View All (73)

View All (2)

Much more interesting than that though is the ability to shoot out the ghostly arm of the Devil Bringer to snatch far away enemies and bring them within range of your sword. This opens up all kinds of combo opportunities that weren’t possible before due to the fact that the last hit of a combo usually would knock the enemy away and out of range of your sword. With the Devil Bringer though you can do a basic combo, snatch them back after the last hit, start up an air combo, cancel the combo with a throw, snatch them back again while still in the air, finish off the air combo by slamming the enemy back down to the ground, and if they’re still even alive after that (which is highly unlikely), you can snatch them back and start the whole thing over again. It’s an insanely fun system that somewhat makes up for the fact that Nero has a fairly limited variety of weapons.

While you do spend the majority of the game as Nero, a little more than halfway through the game you get the chance to play as Dante, who offers a nice throwback to the gameplay of Devil May Cry 3 by giving you access to a fairly large variety of guns, swords, special moves, and most importantly, styles. The Gunslinger, Sword Master, Trickster, and Royal Guard styles from Devil May Cry 3 all make a return in the Dante portions of the game, and best of all, you’re able to switch between all four on the fly with a simple press of the D-Pad. Unfortunately you lose the Devil Bringer, which may cause people to fumble a little with Dante when they first gain control of him due to the fact that the Devil Bringer is such an integral part of Nero’s gameplay. You’ll soon forget about the Devil Bringer though once you see the weapons that Dante finds along the way. Aside from a shotgun and gauntlets, which are somewhat staples of the series by now, you’ll also find a new sword and a new gun in Lucifer and Pandora.

Lucifer is a personal favorite of mine as it takes the form of two sword sheaths bound together by a skull that hold an unlimited number of explosive blades that Dante can throw out rapidly in all directions. The coolest part about this weapon though is that the swords don’t explode on impact. They linger inside enemies until Dante stylishly takes out a rose and throws it, cueing all of the swords to explode simultaneously, causing every enemy with a sword stuck in them to go flying.

Pandora is equally impressive as it is a crossbow, a machine gun, a rocket launcher, a laser canon, and a single manned battle station all in one. It sounds crazy, but somehow the creators over at Capcom managed to stuff five awesome weapons into one little transforming box.

Those of you that played Devil May Cry 3 probably remember it as being extremely punishing and almost unfairly difficult even at the beginning levels and on the easiest difficulty. Personally, I loved the challenge of DMC3, but obviously Capcom viewed it as a problem and made the starting two difficulties of DMC4 almost a cakewalk for any experienced player. Once you beat the game though you unlock the Son of Sparda difficulty, which is about the level of difficulty that DMC3 was on its normal setting. Beat that mode and you unlock the ridiculously difficult Dante Must Die mode and the just plain ridiculous Heaven or Hell mode where everything, including you, dies from just one hit. Only the truly masochistic will manage to try and beat Dante Must Die mode to unlock Hell or Hell mode where the enemies are as strong as they are in Son of Sparda mode, but you die in one hit.