Devil May Cry 5 embraces its own campness and revs up to launch in March
Bloody? Yes. Gory? Yes. Edgy? Not at all.
It's so very good that Devil May Cry 5 is aware of just how daft it is. Unveiled to great surprise at E3 back in June, Capcom have been demoing their hack n' slasher revival at Gamescom. As well as giving us a firm March 8th release date for next year, Capcom also dropped a new trailer, and it's leaning all the way into the ridiculous excess that the series became famous for in Devil May Cry 3 onwards. Check the videos below for demons, gore, banter straight out of a superhero cartoon, wildly enthusiastic vocal battle themes, and some gameplay footage.
While increasingly scruffy original hero Dante makes an appearance in the trailer below, primary protagonist role goes once more to Nero. Introduced in Devil May Cry 4, he was a bit stuffy and straight-laced back then, but has loosened up a lot. Even if not all of his one-liners hit the mark, you can't deny the boy's enthusiasm. He even seems to be handling the loss of his fancy demon arm pretty well, with his new gadgeteering lady friend Nico having built him a transforming bionic replacement with a built-in grappling hook.
That's definitely more Bayonetta than God Of War. While the environments are perhaps a little more grey than I'd like, the monsters are a creatively gruesome lot. I especially like the massive quadruped mech-walker thing. The bullet hell battle against the insectoid demon-angel lady thing looks fun, too, and I'm hoping I get to manually steer that rocket-arm through hoops while dodging waves of lasers. The trailer also gives us a peek at one of Dante's weapons - a motorcycle that splits into a pair of massive buzzsaw-axes, then back into a bike. Yes.
For those of you wanting a little more to chew on, here's 15 minutes of raw, direct-feed gameplay footage, courtesy of IGN, featuring some interesting combat systems (like single-use, expendable robot arms) and a whole bundle of daft banter between Nero and early boss-monster Goliath.
And just in case you can't get enough of Nero's deliciously over-the-top battle theme, Devil Trigger, there's an official music video version right here.
From what I've seen so far, this is far closet to DMC4's combat than anything. Nero's grappling hook lets players either pull themselves towards foes, or drag targets up into the air with you to extend combos without having to touch the ground. Given that the series has always rewarded stylish and technical play, there's plenty of incentive to showboat and treat the floor like lava.
There's also the matter of a third playable character that Capcom haven't yet unveiled. Smart money's on Dante's occasionally evil brother Vergil, although I wouldn't complain if Lady or Trish were playable again. Honestly, anything's fine at this point - if they can come up with motorcycle-axes, I'm happy to let them go wild.
Devil May Cry 5 will be launching on March 8th, 2019. You can see a little more of the game on its official site here.