No one has played every video game. Not even the experts. In Backlog, Digital Trends’ gaming team goes back to the important games they’ve never played to see what makes them so special… Or not.
In the opening minutes of the originalDevil May Cryon PlayStation 2, a skinny blonde woman in black leather corset and sunglasses hurls a motorcycle over her head at protagonist Dante, a demon hunter wearing red leather trenchcoat. Our hero responds, not by dodging, but by grabbing a pair of pistols and shooting the bike so many times, it charges up with energy and flies back at her. The scene perfectly sets the tone for one of the sillier, most of-its-time games I’ve played in a long while.
One thought kept occurring to me over and over throughout: “Oh, this is stupidDark Souls.”
Devil May Cryhits stores in 2001, whenThe Matrixwas still the coolest thing that anyone could imagine: Nothing said “badass” like martial arts and BDSM clothing. As a teenage boy with a PS2, I was the primary audience forDMC, but I was busy pouring too many hours into masteringFinal Fantasy X’sBlitzball, and the underbaked, but compelling combat of Bungie’sOni.
Approaching it now with fresh eyes, since the original trilogy’s been remastered for PS4 and Xbox One, its influence on modern gaming is obvious.
BeforeNinja Gaiden BlackandGod of War,Devil May Cryestablished the mold for fast-paced, combo-driven brawling. As expected, I could easily trace a direct line fromDMCto more recent titles likeBayonettaandNier: Automatathat have expanded upon its core mechanics.
I went in expecting to observe an important, transitional piece of gaming history, and I certainly did, but one thought kept occurring to me over and over throughout: “Oh, this is stupidDark Souls.”
Dork Souls
Or, more accurately, since the first Souls game came out eight years and one hardware generation later,Dark Soulsfeels like a cerebral version ofDevil May Cry.
It has all the style of The Matrix, but none of the armchair philosophy.
Mechanically, getting from one to other is fairly straightforward: Take the precision brawling and crowd control ofDMCand slow it down with shields, parrying, and a more effective dodge roll, and you have the measured combat of aSouls game. It’s far more punishing of your mistakes to keep the challenge up as the action slows down, but the underlying framework is the same.
The similarities run deeper, however. LikeDark Souls,DMCis set in a bizarre, gothic castle which you gradually open up and explore over the course of the game. Although it is divided into discrete, graded missions, your reflexive exploration plays out very similarly to a Souls game. As Dante, you continually loop back to old areas, revisiting areas you have already explored to reach new passages.
Both games feature mythic, underworld settings that draw heavily from Gothic and Christian imagery, but filtered through a Japanese sensibility and pointedly lacking any substantial Christianity. They adopt the trappings of Judeo-Christian monotheism, but substitute a polytheistic core, making their worlds at once familiar and strange to western gamers.
InDevil May Cry, you collect items with names like “Devil Star,” or a “Melancholy Soul.” Both games feature an internal logic that they are not especially compelled to share with the player.Soulsjust takes itself a bit more seriously.
To be clear, I’m not callingDMC“stupid” as a dig — it’s joyously, delightfully over the top and devoid of narrative stakes. Like Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, it’s a goofy jock that’s there to kick ass and have a good time. It has all the style of The Matrix, but none of the armchair philosophy. Dante’s cocky attitude colors the game with snarky commentary throughout, keeping the player at an ironic distance. The game may ostensibly be inspired byThe Divine Comedy, but don’t expect any moralizing.
I contain multitudes
Devil May Cry’s bizarre world is essentially set dressing for its intense combat, your mastery of which remains the game’s focus.Dark Soulstakes the opposite approach — the player’s primary impulse is to explore and understand the world, and combat is a means by which the player interacts with it.
The PS2 era was a fertile and exciting time for game design, especially coming out of Japan. The crude experiments of the PS1 matured, but had not yet codified into the genres that would dominate the following decade.Devil May Cryis exemplary of its time not just because of its charmingly early-aughts teenage boy sensibilities, but also because of its fresh, but polished gameplay, so confidently itself that it contained the seeds of several, divergent genres.
The design space thatDMCcreated has had a population explosion in subsequent years, but for a game nearly 20 years old, the original holds up surprisingly well. Any individual part of its design has been surpassed through iteration, but nothing has quite captured its particular sensibility.
