Devil May Cry

The Good
Resident Evil has grown stale. I could summon no enthusiasm or excitement for the recent revival of the first RE on the Gamecube. There are a number of reasons for my malaise - the fact that it's fundamentally the same game, the fact that RE2 still stands as the masterpiece of the lot - but looming above all of those is the sad, sad fact that the RE control scheme remains unchanged, and therefore terrible. "Frustrating" does not begin to describe my feelings while playing Code: Veronica as I watched my characters slowly, ponderously turning about, feebly dashing this way and that from equally feeble zombies. So thank sweet Christ for Devil May Cry. Devil May Cry is like Homo sapiens to Resident Evil's Australopithecus. Most of the same genetics are there, but the former has grown so far beyond the latter as to represent an entirely new species. In DMC, Dante, the hero, has broken the "spin, spin, move forward," control scheme. This guy can go wherever he wants. And if a monster is charging him, he just leaps out of the way, double jumps off the wall, and then cleaves the bastard in two with his sword on the way back down. Cool. Dante isn't fettered by ammunition restraints - his guns have infinite ammo. And his sword, unlike the feeble knives of REs past, is a truly kick-ass weapon. I still love hacking an opponent up into the air and then blasting the crap out of it with Dante's twin handguns. DMC is an action game that doesn't attempt to scare you, unlike RE. DMC tries to evoke "cool," and succeeds admirably. There are still few PS2 games that can rival DMC for pure action-cool.

The Bad
The plot stinks like crap. So do the voice overs. So what's new?

The Bottom Line
It's survival horror taken to the next level. Absolutely don't pass this one up if you own a PS2.