The Cheap-Ass Gaming Garbage Man Reviews: DmC: Definitive Edition

I jump and boost across the torn chasm, and I land on twisted and gnarled ground. The demons are here.

The flying Patho and Harpies, all of them falling down and screaming in hellish pain as I use claws and weapons of the dark and light. I’m not done. Not by a long shot.

My sword is at the ready and I charge into a fallen demon, unleashing a fury of stabs that decimate my target, leaving nothing but black ink and absorbed souls. Now I’m done.

A Behemoth breaks through the side throwing chunks of pavement and demonic energy around, contrasting the angelic blue glow coming from the teleported witch, hovering just next to the giant.

Five times my size, the monster charges me while the witch begins casting a huge, glowing sword.

I dodge the behemoth, reflect the flying sword back at the witch using my spinning scythe, then pull into the Behemoth with my angelic claws, burying into his backside with a flurry of glaives and sword strikes.The glowing sword hits the witch’s blue shield knocking her down. A downward strike with my demon fists destroys the Behemoth.

I pull the witch over to me with my demonic claw, and with a one, two, three thrust of my sword, the witch is dispatched back to hell and I absorb the souls that brought her here.

I am Dante, a devil hunter.

A Devil May Cry. But I won’t.

Only doves cry.

DmC: Definitive Edition was developed by Ninja Theory and published by Capcom, originally coming out in back in January of 2013. A five year old game at this point. Nearly half a classic in terms of time. But does it deserve the classic moniker? Or is it a flawed game that was just re-released with upgraded textures?

Let’s find the fuck out, shall we?

I’ve played the Devil May Cry series ever since my brother bought a copy of the first one back many, many moon ago on the PS2. Many great times were had with Dante, his weapons, the fixed camera search and find. The action platformer-puzzler was popularized by Resident Evil and capitalized on by Devil May Cry, both of which included the involvement of Hideki Kamiya, who worked as a planner and director for RE 1 and 2, respectively. After the success of RE2, Hideki was in charge of Devil May Cry. His influence can be felt even in this iteration, released 13 years after the first DmC.

So it’s easy to view the franchise with a familiarity that is held for similar games of the period, such as MGS and GTA. But this time, DmC wants to be different.

DmC is going into prequel territory, a look into how Dante and his brother Virgil came into being, while trying to explain why the DmC universe is set amongst demons and angels living among humans. It will try very hard to explain it all, though did it ever need any explaining?

It’s still going to try as hard as it fucking can.

Getting high on his own supply.

DmC utilizes full motion capture, using both voice and capture actors that trace the movements, playing out the cutscenes that dominate this game. The facial animations are top-notch, another testament to facial tracking. A computer can try to imitate the mouth of people, it just looks like it was trying, and it looks fake as fuck. And though the cut scenes are hokey, by using real actors for all the characters, it's not bad on the eyes.

The story for this one… well it fucking sucks. It is as basic bitch as you can get for a tale of demons, angels, and their various spawns. It feels lazy. Side characters are introduced at the most opportune times and then as suddenly dropped. They feel and they are there merely to keep Dante going to the next objective.

It had potential. I mean a world of Demons and humans blended together sounds pretty dope, but instead of taking it to a They Live level, it just flounders in its own demon juice. Every time I thought it was going to take an interesting turn, it just kind of went the safest, most predictable direction instead. Instead of taking risks, like killing a friendly character or two, they just get to live while all the bad demons are taken out.

It’s so simple, it almost makes me wonder why they approved it. They could have gone so many directions, done so many things with this IP, yet they seemed to say, “No one will care about the story if the action is good!” Well… As good as the action might be, when half the game is fucking cutscenes, they had better be good and interesting or I’m going to talk shit about your lazy script writing.

Awarded to the writer of DmC

Here is my take on the story… Many years ago, Tom Hanks became the mayor of the city, where him and Glenn Close would fuck while watching Tom Brokaw on the news. Dante would also fucked a lot, but one day he was found and hunted by Tom Hanks.

Dante meets a thot who shoots jizz out of a spray can to teleport between worlds, just like Stormy Daniels. She takes Dante to meet Virgil, a Sephiroth cosplayer. Dante learns that Virgil is his bro and that his dick is bigger than his brother’s. Dante also learns that Tom Hanks ate Dante’s mother’s heart, so he is a lil sore about that. Dante starts wanting to fuck the thot as she sprays cum on floor and walls, teleporting Dante in between Limbo and reality.

Dante defeats the queen worm at the Slurm factory from Futurama, kills Tom Brokaw during his broadcast on News world, and meets the orc from Bright who gives him a piece of his mind, all in the same day. What an adventure.

When the thottie gets captured, Dante has to abort Tom Hanks’ baby, and then kills baby-momma Glenn Close. But they still get the thottie back. Tom Hanks exposes himself after seeing the box office returns of The Post, and destroys most of the city. Dante and Virgil finally kill Tom Hanks, ending his movie career forever. Virgil thinks he can become the next box office king, but Dante shuts that shit down quick. Dante grabs the thottie’s ass at the end, insinuating that they will have intercourse. Very, very rough and unpleasurable intercourse.

There, I just made the actual story about 23 times better.

And a side of who give a fuck.

It gives no sort of real risk in the story, something it badly needs if I’m going to care about the world and it being overtaken by demons. Shoot, the whole concept makes it seem like the world is fucked anyways, so why does Dante, or myself, even care? Answer: We really don’t.

The meat of this game is the combat. As with all Devil May Cry games, the combat is the most important and impressive aspect. DmC: Definitive Edition is no different. The use of the triggers to switch between demonic and angelic weapons is intuitive and adds many intense moments, switching between a glave, hammer, and sword all on one single foe.

The options to upgrade the weapons are, eh, scant really. Sure, giving me different button to press and pulling off sick combinations feels good in action, but does it really change the experience? Not really. It feels like I have to switch these weapons instead of wanting to switch them. It needed some more variety through the upgrades, something that at least makes the combos look as though I’ve upgraded them, ya know.

Fuck, throw me a fucking laser effect or something here.
And, for some fucking reason, they wanted to put way more platforming into this game than was necessary. It almost feels like 50% fighting, 50% platforming, and 80% cutscenes.

And we haven’t even discussed Dante’s true enemy: The fucking camera. If your going to have a game with tight combat or high-flying platforming, you better have a fucking good camera that knows how to track your character. Not how to snap all the fuck around and end up killing you because of an ill-placed movement or jump.

The soundtrack is okay. Some techno, some heavy metal by this one band, Combichrist. Their name should tell you all you need to know about this band, along with the title of their hit album “What The F**k Is Wrong With You People”. Underwhelmingly basic is the best adverb and adjective combo I could use for the music of DmC.

And by throwing the term, Definitive Edition, here, it seems like this was all they had. There is some of Virgil’s side quest shit, but I really don’t give a fuck about that asshole. At least with Dante, I care because he is tragic anti-hero.

Don't forget to check out my stupid fucking streams!

Rating: 3 out of 5. I really wanted to give it a 4, but DmC just has too many mistakes, too many letdowns, and not enough demons.

I came here to kill demons and chew bubblegum, and I’m all out of both.

The linear path that Dante follows has visual flair, but it lacks depth, it lacks purpose. Cool SSS combos are radical, sure, but what the fuck do they do for me? Nothing. Nothing but make me sit through long-ass cut scenes that think they’re so fucking clever.

They could have done something really cool with their combat system here, maybe implemented it into an open world of the city, allowing Dante and Virgil to slowly take the city from Tom Hanks and turn the staged enemy encounters into waves and waves of hundreds of demons. Maybe a take on the Koei Dynasty Warriors crossed with the GTA open-world formula might have taken this to a solid 5 with the current combat system.

As it stands, DmC: Definitive Edition is a nice addition to the franchise, but it doesn’t take it anywhere further and it doesn’t give any hope for the future. In a way, it reminds me of Legacy of Kain: Defiance: A good direction but a thoroughly circular and an over-indulgent, weak story. DmC never was the height of story-based gameplay, but at least the other games were interesting enough, or more than this one was anyways.

DmC: Definitive Edition is just a stupid story wrapped in a button-mashing, adrenaline pump. Has its highs, but the lows are way too low, man.

It has great combat, something that should be expected of the developer Ninja Theory, but it has too many flaws in story, camera, and purpose. I want to like it more, but it just won’t let me.

This was the Cheap-Ass Gaming Garbage Man. We’ll slay some more demons soon.