. However, should you get into a groove of it, the game can capture a player for hours at a time, pushing them to try multiple playthroughs and to search for ways to unlock all of the ships available in the game.

There is enough meat to “FTL” to satisfy someone looking for a good game to play, but it also has such a light and casual feel to it that anyone looking to play a game can really turn it on and enjoy for a little while. Kudos to  Subset Games for making such a fun little game. You can get it now on Steam should you desire, so check it out. This is a great example of a little indie game that did well. Take some notes from it and try to utilize that to your advantage.