Devil May Cry 3

Dante is back in his third PS2 adventure, and he brought his brother with him this time.
Supposedly, this is the prequel to the other two DMC games (why are the hero’s always more powerful in the prequels?) and Dante’s brother, Vergil, is trying to open the gates of Hell which was locked by their father. Dante gets involved just cause he wants to kick Vergil’s ass. Along the way, he runs into Mary, a girl with a BIG gun and an even bigger chip on her shoulder since it’s her dad helping Vergil. And so off they go slashing and blasting demons on their way to their destiny as it seems.
Ok, here’s the first thing that I didn’t like in this game at the very beginning. In the opening movie, Dante was made out to be invincible since he was stabbed by multiple scythes from demon reapers, and he just shrugged it off. But when you get to the actual game, you find Dante takes damage rather easily and can die just as quickly against some of the tougher opponents. So throughout the game you get to watch all these cool bad-ass video clips of Dante where he can’t die and can pull off all kinds of cool maneuvers, but in the actual game it’s a different story altogether. False advertising is it?
No doubt there is a VERY good story behind the game, and the game itself isn’t half bad as you shoot and slash your way through hordes of enemy demons to battle some huge and powerful bosses. But be prepared, cause this game can be VERY hard at times, especially the boss battles. If there is one thing this game suffers from, in addition to the difficulty of the game, is the often terrible camera. You can control the camera, but I noticed that when battling bosses and you come close to beating them, the game automatically gives you possibly the WORSE camera angles so you can’t see the boss properly and he ends up winning the fight! Or the camera spins around so fast following the boss that you get confused and jumble up your controls, example being your trying to hit left, but the camera turns to an angle where your hitting right instead and the boss is then behind you to get a free shot in!
Another thing added is that you have four different “Styles” to choose from before the start of each level, with two more unlocked as you play the game. The type of style you select gives priority to certain abilities like your shooting, sword attacks or blocking, but it’s all not as cool as it’s cracked up to be. For example, when you get the Quicksilver Style, you get this cool movie sequence where Dante moves so fast everything else just stands still. In the actual game, when you activate this cool sounding ability, it barely lasts a few seconds and there’s not a lot of damage you can do to your enemies in that time either. So it’s just a waste.
And then there’s the matter of upgrading your weapons so they get stronger and you can learn new moves and abilities to go with them. This again is another waste as no matter how powerful you make your weapons, it still feels like it does the same amount of damage. Even all the upgrades for new moves and techniques, which aren’t easy to pull off at times, don’t add much to help you out. And did I mention how hard it is just to get Dante to JUMP accurately?
Despite a lot of gameplay problems that I hate, the game itself looks good at least, with some very good dark and gloomy graphics and a wide variety of enemies to break. The music is also good industrial metal and orchestra melodies, but the song that plays during regular battles can get rather boring.
I’ll admit I never played the previous DMC games, but playing this alone warrants me to not want to play them if they are anything like this. I had high hopes for this one, but it just seemed to pale in comparison to other action adventure titles like Castlevania, Prince of Persia, and the EXCELLENT God of War game which I will review shortly.
As for DMC3, I recommend rental instead of purchase.

Ratings:
Graphics – 8
Sound – 8
Gameplay – 6
Lifespan – 5
Overall – 6