Intro.
Alright, this isn't exactly a "review" - more like impressions of the gameplay, I don't want to talk about the full game since most already know about it, so it's just the impressions of how well this has been ported, and if a Hack N' Slash doesn't suck on PC (which it doesn't)- since DMC4 has been out for a while, and heck, so has the demo, and the PC demo, and I bet the game (PC version) has been out for a while too, I'll skip all that story and dialogue and level design Hulabaloo. If you want to skip all the other Hulabaloo (A.K.A. Details) then press control+F and type in "Quick Summary" or "Finale" (no quotes).
Prologue
A little background, I've played the PS3 version, seen the 360 version, and I own a PC, PS3, and a Wii - and right now I'm going to fess up, I've never played a hack n' slash on PC (I don't even know of any really, I've played every game genre, even sports games, on PC - but never a hack n' slash) so my expectations were low.
Now, the main reason I'm posting my impressions is because I was just so shocked that I had to tell someone about how good it was, I thought the controls would be clunky, I thought it would be poorly optimized, I thought it would have a bad framerate, I expected the worst - after all, we're talking about a Capcom PC port here, RE4 didn't even have mouse support, when the game came out, people had to get mods to fix it.
I got the exact opposite - the controlling was what really impressed me.
Alright time to categorize everything, I'll start with controls:
Controls:
It's obvious to say that you can use a gamepad for this, and the main reason I put this up is to talk about how easy and fluid the controls are for the game because lets face it, this game has been out for a long time, and I'm late to the party because this demo has been out for a while too - so I'm going to focus on the keyboard controls (oh yeah, you don't need a mouse) - chances are, the majority already knows how it controls on the PS3 and 360, but has no idea about a keyboard.
To move, you've got WASD, but it's the combat that's the tricky part, and the default controls, focus movement on the WASD, and the combat controls on the IJKL keys. I is a Melee attack, J is a firearm attack, K is jump, and L is DT or Devil Arm (btw, Nero's devil arm is awesome, and it can trigger some kick ass finishing moves on boss fights) - the learning curve is about the same as picking up the controller on any other DMC game, about 15-20 minutes of fiddling around and getting the hang of things, and you'll be an expert.
The demo/trial consists of a 10 minute mission (as in, you go through the mission killing things and doing some easy puzzles, until the timer runs out), and a Boss Fight - Naturally I stayed away from that boss until I picked up on the controls, so I started the Mission - it has a ten minute timer, and many tutorial windows pop up, with a picture of the 360 controller telling you about the controls, and don't worry, capcom doesn't assume that every PC gamer also owns a 360, so they tell you what they keys are on the keyboard as well! (this 360 controller seems to be the new 'gamepad of choice' for PC gamers since chances are most PC gamers own one of the new consoles, and the 360 controller is the most computer friendly - but if I'm going to use a gamepad I'll just use my PS3 controller because it also just plugs right into the USB, and I can get a driver or something, sorry, nothing against 360 but I don't have a 360 controller and I prefer the PS3 one anyway, I mean, I grew up with DMC on PS !!)
Camera Controls
I put this in a separate section (though it's a short one) because the default controls for camera controlling (when the camera isn't fixed) are the arrow keys, this is hard to maneuver when you have both hands on the keyboard, far from the Arrow Keys (unless you've got a different kind of keyboard, then I'm sorry for assuming so...) - so I'd just like to mention that it would be good ahead of time to change those keys from "left and right" to "Z" and "C" - that way you can control it quicker, and you don't have to risk dieing when the camera fucks you over in combat.
Movement
It looks a little weird sometimes, since with a PC, doing the "fine tuning" in movement is when you have a 3rd person game with a camera that is most likely being moved with the mouse, such as Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, or Oblivion - and you get even better movement with that then an analog stick (for the most part) but in "Fixed Camera Games" it's a different story, some games fix that by adding some more animations to character movement but this is a port, a good one, but not a "fantastic" one, but the only real complaint I can give about the movement is when you aren't in combat and you're running down some path, and then you change direction with either A or D, and then your character just magically changes direction, that's the only way I can describe it since you don't see his transition, it's more of like a "POOF, I'm heading left now! I move so fast that you didn't even notice!" - but that's in the console versions too, it's just a little more noticeable on PC.
Another Gripe is when the camera changes while you are running and then you end up already having the wrong direction pushed, and it's an endless loop of walking on stairs, the camera changes, and then you instantly turn around...but that's plagued all fixed camera games.
Combat/ Movement PT2.
Alright so the camera can kind of mess up your perception in DMC games during combat but most of the time, in combat, the camera can be moved, and that way you won't have to accidently launch enemies in the air when you meant to drive your sword into their chest. This is when the learning curve for the controls is meant to be practiced, there's lots of very good tutorial menu's that come up, and to exit from them you just tap enter with your pinky, and get right back into the game.
The fighting is definitely the funnest part of the game and it's obviously the main reason people love the series and it's why you buy the game, but man, this is what surprised me, I thought this would be a pain in the ass to play with a keyboard, but oh was I wrong.
Movement during combat isn't hard, and that's surprising with the absence of an analog stick, I had no problem jumping away from and dodging enemies, and even more surprising, is precisely hitting my targets, just simply press the keys, hit "I" and Nero will know what to do, I thought I would constantly miss my target and have to end up shooting all my enemies to death and just keep on jumping and locking onto them, but instead I'm doing kick ass combos, launching people in the air, throwing them with my demonic arm straight to the ground, then blowing them away with my double barelled .50 caliber magnum with infinite ammo, and getting an "A" combo rating on almost every enemy I encounter.
I can't BELIEVE I'm saying this..but...
I'm almost better at this game with a keyboard then I was with a controller, and I use to think it was impossible to play a hack n' slash on PC without something going horribly wrong, but nope, I've worked out the kinks and now I'm an expert with Nero.
Graphics, Sound, and Performance
I'll make this one short, the graphics, are fucking mindblowing on Max, if you've played both console versions, and then you see this one, you'll instantly see the difference, it's gorgeous, your jaw will drop.
Sound - well, depends on your speaker set-up, but everything is great, the "chainsaw" (or is it an "engine"?) thing on my sword sounds menacing, Nero's cheesy anime "Slam Dunk!" remarks are crisp, no glitches or repeating loops, it's all nicely done.
Performance: Well, my PC is a hybrid of old and new, but it's my 8800GTS (that was cheap at the time, and is cheaper now) that saves my ass, but I'm always worried about my old Pentium D. Dual core - but if your PC has a PCI express card, a dual core (of any kind) - and 1-2 gigs of RAM, chances are, you can run this, even on Max. Scroll down for the demo and see for yourself if that sounds too good to be true - who knows, I may be wrong.
EDIT: OH, I almost forgot, I don't know what this game looks like on a regular computer monitor, I have my computer plugged into a 26'' LCD HDTV using an DVI-> HDMI cable since the 8800 has that available, so your "Mindblowing graphical experience" may be different than mine - but hey, if your computer Monitor has an HDMI Input, I say go for try it out, games will look 100X better.
Finale
Alright, now the "Quick Summary" - first of all, IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN SEEING HOW DMC PLAYS ON YOUR PC DOWNLOAD THIS NOW BY CLICKING THESE WORDS!!! I put that in all caps because I can't stress this enough, since the game has been out for a long time, people have probably already played it on the consoles, and are probably looking at the DMC demo thinking "Eh, it's probably not worth it, I would like it on my PC but I've got it on my [console] and I don't need to try it out" - but no, you DO need to try it out, you'll be surprised - not only that Capcom made a good PC port, but that you won't need a controller to play it well.
Now that I've had good impressions, I shall post the "Why you should buy it" - because the demo has convinced me to buy the game (eventually).
Why you should "buy" it:
Demo's are to convince you that the game is worth it - and this did just that -, and even if the game did turn out to be a Piece of Shit, Capcom should be rewarded for their hard work, they've outdone themselves and we should encourage them to make more for the PC, they've already gotten their feet wet, and despite their success, it's Sales that will convince them to dive straight in, Virtua Fighter has been announced for PC so we may be getting RE5 soon as well.You don't need a Gamepad, if you don't like the defualt layout you can map the keys to different ones (Try mapping "Melee" attack to left mouse, then "Ranged" to right, and then "Special" to middle - that way you won't be forced with the "JKL" and the Arrow Key camera control) and if you already own a 360 or PS3, those gamepads will work as well.You like Devil May Cry, and you want it on your PC because it is your preferred platform
Why you should pass:
You can't run itYou hate the DMC series (because this one hasn't changed much)The Demo didn't win you overYou already own the game/played it to death on the consoles
If I buy the game anytime soon I'll post those impressions later, thanks for reading! I'd appreciate constructive criticism and feedback, it'll make all of this typing well worth it.
Intro.
Alright, this isn't exactly a "review" - more like impressions of the gameplay, I don't want to talk about the full game since most already know about it, so it's just the impressions of how well this has been ported, and if a Hack N' Slash doesn't suck on PC (which it doesn't)- since DMC4 has been out for a while, and heck, so has the demo, and the PC demo, and I bet the game (PC version) has been out for a while too, I'll skip all that story and dialogue and level design Hulabaloo. If you want to skip all the other Hulabaloo (A.K.A. Details) then press control+F and type in "Quick Summary" or "Finale" (no quotes).
Prologue
A little background, I've played the PS3 version, seen the 360 version, and I own a PC, PS3, and a Wii - and right now I'm going to fess up, I've never played a hack n' slash on PC (I don't even know of any really, I've played every game genre, even sports games, on PC - but never a hack n' slash) so my expectations were low.
Now, the main reason I'm posting my impressions is because I was just so shocked that I had to tell someone about how good it was, I thought the controls would be clunky, I thought it would be poorly optimized, I thought it would have a bad framerate, I expected the worst - after all, we're talking about a Capcom PC port here, RE4 didn't even have mouse support, when the game came out, people had to get mods to fix it.
I got the exact opposite - the controlling was what really impressed me.
Alright time to categorize everything, I'll start with controls:
Controls:
It's obvious to say that you can use a gamepad for this, and the main reason I put this up is to talk about how easy and fluid the controls are for the game because lets face it, this game has been out for a long time, and I'm late to the party because this demo has been out for a while too - so I'm going to focus on the keyboard controls (oh yeah, you don't need a mouse) - chances are, the majority already knows how it controls on the PS3 and 360, but has no idea about a keyboard.
To move, you've got WASD, but it's the combat that's the tricky part, and the default controls, focus movement on the WASD, and the combat controls on the IJKL keys. I is a Melee attack, J is a firearm attack, K is jump, and L is DT or Devil Arm (btw, Nero's devil arm is awesome, and it can trigger some kick ass finishing moves on boss fights) - the learning curve is about the same as picking up the controller on any other DMC game, about 15-20 minutes of fiddling around and getting the hang of things, and you'll be an expert.
The demo/trial consists of a 10 minute mission (as in, you go through the mission killing things and doing some easy puzzles, until the timer runs out), and a Boss Fight - Naturally I stayed away from that boss until I picked up on the controls, so I started the Mission - it has a ten minute timer, and many tutorial windows pop up, with a picture of the 360 controller telling you about the controls, and don't worry, capcom doesn't assume that every PC gamer also owns a 360, so they tell you what they keys are on the keyboard as well! (this 360 controller seems to be the new 'gamepad of choice' for PC gamers since chances are most PC gamers own one of the new consoles, and the 360 controller is the most computer friendly - but if I'm going to use a gamepad I'll just use my PS3 controller because it also just plugs right into the USB, and I can get a driver or something, sorry, nothing against 360 but I don't have a 360 controller and I prefer the PS3 one anyway, I mean, I grew up with DMC on PS !!)
Camera Controls
I put this in a separate section (though it's a short one) because the default controls for camera controlling (when the camera isn't fixed) are the arrow keys, this is hard to maneuver when you have both hands on the keyboard, far from the Arrow Keys (unless you've got a different kind of keyboard, then I'm sorry for assuming so...) - so I'd just like to mention that it would be good ahead of time to change those keys from "left and right" to "Z" and "C" - that way you can control it quicker, and you don't have to risk dieing when the camera fucks you over in combat.
Movement
It looks a little weird sometimes, since with a PC, doing the "fine tuning" in movement is when you have a 3rd person game with a camera that is most likely being moved with the mouse, such as Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, or Oblivion - and you get even better movement with that then an analog stick (for the most part) but in "Fixed Camera Games" it's a different story, some games fix that by adding some more animations to character movement but this is a port, a good one, but not a "fantastic" one, but the only real complaint I can give about the movement is when you aren't in combat and you're running down some path, and then you change direction with either A or D, and then your character just magically changes direction, that's the only way I can describe it since you don't see his transition, it's more of like a "POOF, I'm heading left now! I move so fast that you didn't even notice!" - but that's in the console versions too, it's just a little more noticeable on PC.
Another Gripe is when the camera changes while you are running and then you end up already having the wrong direction pushed, and it's an endless loop of walking on stairs, the camera changes, and then you instantly turn around...but that's plagued all fixed camera games.
Combat/ Movement PT2.
Alright so the camera can kind of mess up your perception in DMC games during combat but most of the time, in combat, the camera can be moved, and that way you won't have to accidently launch enemies in the air when you meant to drive your sword into their chest. This is when the learning curve for the controls is meant to be practiced, there's lots of very good tutorial menu's that come up, and to exit from them you just tap enter with your pinky, and get right back into the game.
The fighting is definitely the funnest part of the game and it's obviously the main reason people love the series and it's why you buy the game, but man, this is what surprised me, I thought this would be a pain in the ass to play with a keyboard, but oh was I wrong.
Movement during combat isn't hard, and that's surprising with the absence of an analog stick, I had no problem jumping away from and dodging enemies, and even more surprising, is precisely hitting my targets, just simply press the keys, hit "I" and Nero will know what to do, I thought I would constantly miss my target and have to end up shooting all my enemies to death and just keep on jumping and locking onto them, but instead I'm doing kick ass combos, launching people in the air, throwing them with my demonic arm straight to the ground, then blowing them away with my double barelled .50 caliber magnum with infinite ammo, and getting an "A" combo rating on almost every enemy I encounter.
I can't BELIEVE I'm saying this..but...
I'm almost better at this game with a keyboard then I was with a controller, and I use to think it was impossible to play a hack n' slash on PC without something going horribly wrong, but nope, I've worked out the kinks and now I'm an expert with Nero.
Graphics, Sound, and Performance
I'll make this one short, the graphics, are fucking mindblowing on Max, if you've played both console versions, and then you see this one, you'll instantly see the difference, it's gorgeous, your jaw will drop.
Sound - well, depends on your speaker set-up, but everything is great, the "chainsaw" (or is it an "engine"?) thing on my sword sounds menacing, Nero's cheesy anime "Slam Dunk!" remarks are crisp, no glitches or repeating loops, it's all nicely done.
Performance: Well, my PC is a hybrid of old and new, but it's my 8800GTS (that was cheap at the time, and is cheaper now) that saves my ass, but I'm always worried about my old Pentium D. Dual core - but if your PC has a PCI express card, a dual core (of any kind) - and 1-2 gigs of RAM, chances are, you can run this, even on Max. Scroll down for the demo and see for yourself if that sounds too good to be true - who knows, I may be wrong.
EDIT: OH, I almost forgot, I don't know what this game looks like on a regular computer monitor, I have my computer plugged into a 26'' LCD HDTV using an DVI-> HDMI cable since the 8800 has that available, so your "Mindblowing graphical experience" may be different than mine - but hey, if your computer Monitor has an HDMI Input, I say go for try it out, games will look 100X better.
Finale
Alright, now the "Quick Summary" - first of all, IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN SEEING HOW DMC PLAYS ON YOUR PC DOWNLOAD THIS NOW BY CLICKING THESE WORDS!!! I put that in all caps because I can't stress this enough, since the game has been out for a long time, people have probably already played it on the consoles, and are probably looking at the DMC demo thinking "Eh, it's probably not worth it, I would like it on my PC but I've got it on my [console] and I don't need to try it out" - but no, you DO need to try it out, you'll be surprised - not only that Capcom made a good PC port, but that you won't need a controller to play it well.
Now that I've had good impressions, I shall post the "Why you should buy it" - because the demo has convinced me to buy the game (eventually).
Why you should "buy" it:
Why you should pass:
If I buy the game anytime soon I'll post those impressions later, thanks for reading! I'd appreciate constructive criticism and feedback, it'll make all of this typing well worth it.