DmC getting great 'pro' reviews, but getting smashed on metacritic

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Plague_Injected

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http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/dmc-devil-may-cry/user-reviews

The negative reviews don't even mention Dante's new look, but all criticise the game for having a lack of challenge, shallow and clunky combat, immature (and, in one part, extremely distasteful and pathetic) story, an inconsistent frame rate, and making the grading system based on damage instead of attack variety.

I've been watching youtube videos of the game, and it seems all of my fears about what arrogant and rank amateur developer Ninja Theory would do with the Devil May Cry name have come to pass. The veteran DMC players seem to not be impressed at all but give very specific reasons rather than the usual "hurgh it's different" self-entitled rage. I wonder if this may well be another case of "professional" reviews being unduly influenced by the publisher, particularly after Resident Evil 6 was destroyed by paid review outlets last year.
 
There is so many ZERO ranks.. Pretty much means.. Its obvious trolls.

Also who cares what others think.
 
Dion said:
There is so many ZERO ranks.. Pretty much means.. Its obvious trolls.

Also who cares what others think.
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I'm not paying attention to the scores, but the content of the reviews. The high-rating reviews are all pretty bad and basically echo Dante's most used line in DmC: "fuck you", which is directed at the "trolls".

Normally I wouldn't take Metacritic seriously but the negative and "yellow-coloured" reviews, so far, are all very sober. I've been looking for what people with an actual clue think about the game rather than the incredulous "oh I played Devil May Cry 1 & 4 on Easy, I'm a hardcore fan, DmC is great!" fodder.

This 10/10 review is pretty great though:


crazydangerous, Jan 15, 2013

"DmC is a brilliant title as it shows us how willing Video game journalists are to prostitute themselves for ad revenue, merchandise and review copies of games. Anyone who played one level would recognize the now crippled game play is a massive drop in quality from previous titles. From the way enemies take a minimum of 5 seconds to attack to the boss banter being things like **** you" and " no **** you". The Plot is your typical masturbatory tale of how corporations are bad and evil with edgy little twists like the murdering of unborn children and brothers debating the length of their **** With all of the above in mind It seem ninja theory are the hero's we truly need to drag unscrupulous game journalists into the spot light and hopefully discover how they justify misleading and lying to consumers with claims that games such as DmC is anything near good. I give this game a 10/10 for the valuable service it provides. Oh metcritic users here's a fun game, view the other reviews of anyone who gave this a 10/10 cause they sure love ninja theory games and that's about it.
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Dante looks like some homosexual emo reject from the Twilight films.
 
These "pro" reviews are pointless these days. I don't even read them anymore.
 
This is news how?

There is no such thing as a 10/10 game, its just not gonna happen, at least by realistic gamers. Angry Joe has the best reviews for products out there soly because he will call out a game as being shit, if it is!

Most "pro" reviewers only rate a game high to make money or to suck up.

Remember the Modern Warfare 3 fiasco? Worst CoD game ever to date, but somehow alot of companies gave it "absolutely gold" reviews. Its media at its finest!
 
Game play videos and word of mouth by forum members that I am pretty sure are not shills.
 
I get the feeling that this is going to be one of those games with a ton of mixed opinions. I'm not overly fond of the new Dante look but it's not like the old Dante looked amazing either. He was pretty much "generic Japanese anime badass dude". As for the story, I have to wonder if those people actually remember the previous games? The story in ALL of the previous games was utter nonsense with some pretty shit writing and dialog. They weren't exactly "mature" either.
 
Derangel said:
I get the feeling that this is going to be one of those games with a ton of mixed opinions. I'm not overly fond of the new Dante look but it's not like the old Dante looked amazing either. He was pretty much "generic Japanese anime badass dude". As for the story, I have to wonder if those people actually remember the previous games? The story in ALL of the previous games was utter nonsense with some pretty shit writing and dialog. They weren't exactly "mature" either.
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The difference here is that Ninja Theory/Capcom have been heavily hyping how good the story was going to be with DmC, and that it was going to be the best story in the series. Not only is the story as painfully adolescent as the previous ones, it takes itself too seriously (whereas DMCs 3 & 4 did not), it has absolutely dreadful writing (and doesn't have the "lost in translation" excuse to fall back on), and is completely unoriginal. Not only that, they try to convey Dante as a "badass" by having him say "fuck you" to every enemy, whereas in the previous games it was conveyed by Dante doing something "badass" in cutscenes. Rather than coming off as the brash show-off in Devil May Cry 3 (where Dante is roughly the same age as he is in DmC), the new Dante comes off as a sociopath.

There is also a controversial scene where Vergil shoots a pregnant woman in the womb, then in the head a few moments later...and apparently afterwards Dante gloats to the would-be father of the murdered unborn child - Mundus, the game's villain - , claiming he enjoyed watching it explode into little wet chunks. Dante does it to enrage Mundus, but it is in very poor taste.

So Ninja Theory's so-called speciality - story - falls flat on its face here, as well as the combat being a pale imitation of the previous games, a dodgy frame rate, and uninspired boss battles. I'm not seeing anything good about this game, let alone any improvement over the series that was supposedly in such a dire need of a reboot. This might appeal to God of War players who were turned off by Devil May Cry's speed and aesthetic, but it does nothing to bring aboard the existing fans and instead seemingly seeks to alienate them.
 
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Plague_Injected said:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/dmc-devil-may-cry/user-reviews

[...] all criticise the game for having a lack of challenge, shallow and clunky combat, immature (and, in one part, extremely distasteful and pathetic) story, an inconsistent frame rate, and making the grading system based on damage instead of attack variety.
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According to the GB:QL there's a difficulty level where you die from one hit and enemies don't, so I don't see how anyone wanting a challenge can be disappointed. So far only the console versions are out, so of course the frame rate sucks. Welcome to 2013, where sub-30 is the console norm. Perhaps DmC fanboys should have held out a week for the PC version instead?

The rest of your post is just typical fanboyish conspiracy theories. The reason 'pro' reviewers like the game is because they're not DmC fanboys, so they can enjoy the good parts of the game without getting hung up on how it's "different from before". In all likelihood, a low metacritic rating is simply because DmC fanboys aren't being serviced by the game, because, and here's the kicker, ultimately there aren't enough of them to matter.

I don't care one way or another. I don't see how it's a 5/5 like Brad gave it over at GB, but rest assured that it wasn't a bought grade.
 
From what I've seen of the reviews they toned down or took out the progression system and made this just an action platformer. I think his new look is fine but is it just me or does the game just not look very good? Like they didn't work very hard on the aesthetics. I recently started playing Devil May Cry HD(I missed the PS2 era) and while the game does look very old it definitely has more personality than this game.
 
A lot of those metacritic user accounts were created just to bash the game.

It's actually a pretty decent game, not anything amazing, but definitely better than 4 and (obviously) 2.
 
Without spoiling anything, can anyone tell me if the game follows the style of the old games where you basically get 50% through the game and have to backtrack and fight the same bosses 2-3 more times before you finally beat the game?

I thought that was pretty lame.
 
djoye said:
Without spoiling anything, can anyone tell me if the game follows the style of the old games where you basically get 50% through the game and have to backtrack and fight the same bosses 2-3 more times before you finally beat the game?

I thought that was pretty lame.
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DMC4 was the only one that was half finished. The others had back tracking and repeat bosses but not to the same degree as 4.
 
Sorry, I trust Brad Shoemaker and Jim Sterling more than a bunch of butt-hurt internet trolls.

It seems many think that if a pro reviewer gives a game a score one feels is undeserved, the only possibility is a conspiracy of corruption. These people have no idea how pro reviews work, or how to use them.
You are supposed to find reviewers whose integrity and ability you trust, and if you are really lucky, whose tastes correspond with yours. Ignore the metacritic score, and just see what they say. If you find you disagree on too many games, find someone else.

I have complete faith in all of the Giant Bomb crew, and the way they reviewed some games i personally played, like ME3, showed them to be far more on target for how I felt than the internet rage I saw on places like metacritic. And I loved ME1, and liked ME2 a lot. The internet seems to encourage a great many people to give everything a 10 or a 0; I find that pretty useless.

People who want the old DMC to stay the same can rage all they want, giving the game very low scores is their perogative. As someone who preferred Ninja Gaiden over DMC, and saw that franchise go off a cliff, as well as Dragon Age and, to a lesser extent, ME, I can identify. But by all serious accounts, DMC is a good enough game in its own right, and only is a failure if you wanted nothing to change in the DMC series.
 
triclops41 said:
Sorry, I trust Brad Shoemaker and Jim Sterling more than a bunch of butt-hurt internet trolls.

It seems many think that if a pro reviewer gives a game a score one feels is undeserved, the only possibility is a conspiracy of corruption. These people have no idea how pro reviews work, or how to use them.
You are supposed to find reviewers whose integrity and ability you trust, and if you are really lucky, whose tastes correspond with yours. Ignore the metacritic score, and just see what they say. If you find you disagree on too many games, find someone else.

I have complete faith in all of the Giant Bomb crew, and the way they reviewed some games i personally played, like ME3, showed them to be far more on target for how I felt than the internet rage I saw on places like metacritic. And I loved ME1, and liked ME2 a lot. The internet seems to encourage a great many people to give everything a 10 or a 0; I find that pretty useless.

People who want the old DMC to stay the same can rage all they want, giving the game very low scores is their perogative. As someone who preferred Ninja Gaiden over DMC, and saw that franchise go off a cliff, as well as Dragon Age and, to a lesser extent, ME, I can identify. But by all serious accounts, DMC is a good enough game in its own right, and only is a failure if you wanted nothing to change in the DMC series.
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Again, so many of you are only looking at the scores and not the actual content of the reviews. These are not "butthurt fanboys" but people who have played the previous games and know more about the DMC games than some guy who plays and reviews 100s of games a year as his job, and thus is far less likely to notice the subtle but significant changes to the game. This is evident by so many press reviews stating nothing about the changes in the combat.

None of the changes in DmC are for the better. Not even one. You can piss and moan about how people can't accept change, but most times when change is criticised it is because it changes things for the worse, not the better. Capcom did this with RE6 and have instructed Ninja Theory to do the same with another one of its franchises. The gameplay is dumb, it has a high amount of pointless platforming, is even more low-brow, and abuses overlong cutscenes that are far worse than anything from the previous DMC games. The game doesn't even succeed in telling a better story.

As for Jim Sterling, he stated in the review that the game is faster than previous games, which is flatout wrong, as well as being more fluid. Also, he gave Modern Warfare 3 a 9.5/10. Sterling has some excellent commentaries on the state of the gaming industry, but he is a weak reviewer.

DmC is Devil May Cry for the pathetic Western casual market who thinks God of War is the pinnacle of hack-and-slash and hates anything that even remotely poses a threat to continuous progression through their games. It is no wonder so many people are angry; they have made an entirely different game for an entirely different demographic using the same characters and name, disowning the previous games and the fans.
 
The demo was pretty good. The character is pretty annoying, but he's always been (have finished and own every DMC game up to this one including 2 copies of IV because of the PC enhanced mode). Most of the missions you doesn't really notice him.

It's definitely not a terrible game, and it's pretty similar to IV. Based on the demo I'd say 7/10, as it has potential (though some of it is a bit...rehashed from other games I liked the boss, and it's kind of overly easy...) though I'm not sure about the full game. Will probably get it on sale.
 
I've done a playthrough the game and I have played DMC 1-4 DMD and H&H modes to SSS ranks.

This game isn't DMC3. It's a mix of DMC4 and 3 in play style with "newer" simplified elements. The framerate has been decent on my ps3 and aside from some sound skip during a scene to cut scene change once in awhile, it's been pretty decent.

A lot of ripping into the game by people that probably haven't even played the game or just judged on demo/videos. I for one am enjoying it for the most part, but yeah some dialogue writers were probably skipped during budget talks...
 
The "feel" of 60fps.
S-S-S-tylish!

I find this appropriate:

For our longtime fans...
0174_25758geoa1.gif


For our new players!
i302QQsrHNQ89.gif


Har har
 
LeviathanZERO said:
The "feel" of 60fps.
S-S-S-tylish!

I find this appropriate:

For our longtime fans...
0174_25758geoa1.gif


For our new players!
i302QQsrHNQ89.gif


Har har
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So, what about the difficulty levels above the default? With games that have multiple difficulties it always baffles me that people will bitch about the default one being easy and never seeming to talk about the higher ones, as if they didn't realize they were there or bother trying them to see if they helped.
 
Derangel said:
So, what about the difficulty levels above the default? With games that have multiple difficulties it always baffles me that people will bitch about the default one being easy and never seeming to talk about the higher ones, as if they didn't realize they were there or bother trying them to see if they helped.
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Well, from what I understand the combo system is broken, which changing the difficulty will not fix.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coevhaCP324
 
Derangel said:
So, what about the difficulty levels above the default? With games that have multiple difficulties it always baffles me that people will bitch about the default one being easy and never seeming to talk about the higher ones, as if they didn't realize they were there or bother trying them to see if they helped.
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According to reviews, harder difficulties just make the enemies have more health and do more damage (and in one mode, you die in one hit). In previous games, enemies would become faster, more aggressive, and use completely new attacks...as well as going into some hyper-unstoppable-bullshit state if you don't kill them quick enough.
 
Plague_Injected said:
According to reviews, harder difficulties just make the enemies have more health and do more damage (and in one mode, you die in one hit). In previous games, enemies would become faster, more aggressive, and use completely new attacks...as well as going into some hyper-unstoppable-bullshit state if you don't kill them quick enough.
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That's kind of what they did with Enslaved too. Though with Enslaved just doing that with enemies worked because it made you have to try a little harder as the game was ridiculously easy on default. That said, Enslaved had an interesting well realized world with great characters. Doesn't sound like that applies for DmC. I wonder how much of the problems with this game are due to Ninja Theory and what is due to Capcom's demands.
 
DmC seems ridiculous with the ease of the combo meter but people ripped on every dmc to date for something or another.

Were the other dmc's story masterpieces? Was the dialog not cheesy? Was the difficulty that much harder? Did you not have incredible moves and combos that got you SSS rank in a few hits?

I mean seriously, go rewatch some dmc's fights and bosses. Go take a look at SSS rank combos of dmc3 in dmd mode. Watch the exceed combos and jump/cancel moves of Dante in dmc4. What about NA's initial release of dmc3 and its broken starter difficulties...

When you played DMD mode in the other games, did they not get harder? did they not get dt of their own? Did they not get ridiculously hard if you took your sweet time? Were you not given insane crowd control attacks, high power damage and crazy weapons at that point?
 
Slade said:
I've done a playthrough the game and I have played DMC 1-4 DMD and H&H modes to SSS ranks.

This game isn't DMC3. It's a mix of DMC4 and 3 in play style with "newer" simplified elements. The framerate has been decent on my ps3 and aside from some sound skip during a scene to cut scene change once in awhile, it's been pretty decent.

A lot of ripping into the game by people that probably haven't even played the game or just judged on demo/videos. I for one am enjoying it for the most part, but yeah some dialogue writers were probably skipped during budget talks...
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What..... do you mean simplified?

And personally, aside from the combat, the other DMC are terrible. But I only really play them for the gameplay. My problem with the character is that it seems to be a projection from the director, which makes the already flat character even worst.
 
Heroes in games tend to spew the views and ideals of the directors behind them. dmc series isn't new to this.

As far as the combat goes, I think of it as a mix of 3 and 4 of which I have fond memories of 3 once I got into dmd mode and was forced to come up with the quickest and stylish ways to dispatch enemies and button mashing got punished. Going to 4 was an improvement in gameplay I found but terrible level design due to repetition.
 
Plague_Injected said:
. Rather than coming off as the brash show-off in Devil May Cry 3 (where Dante is roughly the same age as he is in DmC), the new Dante comes off as a sociopath.

There is also a controversial scene where Vergil shoots a pregnant woman in the womb, then in the head a few moments later...and apparently afterwards Dante gloats to the would-be father of the murdered unborn child - Mundus, the game's villain - , claiming he enjoyed watching it explode into little wet chunks. Dante does it to enrage Mundus, but it is in very poor taste.
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That's disgusting. No way would I buy a game and support that kind of crap.
 
Plague_Injected said:
According to reviews, harder difficulties just make the enemies have more health and do more damage.
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At the very least higher difficulties changes how the levels are populated with enemies, as was clearly explained in the GB:QL. Again your information seems inaccurate.
 
Enemies also have Devil Trigger.

Seems like the main people bashing it in this thread haven't even played it.
 
I've been skeptical of this like most fans since they announced it with Ninja Theory as the developer.
It was pretty obvious they had screwed it up from the first youtube videos.

I'm a big fan - I liked DMC1,3 and 4 plenty (although I've just started trying to play DMC3...abandoned it back in the day...too hard and babies to deal with...) but I'm not an uber-good player. I've never gotten through Hard mode on any of them, for example.

I'd bet reviewers like it just fine. They liked Dragon Age 2, too.

I frankly think reviewers play so many games across so many genres that they aren't reliable any more for the smaller genres I'm fond of (RPGs, strategy games, etc). I don't trust reviewers on oldschool RPGs at all, for example - they measure by the measuring stick of Call of Duty and God of War and whatever - rather than by what makes a good RPG. Thus the disconnect between pro reviews of DA2 and player reaction.
 
After playing it for a while, the game is decent. DmC games never had an amazing story and this one does not either. The gameplay is pretty good it is entertaining overall. It is not a horrendous game like some have said. I agree with the the user that said insanely low scores should be reserved for games like Big Rigs.
 
Derangel said:
That's kind of what they did with Enslaved too. Though with Enslaved just doing that with enemies worked because it made you have to try a little harder as the game was ridiculously easy on default. That said, Enslaved had an interesting well realized world with great characters. Doesn't sound like that applies for DmC. I wonder how much of the problems with this game are due to Ninja Theory and what is due to Capcom's demands.
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Yeah Enslaved combat was built for thinking around complex enemy maneuvers so adding depth at harder difficulties wasn't necessary. DmC is built to be a brawler more in the vain of god of war.

GreenMonkey said:
I frankly think reviewers play so many games across so many genres that they aren't reliable any more for the smaller genres I'm fond of (RPGs, strategy games, etc). I don't trust reviewers on oldschool RPGs at all, for example - they measure by the measuring stick of Call of Duty and God of War and whatever - rather than by what makes a good RPG. Thus the disconnect between pro reviews of DA2 and player reaction.
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I briefly tried my hand at hammering out a game a few days or a week at a time and I found it really changes your perspective on good and bad qualities of a game.
 
i'll buy the game when it hits $4.99 or $9.99 and I hope it will before the end of 2013.
 
Played the demo on 360 and PS3. Felt like a DMC game to me. Don't get the hate. Only reason I'm not picking it up right now is my backlog is too big.
 
AceCR42 said:
Enemies also have Devil Trigger.

Seems like the main people bashing it in this thread haven't even played it.
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From what I have played, not every enemy gets Devil Trigger (even the lowest enemies got it in previous games) and the only effect DT has on enemies is that their attacks are not interruptible.

"Nephilim Mode" feels very much like Demon Hunter Mode from DMC4, so it's not very challenging at all if you have played a DMC game before. "Devil Hunter" is Easy Mode, and I haven't even tried "Human"...I'm assuming that's for "I play gamesh for their shtoriesh" people who just want to hit one or two buttons between cutscenes. "Son of Sparda" feels challenging more due to putting in red-type and blue-type enemies together (as well as having later-game enemies show up early)...it's not challenging in a fun way, it instead just limits the majority of your moveset and requires you to spam Evade often. Ninja Theory's inexperience in making a balanced challenging game shows, since the default difficulty is a joke, and the highest ones resort to a very artificial form of challenge. I haven't got DMD Mode yet, so it will be interesting to see if that improves anything or just makes it worse.

I can see this game being challenging purely from a completionist's point of view but not much else. It could be hard to get top ranks on every level, but in previous games at top difficulties it was hard (as in Dark Souls hard) just getting through a level to begin with.
 
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