More Devil May Cry (2 and 4)
Sep. 9th, 2012 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daidoji_giseiI probably sound slightly obsessed at this point (and that would be fair), but there are contributing factors to my DMC marathon. The biggest is that as I was training a new night baker last week my sleep cycle has been completely out of whack which cascades down into a brain that has trouble focusing on serious things. So I basically gave up, collected the cut scenes from all four Devil May Cry games, and watched them all.
Devil May Cry 2 was not, IMO, very good. The story was short and the plot fairly lightweight, though to be absolutely fair you don't need a lot of plot to keep me happy if you have a well-dressed, hot-looking guy getting into swordfights (or gun battles). Alas, the villain was so, so corny and theatrical he managed to drag the whole thing down several notches. Not even the rather cool mother-daughter relationship could save it.
Devil May Cry 4 has my second-favorite story (3 is my favorite) and it's without question the prettiest of the three. Comparing DMC1 to DMC4 one really gets an idea of how far game systems have come in terms of handling images, and how much work game companies put into making them visually appealing.
And while I am on the topic of visual appeal I'll mention one of my favorite things about DMC4--Nero. That boy is smoking hot: Benten's Blessing/Dangerous Beauty on a plate with a side order of sword. He's got it, yeah baby he's got it. (That being said, if I had to choose between him and Dante to take home I'd take Dante, whose adult beauty isn't as dazzling but there's more to life than dazzle.)
Nero is also comes equipped with all kinds of interesting complications: he's an orphan in love with the daughter of the family who took him in as a child, he's an agnostic in a religious order of warriors, one of his arms has turned into a demon's claw and he's trying to hide it from everyone else. His big flaw is that he spends roughly half of the game screaming "Kyrie!", the name of his beloved, and Kyrie is as dull as proverbial dishwater.
It makes me irritated at the writers, because we are supposed to understand that his love for Kyrie is a driving force in his life, but I have absolutely no clue as to what Nero sees in her. It's as if the writers went, "Well, she's young, thin, and pretty, so what else is there to explain?" and this just doesn't cut it for me. I don't think I'm alone in this, either: when I first saw DMC4 a few years ago, the man who owned the game compared Kyrie to a sandwich in terms of engaging personalities. I think the sandwich won, but I might just be projecting here.
The overall plot is interesting, but it suffers from poor structure. I'm trying to be sympathetic on this point, as I'm pretty sure it stems from a need to have scenes were Dante (as opposed to Nero) is the playable character, but I can't help but wish they had found a better way to make this happen. That being said, some of the scenes in the meandering section of the plot are among my favorites. On the other hand, they are favorites primarily because they are weird.
One of them has Dante destroying a Hellgate by throwing spears of red light into the rock slab that makes up the gate, while a happy little flamenco-inspired tune with creepy, violent, sexually suggestive lyrics plays in the background. He ends the sequence with a dramatic pose...with a rose clenched in his teeth. Then you see that the spears have outlined a heart on the rock slab, the outer parts of the slab crumble away to display the heart more clearly, and then Dante throws the rose at the heart, causing it to break in two and fall apart. I can only conclude the writers are deliberately messing with us. (I wonder if anyone has made computer wallpaper of the rose-clenched-in-teeth pose?)
The next scene is even weirder and it's possibly my favorite in the whole game: Dante confronts Angus, the Evil Scientist Guy who has pawned away his humanity for power. Confrontations between a Noble Hero and Evil Scientist Guy frequently end up with the two of them monologuing philosophy at each other, and this is no different. Except that it is, because the confrontation is (absolutely literally) staged as the two of them alternately giving dramatic monologues at each other. Complete with handy props, changes of lighting, and confetti. I'm not making this up.
There is a reboot of the DMC series in the works titled DmC:Devil May Cry, and I am already suspecting it may not interest me. I'm trying not to make snap judgments here, but I read on the internet (ha!) that in DmC:DMC Dante isn't half-human/half-demon, he's half-angel/half-demon and for me this guts the most interesting question the DMC stories raise: What makes us human? Dante inherited the strength and fighting prowess of his demon father, but more significantly he inherited Sparda's belief that the human ability to love others is an important thing. A story that doesn't involve that concept doesn't strike me as DMCish, and one that suggests that love is something only for angels repels.
Devil May Cry 2 was not, IMO, very good. The story was short and the plot fairly lightweight, though to be absolutely fair you don't need a lot of plot to keep me happy if you have a well-dressed, hot-looking guy getting into swordfights (or gun battles). Alas, the villain was so, so corny and theatrical he managed to drag the whole thing down several notches. Not even the rather cool mother-daughter relationship could save it.
Devil May Cry 4 has my second-favorite story (3 is my favorite) and it's without question the prettiest of the three. Comparing DMC1 to DMC4 one really gets an idea of how far game systems have come in terms of handling images, and how much work game companies put into making them visually appealing.
And while I am on the topic of visual appeal I'll mention one of my favorite things about DMC4--Nero. That boy is smoking hot: Benten's Blessing/Dangerous Beauty on a plate with a side order of sword. He's got it, yeah baby he's got it. (That being said, if I had to choose between him and Dante to take home I'd take Dante, whose adult beauty isn't as dazzling but there's more to life than dazzle.)
Nero is also comes equipped with all kinds of interesting complications: he's an orphan in love with the daughter of the family who took him in as a child, he's an agnostic in a religious order of warriors, one of his arms has turned into a demon's claw and he's trying to hide it from everyone else. His big flaw is that he spends roughly half of the game screaming "Kyrie!", the name of his beloved, and Kyrie is as dull as proverbial dishwater.
It makes me irritated at the writers, because we are supposed to understand that his love for Kyrie is a driving force in his life, but I have absolutely no clue as to what Nero sees in her. It's as if the writers went, "Well, she's young, thin, and pretty, so what else is there to explain?" and this just doesn't cut it for me. I don't think I'm alone in this, either: when I first saw DMC4 a few years ago, the man who owned the game compared Kyrie to a sandwich in terms of engaging personalities. I think the sandwich won, but I might just be projecting here.
The overall plot is interesting, but it suffers from poor structure. I'm trying to be sympathetic on this point, as I'm pretty sure it stems from a need to have scenes were Dante (as opposed to Nero) is the playable character, but I can't help but wish they had found a better way to make this happen. That being said, some of the scenes in the meandering section of the plot are among my favorites. On the other hand, they are favorites primarily because they are weird.
One of them has Dante destroying a Hellgate by throwing spears of red light into the rock slab that makes up the gate, while a happy little flamenco-inspired tune with creepy, violent, sexually suggestive lyrics plays in the background. He ends the sequence with a dramatic pose...with a rose clenched in his teeth. Then you see that the spears have outlined a heart on the rock slab, the outer parts of the slab crumble away to display the heart more clearly, and then Dante throws the rose at the heart, causing it to break in two and fall apart. I can only conclude the writers are deliberately messing with us. (I wonder if anyone has made computer wallpaper of the rose-clenched-in-teeth pose?)
The next scene is even weirder and it's possibly my favorite in the whole game: Dante confronts Angus, the Evil Scientist Guy who has pawned away his humanity for power. Confrontations between a Noble Hero and Evil Scientist Guy frequently end up with the two of them monologuing philosophy at each other, and this is no different. Except that it is, because the confrontation is (absolutely literally) staged as the two of them alternately giving dramatic monologues at each other. Complete with handy props, changes of lighting, and confetti. I'm not making this up.
There is a reboot of the DMC series in the works titled DmC:Devil May Cry, and I am already suspecting it may not interest me. I'm trying not to make snap judgments here, but I read on the internet (ha!) that in DmC:DMC Dante isn't half-human/half-demon, he's half-angel/half-demon and for me this guts the most interesting question the DMC stories raise: What makes us human? Dante inherited the strength and fighting prowess of his demon father, but more significantly he inherited Sparda's belief that the human ability to love others is an important thing. A story that doesn't involve that concept doesn't strike me as DMCish, and one that suggests that love is something only for angels repels.
