Devil May Cry 4 PC Demo Impressions

By Joe Haygood | June 8, 2008

So I just finished playing through the Devil May Cry 4 demo on the PC a couple of times, and I have to say that I am resonably impressed with the way the game has moved from the console to the PC.  This is essentially the same demo that graced Xbox Live a few months agao, with the exception of a few PC centric visual upgrades, like higher resolutions and a multitude of AA options.

So how does the game translate from the 360 to the PC.  Well, first off is that you will have to have a gamepad.  Any will work, but you will need one.  Trying to play this game on the keyboard is an exercise in futility.  There are way too many keys needed to play and they are not laid out in a logical fashion.  You can customize the key settings, unlike Devil May Cry 3 on the PC, but it should of shipped with a better default control set.  Once you get past using a keyboard and move to a gamepad, the game starts to come together very nicely.

As you play through the demo, you realize that Devil May Cry is a visual feast for the eyes.  The colors really pop off the screen, and the enemies and good guys alike have a great amount of detail in them.  Nero, the new character to the series looks fantastic, and hi-res backdrops that he plays in are a sight to behold.  Running the game at 1920×1200 with Super High detail, really looks sharp, without a hint of jaggies in any frame.  Frame rate also keeps up the pace with my machine routinely hitting 90+ frames per second, whle playing through the demo.

The demo had a lot of musical backgrounds ranging from classical, to rock, and it never seemed to leave you without some sort of nice ambient sound.  We hear little of Nero in the demo, so it is hard to tell how his or anyone elses voice will sound, but if it plays out like most other Capcom games, the leads will sound great, with everyone else sounding average at best.

The combat system will take some getting used to on a PC, as you have to be able to really use your gamepad to the highest order, as multi-hit combos are the rule for the game.  As you can see in some of the above videos, you get ratings on combos,  the higher the grade the better your combo usage.  You go from D to A, and if you really get good, can get into the S categories.  I for one never could get higher than a B rating on with the combo system in the demo, but maybe with practice, and the full game, you can accomplish those higher combo grades.

So far, with the demo, Devil May Cry 4 is shaping up nicely for the PC.  High frame rates, high visual details, and great sound are good marks, but the combat system might need a few more tweaks before it is final, as it still does not seem to respond well at times with PC gamepads.  The full release should hit shelves the beginning of July.