BadGameHOF
@BadGameHOF

An attempt to reboot the Devil May Cry franchise by way of studio Ninja Theory, who were ordered by Capcom to completely re-imagine protagonist Dante and the world around him. The end result did not go over particularly well.


thewaether
@thewaether

lots of mixed things being said about this game today so let me go over my main memories of this game, both bad and good

  1. it is fantastic to watch with a crowd. either on livestream for an audience who's never seen it before, or people who know it, if only because this is the closest you can get to a "so bad it's good" movie in video game form. i.e the actual game is pretty breezy and bug-free, but the story aspect of the game itself is where the badness really shines

  2. scene where dante and the first boss yell "fuck you!" at eachother which since became notorious to the point someone modded this game with a dedicated "fuck you" button

  3. if original devil may cry is old-school metal, DmC is scene/emo metal. and it gets the feel exactly right- think band like bring me the horizon and blue stahli, and that poppier, cleaner sound/surrounding culture

  4. some genuinely awful misognyny in this game that can't be overlooked, maybe most epitomised by one of the villains who is a supermodel with layers of plastic surgery, who, after her boss fight, gives birth to a demon baby (?) women in this game fulfil the virgin/mother/crone stereotype to the T

  5. ...in addition, there is a lot fatphobia, with an early scene in a factory that makes energy drinks that supposedly make you stronger and sexier but get this: they make you FAT INSTEAD!!! <--- parts of this game feel written by banksy at his worst. the social commentary is like this all the way through, somewhere between idiocracy and someone first becoming aware of politics through boomer facebook memes:- with the exception of a very fun boss battle against a fox news-style televangelist host, which is a highlight

  6. there's an infamous slide from the development of this game where they make sure the devs know not to make dante GAY because audiences don't like that (here) ( and here) and this also carries through a general line of mean-spiritedness towards the material it's adapting that runs through the whole thing and sours the experience

  7. there's a scene where virgil says to dante "I have the bigger dick"

  8. when I first [watched someone else] play this game, I predicted there would be a scene where Dante walks into a strip club and ignores the strippers and acts generally like he's too cool and above it all, and then I was right and this scene did in fact happen exactly the way I predicted it

  9. by level 2 they run out of budget and the levels just become floating platforms

  10. twitter gets a shout-out in the climax, which I have no idea will date this game terribly

anyway, yeah, this is a great game to experience with a group. parts of it have aged badly. a lot of it was already bad when it came out. in a way I think of it as one of the last games and most symbolic games OF: the period at the end of the PS3 era that felt like video games were trying to "grow up" and it's a fascinating historical peice for that alone


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in reply to @BadGameHOF's post:

I know this game has had something of a critical reappraisal in the last few years, and I'm willing to accept that it actually is a much better game than its reputation would have you believe... but then I remember the pitch deck for the game which basically stops just shy of calling you the f-slur if you liked the previous games, and remember why it deserved to get shitted on.