Devil May Cry 5 is out in the wild, and the game is receiving critical acclaim from just about every gaming outlet. It’s brash, it’s irreverent, and it absolutely oozes cheese, with its three playable characters bringing diversity to gameplay that we haven’t seen in an action game before. Devil May Cry 5 is my favorite game of the year thus far, but it should not overshadow the greatness of its predecessor. No, I’m not talking about Devil May Cry 4, but Ninja Theory’s western reimagining, DmC: Devil May Cry.
DmC: Devil May Cry was a tough sell for Ninja Theory and Capcom. It wasn’t developed by Capcom’s internal team or director Hideaki Itsuno, the latter of whom served only as a supervisor for the project. It would release nearly five years after Devil May Cry 4, leaving longtime fans without a continuation of its story and no clear plan for its future. These problems only made the pill harder to swallow when they saw the radically redesigned look for protagonist Dante.Gone was Dante’s famous white hairdo, replaced with a short, brown crew cut. His clothing style was influenced by more modern fashion than the original character, with skinny jeans and a less comical overcoat, and his rebellious attitude was more pronounced. Early trailers also made him excessively skinny, as if he had come directly off a three-day amphetamines bender to send demons back to hell.