It's been ten years since Devil May Cry 4 and finally we're going to be seeing it's long awaited sequel sometime before April next year. Interestingly, it's the first time I can remember a game series abandoning it's reboot version of a franchise and return to the original story line. Sure, DmC received a somewhat luke warm welcome and you can still technically reference it as an origin story for Dante and Virgil but for all intents and purposes; that game never happened canonical.
Which is actually a shame as it wasn't a bad game it was just so different from what everybody knew was Devil May Cry, it lacked the tongue in cheek humor and silky smooth flowing combat, instead it was dark punk emo and the combat had a methodical rock scissors paper feel to it. The re-release on modern consoles was as the name implied Definitive, running at 60 fps did wonders for the flow of combat and you could even ramp the speed up with a turbo option. I really enjoyed the definitive version, it was a fun game and once you embrace it it's really fun and does some cool things.
It still wasn't quite Devil May Cry, I generally find western hack'n'slash games don't imply the intricacies of their Japanese contemparies which derive a lot of mechanics from the fighting game world such as combo cancelling, which is such a simple mechanic but changes the dynamic of a hack'n'slash game. DmC lacked these fundermental mechanics and was more show than technique. Also, instead of giving the player a variety of weapons to use that suited their play style, each weapon is designed to employed against a certain type of enemy and that detracts from player options, in order to beat X you must use Y. I think that's such a big thing when it comes to hack'n'slash games, you want to expand the players combat opportunities and basically allow them to choose a weapon that suits their play style.
Another game series that did understand these concepts was Ninja Gaiden. I never played the NES series, my first interaction with Ninja Gaiden was on the Xbox and it was awesome. Ninja Gaiden is one of my all time favorite games and it's still a great game to play.
Going back to my previous statement about combat free flow, Ninja Gaiden embraced this: when you start the game you're locked to the Dragon Sword. It's a very balanced weapon in every sense of the word. Later you can find the Vigorian Flails that are like bladed nunchuks; this weapon does less damage but has lightning fast combos that almost chain endlessly. Then lastly is Dabilahro, a huge sword that is very slow but deals huge damage with short combos. No weapon is purposely designed to be used against a particular enemy type, the game has given players three fighting style options.
They are introduced slowly into the game and the it makes sure you learn all the basics of combat with the Dragon Sword before giving you those extra options. Later installments had even more weapons to choose from that were even more about style rather than function.
I don't want to get too bogged down on Ninja Gaiden, it is a fantastic game and I could probably prattle on about it all night but I won't.
It's great to see Capcom giving some of it's franchises the love they truly deserve, (even the little blue bomber is getting a new game instead of just a collection) and Devil May Cry is a series I've sorely missed. God of War is the last game I've played in five years that embraced the hack'n'slash genre, even if it was in a vein more like DmC. The Hack'n'slash genre seemed to live with just a few titles, it's often seen as a difficult series of games which is understandable as most have been hard to learn and even tricky to master. It's possible that this stigma contributed to the near disappearance of the series but with big names like God of War and Devil May Cry coming out and rallying up the player base it'd be nice to see this genre really kick off again. Dark Souls showed the world that there's a huge market for hard type games so it'd be great to see another Ninja Gaiden and new hack'n'slash IPs.
Lot's of the hope for the future and loving the resurgence of more genres in the triple A scene, it's an exciting time to be playing videogames and I'm so excited for what we're going to see next year.
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