Ninja Theory's DmC: Devil May Cry demo released earlier this week showcasing Capcom's newly envisioned version of demon hunter Dante. While still the offspring of the demon Sparda his new origin has his mother Eva as an angel. Dante is a Nephilim, which is the term for the offspring of a demon and an angel.
The demo begins with a brief cinematic that explains the situation of Limbo City and Dante's recruitment into the secretive organization "The Order" by his long lost twin brother Vergil. Dante's brother clues him in on the death of their mother and the rise of power of the demon Mundus.
We then take to the streets of Limbo City, where citizens are mindless zombies to unhealthy energy drinks and corporations. The story has an Orwellian appeal to it and could be seen as battle against consumer consumption as much as it is a fight against demons. The street are under constant surveillance by demon controlled cameras. The first section of the demo acts as a tutorial and introduces gamers to the new gameplay mechanics.
The new Dante is still kind of cocky and arrogant and automatically draws the attention of the demons as he and Kat strolls through the streets of Limbo City. Dante is quickly pulled into an interdimensional reality called "Limbo" that exists within the streets of the city.
From here on gamers finally get to control Dante and it feel surprisingly familiar to the previous games of the original series. Dante can juggle enemies and slash or shoot them for aerial combination attacks. Dante also has access to grappling hook that can be used to climb to higher grounds and reach demonic cameras or to pull in enemies from a distance. He can also dodge attacks and sneak up behind an enemy for a well-placed attack.
Dante has a gauge meter that fills up and allows gamers to pull off a monstrous combination of attacks in slow motion and regenerates his health.
Graphically the game has an imaginative art direction and looks like a Hollywood movie in many ways. Gone is the previous Dante's comic book styling and has been replaced by a gritty realism. This may be off putting to fans of the original series, but it really matches the tone of the Ninja Theory's game.
But the environment isn't just for show and is actually Dante's most deadly antagonist as it morphs into difficult to cross the terrain. Gamers will have to grappling hook across platforms and glide across chasms.
The second part of the demo features a demon boss that slings profanities at Dante. Here gamers will utilize the dodge, jump and glide mechanics to escape the worm-like creatures assault. The battle isn't too different from the previous fights Dante encountered in the first section of the demo.
The entire Demo takes a less than an hour to finish and is highly addictive. The gameplay should calm the anger about the artistic changes that have been made to the game. There are a few hiccups during the gameplay including Dante getting stuck mid-glide in the air and a few awkward camera angles. Another sour note is that the voice actor playing Dante does get a little bit annoying at times. I give the demo an 8.5-out-of-10. The demo didn't show off too much variety but was a lot of fun.
DmC Devil May Cry arrives on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on January 15, 2013 across North America and Europe with a PC version shortly after. There still is no word on a demo of the game for PC. The DmC: Devil May Cry PC port is not being developed by Ninja Theory and has been out sourced to Polish quality assurance and localization studio QLOC, which has worked on past Capcom ports.
