Angelo Credo
Kept you waiting, huh?
So, for quite a while now I've felt something of an overwhelming urge to review...Well, everything that comes my way, just because I'm the kind of guy that likes to make opinions known.
So here we go, I've decided to start writing up reviews for just about anything, CDs, games, movies, books, things of that nature in a hope to relieve my boredom and perhaps bring some entertainment to the lovely public within these forums.
I must say, I WILL be reviewing Devil May Cry 4 in this, and I WILL be adressing my most hated issues of this game, and I WILL be beating the game around quite a bit, just because I genuinely had a LOT of problems with it.
On a side note, I'm aware that today is infact Friday, but I shall be attempting to release these each Sunday, this is because this issue is a prewritten one, written up for the sake of another site, and I want to get a new one written as soon as possible.
My items today shall be: Devil May Cry 4 and Pendulum's latest album, In Silico, enjoy.
In Silico.
First off I’ll start with In Silico, at first I was rather annoyed that Kerrang and Scuzz were drowning me with Drum & Bass at stupid times, then something rather amazing happened to me, I began to like it, yes, me, Mr Metalhead started liking a Drum & Bass track listing, and I was almost in tears because of it.
In Silico is what you would expect from a Drum & Bass album, loud, with heavy beats and some techno elements, yes I know, techno = bad, but not in this case oddly enough, like The Prodigy, they managed to make something good out of the ocean of garbage that is techno. They honestly manage to produce a good selection of enjoyable songs that live up to the name Drum & Bass, and also manage to live up to being compared to The Prodigy.
Like I said, it really is what you would expect from a Drum & Bass album, providing you come into such things with no previous feelings towards it one way or the other, all in all, In Silico is quite a good album, but it isn’t without it’s bad points, it can get a tad repetitive, but in most cases, it has a tendency to mix things up a little, which is what most Techno/Electronica groups fail to do, rather they storm us with the same junk constantly.
Yet Pendulum avoided this fatal mistake, sure, one or two tracks may give you the feeling that it’s never changed track at all, but for the most part, the album offers up a decent selection of songs that really make you feel like Drum & Bass took a turn for the better.
Devil May Cry 4.
Devil May Cry 4 is, obviously, the fourth instalment on the Devil May Cry series of games, brought to us by the game creators, Capcom, the first Devil May Cry was released in 2001, and let me say this, that game was incredible for it’s time, yet when you go back and play it now, it really makes you thankful for sequels.
Devil May Cry’s timeline flows like this, as I'm sure many of you know, first, the events of Devil May Cry 3 occurred, then follows Devil May Cry 1, next is Devil May Cry 4, and then finally, Devil May Cry 2, so it pretty much follows the Rockstar/Capcom storyline progression, the “Because I said so.” rule of gaming.
Now, I’ve followed DMC from the very start of the series, a loyal fan was I, even through DMC2, (Note, I’ve shortened it because I really can’t be bothered to type out the full thing.) which was an honest ocean of garbage, then DMC3 made my day, and of course made my next six months of gaming, along with the final nail in my coffin of insanity, DMC1’s difficulty was somewhere between medium and head stomping insanity, DMC2 released that people weren’t into the whole “super difficulty” of gaming and decided to scale it back a notch, a notch that pretty much killed it. (Along with the horrid storyline.) And it ended up somewhere between easy and games for your mother.
DMC3 then lit the way and released people didn’t like games too easy either, but they overshot it once again, and I mean REALLY overshot it, it was in the region of head stomping insanity and games that physically reach out of the screen and pull your eyes out so you can’t see what you’re doing.
DMC4 finally hit the nail on the head with difficulty, it was perfect, not too hard, but not to easy either, all of the difficulties really were what they said on the tin, easy was easy, normal was normal, hard mode was hard, extreme was extreme, and insane really was that.
It had it all, for the casual gamers and the hardcore gamers, for your mother and for “That Guy”, “That Guy” who spends all his life playing that game because he has no social life and becomes a master.
And the combat system, that was incredible, like all DMC games, it follows a “Who can get the most stylish kill” routine, which basically involves pulling off a “Laws-Of-Physics” defying combo and then launching them into the air, holding them their with a hail of bullets, then slamming them back down into the ground.
If you don’t think that’s cool then you really need to reassess what’s cool, but the lone gold star I give the game for it’s combat is torn off for some obnoxious level design.
Jumping puzzles, fine.
Timed jumping puzzles, alright.
Timed jumping puzzles with a fixed camera, okay but now we're just taking the cake a little.
Timed jumping puzzles with fixed cameras and a pit filled with demons wanting your blood beneath you just really lands us in the ocean of garbage.
And about half way through the game, you change character and repeat it all in reverse order, it wasn’t a good idea in Silent Hill and it isn’t a good idea now, also, you’ve got this ridiculously long dice board game thing, which results in you smacking a huge dice around with your sword to propel a stone version of yourself across a board, and there’s no strategy involved their either because it’s entirely linear.
When I saw this I thought it was just something that one of the developers put in because of a nagging wife or girlfriend purely for the sake of his romantic life, but then it comes back towards the end, bigger and more of an annoyance than ever, after solving every board, you’re thrown into a boss battle, a boss you’ve already killed five million times through the course of the game.
This just leads me to believe that the developers are sick of DMC, and it shows, because it’s really scraping the bottom of the barrel now in terms of plot design.
Contrary to what I’ve said though, in theory it really isn’t an awful game, sure, it has it’s flaws, but what game doesn’t, it’s like one of those loveable little dogs that only have three legs, it’s a little slow but you really love it because it TRIES.
So really, if you like the Devil May Cry series, buy this game, because it does what other games don’t, it really does try to make you happy, but if you’ve never played the series, this isn’t the game I suggest you come into it on, go buy Devil May Cry 3, or the first one…If you can find it anywhere that is.
Thank you for reading, this review has been written by Angelo Credo.
Next week’s review shall be…Whatever I want it to be.
So here we go, I've decided to start writing up reviews for just about anything, CDs, games, movies, books, things of that nature in a hope to relieve my boredom and perhaps bring some entertainment to the lovely public within these forums.
I must say, I WILL be reviewing Devil May Cry 4 in this, and I WILL be adressing my most hated issues of this game, and I WILL be beating the game around quite a bit, just because I genuinely had a LOT of problems with it.
On a side note, I'm aware that today is infact Friday, but I shall be attempting to release these each Sunday, this is because this issue is a prewritten one, written up for the sake of another site, and I want to get a new one written as soon as possible.
My items today shall be: Devil May Cry 4 and Pendulum's latest album, In Silico, enjoy.
In Silico.
First off I’ll start with In Silico, at first I was rather annoyed that Kerrang and Scuzz were drowning me with Drum & Bass at stupid times, then something rather amazing happened to me, I began to like it, yes, me, Mr Metalhead started liking a Drum & Bass track listing, and I was almost in tears because of it.
In Silico is what you would expect from a Drum & Bass album, loud, with heavy beats and some techno elements, yes I know, techno = bad, but not in this case oddly enough, like The Prodigy, they managed to make something good out of the ocean of garbage that is techno. They honestly manage to produce a good selection of enjoyable songs that live up to the name Drum & Bass, and also manage to live up to being compared to The Prodigy.
Like I said, it really is what you would expect from a Drum & Bass album, providing you come into such things with no previous feelings towards it one way or the other, all in all, In Silico is quite a good album, but it isn’t without it’s bad points, it can get a tad repetitive, but in most cases, it has a tendency to mix things up a little, which is what most Techno/Electronica groups fail to do, rather they storm us with the same junk constantly.
Yet Pendulum avoided this fatal mistake, sure, one or two tracks may give you the feeling that it’s never changed track at all, but for the most part, the album offers up a decent selection of songs that really make you feel like Drum & Bass took a turn for the better.
Devil May Cry 4.
Devil May Cry 4 is, obviously, the fourth instalment on the Devil May Cry series of games, brought to us by the game creators, Capcom, the first Devil May Cry was released in 2001, and let me say this, that game was incredible for it’s time, yet when you go back and play it now, it really makes you thankful for sequels.
Devil May Cry’s timeline flows like this, as I'm sure many of you know, first, the events of Devil May Cry 3 occurred, then follows Devil May Cry 1, next is Devil May Cry 4, and then finally, Devil May Cry 2, so it pretty much follows the Rockstar/Capcom storyline progression, the “Because I said so.” rule of gaming.
Now, I’ve followed DMC from the very start of the series, a loyal fan was I, even through DMC2, (Note, I’ve shortened it because I really can’t be bothered to type out the full thing.) which was an honest ocean of garbage, then DMC3 made my day, and of course made my next six months of gaming, along with the final nail in my coffin of insanity, DMC1’s difficulty was somewhere between medium and head stomping insanity, DMC2 released that people weren’t into the whole “super difficulty” of gaming and decided to scale it back a notch, a notch that pretty much killed it. (Along with the horrid storyline.) And it ended up somewhere between easy and games for your mother.
DMC3 then lit the way and released people didn’t like games too easy either, but they overshot it once again, and I mean REALLY overshot it, it was in the region of head stomping insanity and games that physically reach out of the screen and pull your eyes out so you can’t see what you’re doing.
DMC4 finally hit the nail on the head with difficulty, it was perfect, not too hard, but not to easy either, all of the difficulties really were what they said on the tin, easy was easy, normal was normal, hard mode was hard, extreme was extreme, and insane really was that.
It had it all, for the casual gamers and the hardcore gamers, for your mother and for “That Guy”, “That Guy” who spends all his life playing that game because he has no social life and becomes a master.
And the combat system, that was incredible, like all DMC games, it follows a “Who can get the most stylish kill” routine, which basically involves pulling off a “Laws-Of-Physics” defying combo and then launching them into the air, holding them their with a hail of bullets, then slamming them back down into the ground.
If you don’t think that’s cool then you really need to reassess what’s cool, but the lone gold star I give the game for it’s combat is torn off for some obnoxious level design.
Jumping puzzles, fine.
Timed jumping puzzles, alright.
Timed jumping puzzles with a fixed camera, okay but now we're just taking the cake a little.
Timed jumping puzzles with fixed cameras and a pit filled with demons wanting your blood beneath you just really lands us in the ocean of garbage.
And about half way through the game, you change character and repeat it all in reverse order, it wasn’t a good idea in Silent Hill and it isn’t a good idea now, also, you’ve got this ridiculously long dice board game thing, which results in you smacking a huge dice around with your sword to propel a stone version of yourself across a board, and there’s no strategy involved their either because it’s entirely linear.
When I saw this I thought it was just something that one of the developers put in because of a nagging wife or girlfriend purely for the sake of his romantic life, but then it comes back towards the end, bigger and more of an annoyance than ever, after solving every board, you’re thrown into a boss battle, a boss you’ve already killed five million times through the course of the game.
This just leads me to believe that the developers are sick of DMC, and it shows, because it’s really scraping the bottom of the barrel now in terms of plot design.
Contrary to what I’ve said though, in theory it really isn’t an awful game, sure, it has it’s flaws, but what game doesn’t, it’s like one of those loveable little dogs that only have three legs, it’s a little slow but you really love it because it TRIES.
So really, if you like the Devil May Cry series, buy this game, because it does what other games don’t, it really does try to make you happy, but if you’ve never played the series, this isn’t the game I suggest you come into it on, go buy Devil May Cry 3, or the first one…If you can find it anywhere that is.
Thank you for reading, this review has been written by Angelo Credo.
Next week’s review shall be…Whatever I want it to be.