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Dom Robinson reviews
Capcom 
- Price: £34.99
- Players: 1
- Widescreen: No
- NTSC 60Hz: Yes
- DTS sound: No
Devil May Cry 2is the sequel to a gave I never got to play, with you as Dante, a half-manhalf-demon who is the son of Sparda and must defeat the evil that’s lurkingin the town over 18 missions – and this time you’re accompanied by a Frenchfemale friend, Lucia, who has an unlucky 13 missions to accomplish herself ondisc 2.
As you run about, you must collect orbs to replenish health, give specialpowers and strengthen your weapons, guns or buy further items to help you onyour quest. You’ll get to fight weird monsters and use the Devil Trigger tobring out the demon in you. Between the action comes glorious cut-scenes thatset the tone of the place including, in Mission 2 on disc one, where an oldlady tells you to go after Arius, the owner of a big corporation who exertshis force using evil power – so, an earlier version of Rupert Murdoch, then?
Graphically, this game looks fantastic and, while not quite as good assome Xbox games doing the rounds, that’s due to the limitations of the PS2 whichfew games can seem to overcome.
The setting is like a gothic version of Prague, as if it was set a few hundredyears ago. Hacking and slashing isn’t adverse to a bit of gore, so it’s notone for the younger gamers. Devil May Cry 2 pays a partial homage to the Resident Evilseries, in that horrible things can come at you from all sides and with littlewarning, but the camera movement is more pleasing and follows you to a degreerather than simply being static the whole time. That said, there are timeswhen you won’t get to see all the enemies around you in an enclosed space untilyou’re a little too close to them… the grinding music informs you, however,that the battle is not yet over. I would’ve liked to add a use for theright-joystick in being able to look out from your own eyes at the city asoccasionally it can be a bit tricky to find out where to go next.
One other nice addition is that, although the camera angle can change, meaningthat the direction of the joystick is different to the way your character isnow running, for a second or two it will still allow you to run in the correctdirection until you realise – this stops you accidentally going back and forthbetween two rooms while you figure out the new area.
Soundwise, the music is nicely effective in creating the atmosphere and, attimes, reminiscent of even The Orb. The sound FX are functional although decentand, overall, there’s nothing to complain about.
You could complain that the gameplay is linear as you walk from location tolocation, but this isn’t a problem as it saves the game from being toorepetitive and you will certainly have a good blast along the way.There’s strikingMatrix-stylefights to be had as you leap about the town, including jumping into the air andshooting on the way down – which keeps you up in the air the longer you blastaway. I found you can even destroy what look like TV aerials on the roof -someone’s not going to be pleased when they get in from a hard day’s work…
Overall, this is a game worthy of checking out if you like any kind of action,couple with a lot of gameplay over the 31 missions if you’re going to stay thecourse. That said, those who haven’t played the original title may wish torent this one before they buy.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.