After the internet went insane over the redesign of Devil May Cry’s Dante I was interested to see what the actual game was like. As I suspected, those worried about the change of developer to Ninja Theory and the different styling of Dante need not have worried. Gameplay wise this still plays very much like previous entries in the series. Whilst I am by no means an expert in the combat system of Devil May Cry my muscle memory easily slipped back in to some familiar combos. I am sure more hardcore DMC fans might be able to pick up slight differences but for me this felt like Dante should.

Combos are still based on attacks split between sword strikes, juggles and blasting with Dante’s twin guns, Ebony and Ivory. In addition to these you now have access to a huge axe, which is unsurprisingly slow but powerful. In the demo this was used the break the shields of enemies whose defences you could otherwise not penetrate. Covering the fast but weak attacks was a new scythe which was good for clearing out groups and certain enemies who appeared to be weak against these attacks. Dante now also as a grappling hook style ability which can be used to pull him to otherwise unreachable platforms or alternatively pull enemies towards him to maintain a combo.

So all in all much like the other Devil May Cry games from this showing. Although as with other such games the beauty will be in spending the hours to learn the intricacies of the combat system so it’s difficult to assess the full quality from such a short showing. Personally I don’t think that I will be buying this on release but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to be a good game. For big fans of the series this is clearly a must, even with the new Dante. With Bayonetta proving to have mastered the genre and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance providing a new take on the action DMC will have to go some to rise to the top and in such illustrious company I’m not sure it’s going to make it.