Devil May Cry 2

"Capcom, you have officially hit the Tyson Zone."

For those who don't read ESPN, the Tyson Zone is a phrase coined by Bill Simmons of Boston sports fanboy fame, referring to an athlete or celebrity doing enough stupid things to no longer be a surprise. Mike Tyson is obviously the king of this, with such role models as Britney Spears, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez and Michael Jackson also on the list.

Well, we're going to include video game companies in the Tyson Zone, with Capcom and Sonic Team as our flagships. The original Devil May Cry, for all of its horrendous faults (most notably the game being near-unplayable thanks to awful camera transitions literally out to kill you) still had a real style to it. There was uniqueness there -- a flair, a "wow, I've never seen this before" going on. Dante obviously sold his soul to the devil following his adventures on Mallet Island, because he doesn't have one in Devil May Cry 2.

There are literally two improvements --and only three -- over the original title. All enemies are now named with a health bar, and the intro is slightly longer with slightly better music. So once you watch the intro and kill one enemy, you've seen 2/3rds of the good things and it's just downhill from there. For the big sequel to their revolutionary new 3D action series, Capcom effectively fixed nothing wrong with the original Devil May Cry and made most if not anything worse. Frankly, a conspiracy theorist could have a field day with this one; any not release an atrocious sequel to make the less-than-par original look better?

The first thing any DMC fan will notice is how the game, specifically Dante himself, is completely soulless. Gone is the over-the-top action hero badass laughing in the face of all evil. We now have Dante wearing a skin-tight leather shirt and barely speaking -- which may a good thing, given the game has no story at all and all of Dante's lines are completely atrocious. Saying DMC2 has no story is no exaggeration, for the record. There is literally no plot, no character development, no real villain to speak of and no rhyme or reason for any of the game's events. If you ever wanted to play a game where you go from big city to offshore oil rig to underground demon world for NO REASON AT ALL, Devil May Cry 2 is your game. If you're a huge fan of the series and absolutely must play this, you're better off not even calling the main character Dante. Seriously, movie games have better plot and character than this game does.

The second thing you'll notice are the bland, boring graphics and atmosphere. If Devil May Cry is about hunting devils and being over-the-top badass, what the hell is Dante doing in a giant city chasing corporate figureheads and fighting infected tanks and helicopters? The entire game's setting is unbelievably backwards, and the areas you walk in are FAR too wide-open. Sure the castle from DMC1 is cramped at times, but DMC2 overcompensates for this by giving you way, way, way too much space. It takes forever to walk from point A to B in this game, even when you get out of the city and start doing more.... "demonic" areas. Demonic being in quotes because of course, it doesn't feel at all intimidating. Nor do you have any semblance of transitions to other sceneries that make sense. In the end, you're pretty much running through a giant city for no reason. Then following a helicopter to an offshore oil rig for no reason (and no transportation!). Then just... randomly going underground.

Then of course there's actually playing the game. I'm positive a group of DMC fans could get together and sue Capcom for false advertising if they bothered reading the back of the game case, because there is no action to be had in this here action game. No "cool new moves" to experience. And there's sure as hell not any "badass" going on here. None. For starters, the controls are completely backwards from the original and cannot be altered. So it's lame right off the bat.

More importantly, in a series that quite literally awards style points, nearly all the enemies in DMC2 can be defeated by simple button mashing. Better yet is how more than one boss can be killed by standing in one spot and pressing Square. No joke. Ultimately, you end up with awful level design and even worse enemies. The actual character you use isn't much better, either, given a lot of the attacks are nerfed to holy hell on top of the lame "new" moves forced upon you. Dodging is now assigned to a button, but you can't cancel attacks into rolls. "Dodging" into a wall will see Dante run up the wall and do some weird Jet-Li wall jump nonsense. A lot of rooms will be accessed by complete accident, thanks to there being no real visible spot for them -- such as jumping behind some giant truck.

And worst of all, Devil Trigger is simultaneously broken and lame. Bosses can already mostly be killed by holding Square, so DT just speeds up the process. The catch here is DT lasts ENTIRELY too long. You can seriously activate it, kill a boss from full health and then have DT left over for the game's various and idiotic flying puzzles. By the way, there are flying puzzles that you can only solve with Devil Trigger. Have fun.

But hey, surely some random intangible will save this game... right? Of course not. Again, all the side stuff from the original Devil May Cry is either not fixed or worse. The camera is equally worthless in DMC2, compounded by the most ridiculous hitstun of all time. Rather than just getting the hell of the ground upon getting hit, Dante will roll sideways and then kick flip into a sideways 720 degree spin. And then he will get hit again while the camera transitions into some useless angle that serves no purpose other than letting some boss hit you while you can't see the attack coming.

Red orbs are back, and are effectively useless. You can only buy extra damage on your very bad weapons or some items; there is no buying cool new skills, since you start with all of your skills innate. Speaking of the weapons, pretty much the entire set of weapons in DMC2 is unspeakably lame. Ebony and Ivory and the Shotgun are cool, and that's it. The exclusion of the Sparda sword is probably the most unspeakable disgrace of all, but you get the idea by now.

This all ultimately leads to the saddening conclusion that Devil May Cry 2 is actually a two disc game, with the second disc reserved for Dante's new sidekick, Lucia. Lucia's disc is actually not as laughably atrocious compared to Dante's (worthy of perhaps a 1.5/10 instead of a 1), but you'll likely be so disgusted with the entire game that you won't bother with Lucia's disc (or LUCIA DISC as the game calls it). Not that there's much of a difference, barring faster running speed and weaker-but-more-agile attacks. Lucia can actually attack enemies fast enough to stunlock them to death, assuming they can be stunlocked, so.... I guess there's a benefit to benefit to random button mashing? Maybe? As for Lucia's ranged weapons, they're horrendous. Laughably, horribly horrendous.

Which, lastly, brings us back to the original point: Capcom. Devil May Cry 2 isn't like Big Rigs, where you can treat the game like a joke and have 15 minutes of fun. DMC2 is just an outright joke with no punchline, and this was intentional on Capcom's part. The director of the original Devil May Cry was actually designing Resident Evil 3, but made it too action oriented. By the time he realized development was too far in to change anything, he just made a couple of minor tweaks and a name change.

PRESTO! Devil May is born! So Capcom, rather than be excited about this new series, nearly fires the original director for taking so long with Resident Evil 3; ergo, a new director making a horribly atrocious sequel. Capcom, embarrassed to holy hell and back, crawls back to the original director on hands and knees while simultaneously kissing his ass and wiping egg off their face. Verily, Devil May Cry 3 enters development and 2 is declared non-canon. As well it should be, since the ending to DMC2 just craps all over everything built up in the original.

Sadly however, the damage is permanently done with hardcore gamers no matter what Capcom does from here on in. Capcom, you are officially on notice. Frankly I'm not convinced this was all intentional to make the sub-par original game look better, but that's a different conversation for a different day. Even if you're like me and just have to play all the games of a series in order, I can safely tell you to skip this. You'll be better-off as a gamer pretending this never happened.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 04/20/09

Game Release: Devil May Cry 2 (US, 01/25/03)