Capcom is one of my all time favorite game makers, so I'm always looking to see what they'll come up with next. We're in the first quarter of 2019 and Capcom is looking to thrill gamers with a punch-kick combo of new installments from two of their biggest franchises! Here are my first impressions of the Xbox One Demo versions of the Resident Evil 2 Remake (sometimes nicknamed as REmake 2) and Devil May Cry 5.
Capcom's flagship 3D action game series Devil May Cry has gone through some crazy ups and downs. To give my drive-by opinions, DMC1 was a revolutionary 3D action game that was sometimes imitated, but never replicated. DMC2 was rushed, lousy and nearly killed the series. DMC3 was a course correction that many latched onto. It's one of my favorite action games of all time and I've logged a few hundred hours into the PS2 version. DMC4 I've enjoyed enough to run through it a few times, and yet I feel a tad lukewarm about it overall.
Out of those 4 entries, DMC2 was the only one that I thought was outright bad! In recent times, some information has come out to try to shed some light as to why DMC2 turned out so bad. It's been known that Hideki Kamiya (director of DMC1) wasn't involved in the making in the game, as he was working on Viewtiful Joe. Which is a massive shame; the man is a world-class game designer. Moreover, the development team was more or less FORCED to meet a target date and the final director of the game (Hideaki Itsuno) didn't even join the project until the last few months of development. When he got there, the game was functional, but barely complete. Holy moly, these are awful working conditions!!
In a Capcom artbook, Hideaki Itsuno had said that he wanted DMC3 to be as a good as possible because "he didn't want to be remembered as the guy who made Devil May Cry 2". He considers the game an apology, and I have accepted it. The naked honesty is staggering. The man deserves a few bottles of champagne and a fruit basket.
So after DMC4, Capcom made the frustrating decision to pass the buck to Ninja Theory. This next game would be a reboot disconnected from all other Devil May Cry games. This release was the obnoxiously titled DmC: Devil May Cry and frankly, I just don't like talking about it. I disliked the reimagined versions of the characters, I thought the writing of the game was extremely juvenile, and worst of all, I found the combat to be not as fluid as the games of the past and underbaked. DmC has it's fans, but it's not for me and I don't count it as part of the series. DmC did not meet Capcom's sales expectations and it seems the series was gonna be put on ice for a while. And it was. But now it seems Itsuno has rolled out with another apology.
Disregarding DmC, we're now getting a very long awaited sequel as this sequel is picking up where DMC2 left off. The Devil May Cry timeline is kinda nuts, with the second game being a distant sequel to the first, the 3rd game being a direct prequel to DMC1 and the 4th game being a sequel to the first game. We're finally going even further and seeing what adventures await Dante, Nero, their pals Lady and Trish and some new allies Nico and V!
Taking control of Nero, the Devil May Cry 5 demo is on the short side. With some parts of the story being glossed over and more or less teleporting you from one environment to the next, there's not much to report yet of the story or narrative, but there's enough in-game time to allow you to get a basic feel for the game. In DMC4, Nero played much slower and much more deliberate than Dante. His combos were simple and based in charging up his sword and gun, timing his sword strikes, and grabbing and juggling his enemies with his Devil Bringer. Nero's initial footspeed here reminds me of his initial speed from DMC4: it's a bit on the slow side, but I want to give the gamemakers some benefit-of-the-doubt as usually in Devil May Cry games you can upgrade a character's preformance throughout the game. The big change with Nero is his ability to switch between his Devil Bringers and the cost of expending the one you have active. This allows you to cancel out of combos or break out of certain enemy attacks. The demo mostly consists of a few battle scenes with grunts, a pretty basic puzzle and tops it all off with a boss battle: the enormous Goliath! And yes, there's plenty of trash-talking between Nero and Goliath.
Between these two Capcom demos, I'd say I enjoyed the REmake 2 demo the most. Both were still fun however and I look forward to picking both games up soon!
