For a game that started as the first Resident Evil title being developed specifically for the Playstation 2, Devil May Cry sure turned out to be a lot of fun. To be fair, I rather like the Resident Evil games - they're fun in their own hokey, sluggish sort of way. But Devil May Cry is a different breed entirely. It's pure action. It's one part Castlevania and one part John Woo. And it is executed almost flawlessly.

You play as Dante, the half human, half demon son of the legendary demon Sparda, who defeated and imprisoned the ruler of the underworld 2000 years ago. Dante is a freelance mercenary, specializing in the bizarre and supernatural, hoping that if he kills enough demons he can avenge his mother and brother, who were killed by evil forces twenty years ago. The game opens with a mysterious woman named Trish bringing Dante to the mysterious Mallet Island to stop the previously imprisoned ruler of the underworld from entering and conquering our world. Mayhem ensues.

Gameplay is mission-based. At the end of each mission, you receive a ranking based on several factors, including completion time, amount of damage taken, power-ups collected, and item use. This, combined with the frantic pace of combat, makes Devil May Cry feel very much like an arcade game. However, unlike an arcade game, you are usually free to explore areas you passed through in previous missions - the mission structure here serves primarily as a convenient way of breaking up the story.

There are relatively few weapons and power-ups available, and it seems to have been a wise design choice to keep things simple. Available power-ups include red, yellow, and blue orbs, which are used as currency for buying items and skills, extra lives, and extensions to maximum life, respectively. There are also items that grant temporary invincibility, enhance your demonic powers, and refill your life gauge.

But enough about all that. The thing that makes Devil May Cry so ridiculously fun is the combat. Available attacks include close-combat with a sword or gauntlets and ranged attacks with a variety of firearms. The truly wonderful thing is that you have a melee weapon and some sort of gun equipped at all times, with separate buttons on the controller devoted to each of them. This allows for effortless switching between the two types of weapon during battle, and creates some spectacular combos. After playing through the entire game, I still haven't gotten tired of throwing enemies into the air with my sword and then blowing them to pieces with a shotgun before they hit the ground.

Much of the variety in the combat system comes from a number of special moves, which can be bought using red orbs between missions or at a number of fixed locations throughout the island. These moves are weapon specific: one group is tied to your sword, Alastor, and the other is tied to the flame gauntlets, Ifrit. Each of these weapons also has a Devil Trigger mode, which can be activated after your D.T. gauge has filled up during combat. In this mode, all of your attacks will deal more damage, guns will fire faster, you will recover a small amount of life, and depending on what skills you have purchased with red orbs, extra battle abilities may become available to you.

And you'll need a few tricks up your sleeve when you get into a fight in Devil May Cry, because this game throws a lot of enemies at you. Apart from boss battles, you will almost never find yourself fighting a single monster at a time. As a result, survival depends largely on your ability to think on your feet in order to separate a horde of enemies into small groups that can be dealt with rapidly and safely. Most rooms are repopulated as soon as you leave, so you can't count on safe passage through areas you have already cleared out. This game is primarily focused on combat, and it gives you plenty of it.

Boss battles are, as a general rule, spectacular. They have a very epic feel to them, as you often have to fight the same boss multiple times over the course of several missions before you finish it off. These battles are refreshingly challenging. Each one took me several tries, which just makes the eventual victory more rewarding.

A big help to combat in general is the "File" section of the in-game sub-screen, which contains detailed information about the enemies you have encountered so far. A section is added for each enemy type (including bosses) when you encounter it for the first time. As you battle more and more enemies of a particular type, information is added to their file. This can be very helpful in determining how best to dodge particularly devastating attacks and how to exploit a particular monster's weak point. This strikes me as an extremely good move on Capcom's part. After all, this sort of information was bound to be widely available in strategy guides and online FAQs anyway. They've simply made that information accessible in-game.

I do have a few complaints about the game, although they are all minor enough that I still consider the game worthy of a five star rating. For one thing, the sheer amount of combat in this game is bound to give most players a severe case of Nintendo Thumb. For me, it was particularly problematic early in the game, where the only available weapons were a sword and akimbo handguns. The guns won't fire automatically if you hold down the button, so if you're trying to take something out from a distance, or juggle an enemy in the air with bullets (another favorite trick of mine), you have to hold down the R1 button to keep your guns drawn and constantly pound on the X button. Luckily, a more powerful firearm is available not long after you begin the second mission, which alleviates the problem somewhat, although it certainly does not eliminate it.

Everything in Devil May Cry is rendered on the fly, but the camera angles are all fixed (including a few "moving-fixed" angles where the camera moves along a predetermined path to keep up with Dante). Although most of the angles (combined with the phenomenal graphics and level design) are quite effective in setting the mood, there are a few places throughout the game where rooms become a bit difficult to navigate due to sudden, awkward changes in camera angle as you walk around the room. The directional controls do not remap to match a new angle until you let go of the left analog stick, but even so, it's quite easy to lose your bearings in some situations. At best, this is an annoyance. In the middle of a boss battle, it can be fatal.

Shortly before the end of the game (don't worry, I'm not going to spoil any surprises here. None of the good ones, anyway), the developers appear to have forgotten what game they were making. For one key battle near the end, it turns into what can only be described as a space shooter, along the lines of R-Type. Although it's a reasonably fun battle, it's a little weird to spend the entire game mastering combat with swords and guns, then be thrust without warning into something completely different. After this battle, things go back to normal for a bit, and then the game turns briefly into a sort of bizarre 3rd-person flight simulator. Again, I have to question the design decision of adding what are essentially mini-games to a title that is meant to be pure hack and slash action, but it only happens twice, which isn't quite obtrusive enough to make the overall experience any less fun.

This is the fourth PS2 game I've bought to fill the void until Metal Gear: Solid 2 and Final Fantasy X are released. All of the games I have at this point are fun in their own way, but now that I own Devil May Cry, I can finally justify buying this console. It's a near-perfect blend of accessible action gameplay with extreme replayability. As a gamer, I really couldn't ask for much more. Except maybe a sequel.

Recommended: Yes