Joystiq hands-on: Devil May Cry 4 (PS3)

Devil May Cry 4 is only a month away from release and we were itching to sit down for a few hours and try out the final build. From what we've seen, the game has been polished so much we could almost see our faces in it. It's clear that DMC4 has benefited from being pushed back to early '08, if only because it now has the Q1 stage all to itself.

The gameplay hasn't changed much since Devil May Cry 1, but fans of the series should see no problems with that. Having said that, numerous new features have been added, with Nero's crazy arm (used for grabbing, throwing and slamming, natch) reminding us of Evil Dead 2. That can only be a good thing, right? Its ability to cling onto nearby floating objects in order to reach higher places is ripped straight from Onimusha 3, though the timing based jump puzzles seen here make things a little different.

One such puzzle requires you to hop across a spike-filled room by grabbing jump points that can disappear and reappear at random. Grab at the wrong time and the spikes will damage you, causing you to plummet into a room full of marionettes (those being the things trying to kill you most of the time) below. Did we fall? Maybe. Maybe we fell three times. So what if we did?



Speaking of features seen in other games, Nero's Gunblade Motorbike Sword takes a little time to master but once you do, it makes getting those SSS combos much easier. Grabbing your enemies and throwing them to the floor using Nero's Devil Arm is also great fun. Fans of Dante's stances from DMC3 will be happy to see them return and become interchangeable in the midst of battle. Capcom has also given Dante a huge arsenal of weapons to play with, including some particularly fun, pink exploding blades. From what we could tell, the difficulty is much less brutal than in the series' previous iteration, though it did get quite tough during the later missions.

Some other mainstays of the series are back, including ridiculous giant bosses and hilariously clad female supporting characters. The Balrog makes a guest appearance as an early boss and is far easier than Lord of the Rings made him look. Thanks to the combat tutorial at the start of the game, Devil May Cry 4 should be accessible to everyone, regardless of whether you've played the previous games in the series. However, this game presents another example of using a ridiculously overpowered character as a tutorial boss. We're expected to believe that Nero can beat Dante in a fight, and learn the rules of combat as he does so? Wouldn't Dante be the hardest boss ever?

Devil May Cry 4 probably won't be 2008's GOTY, but fans of the series will definitely enjoy its energetic gameplay, giant bosses and self-indulgent cutscenes. It'll be out on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 early February in both America and Europe.