Capcom Unveils "Classic Dante" DLC for DMC: Devil May Cry

[Darren716]

You know what I'm really not surprised this happened. Crapcom has turned nickle and diming with DLC into an artform at this point.

 

[Mr C]

Personally none of this bothers me. I love the original DMC, but it had nothing to do with the character. The 1st game was actually extremely light on plot and characterisation, which was to its benefit. This allowed me to focus on the awesome action.

The 2nd was crap, but it's still in my collection.

The 3rd has awesome gameplay, but the extra emphasis on story and characterisation turned me off because I found Dante to be a total whooping wanker.

Never played the 4th, but I shall be getting this reboot and welcome the change.

If you are not happy about the changes because you liked the character of Dante, I suggest you don't buy it.

If you dislike the gameplay, buy something else and get over it. There are greater things to worry about.

 

[scotth266]

If you change what the product is, and then claim it's the same thing, that's an issue. A huge issue in gaming, and media in general, is one of brand identity, where they try and pass off anything they want to try and do as being part of an existing series, when it really shouldn't be. Expanding on something and adding new features to an existing game is fine, but when your altering everything from the look and backstory of characters, to the way the game plays, to reducing the number of options, that's a problem when you decide to slap a label on it and say "this is part of an established franchise".

What part of the whole "this is a reboot" thing did you miss? People expecting more of the same weren't going to get what they wanted, because Capcom wanted to modernize the franchise: something it's been doing a lot of lately. Let's take Resident Evil 4, for instance: a lot of old Resi fans complained and whined that it wasn't THEIR Resi, that this was a foreign entity: yet the game was great, both as a Resi game and as a game in its own right. It was just something new. This is much the same, except the number of people crying about it has increased because Capcom changed some surface details.

The thing is with DMC is that it's not being presented as just a modern beat em up with swords and guns, it's being called a "Devil May Cry" game, and the vaguely similar protaganist with a few carried over story elements (resembling a knockoff of a popular character trying to avoid a law suit that we'd see in other mediums), does not make it a "Devil May Cry" game. By being part of that franchise and series it should be reviewed entirely within the scope of the series up until that point, and failing at the basics invalidates anything else it might accomplish along the way.

And reviewers have all done this. They've criticized the game as a reboot of the DMC franchise and found it pretty good (though nowhere near perfect). Butthurt fans respond by calling them sellouts. They didn't forget that this was a part of a franchise: they simply acknowledged the fact that this was a reboot of a franchise, as opposed to a continuation of the status quo, something that the whiners have yet to accept. They wanted more of the old DMC, and nothing was going to satisfy them after they saw the first trailer.

There wouldn't be an issue with DMC if they had started a new franchise and not called it "Devil May Cry", and not tried to say this protaganist is Dante.

Case in point.

When it comes to reviewers, understand these guys are supposed to be professionals. An encyclopediac knowledge of games, their history, and evolution up until this point, and detailed knowlege about the series a game is part of (when it applies) is exactly why these guys are pros, and they warrent a pay check and a platform. Your looking to a professional reviewer for a greater depth of knowlege and perspective than simply asking some fanboy, or even your typical hardcore gamer.

So you're assuming that reviewers that graded the game highly don't know anything about the DMC franchise, because they dared to give the reboot good marks?

Changing major series elements but otherwise lionizing and rating a game highly because of the things it manages to do well is simply incompetant behavior, and why reviewers are increasingly called sell outs.The pressure is because someone rating Mass Effect 3 highly despite the acknowleged problems is contrary to what these people are supposed to stand for. If you don't have the basics right, including the ending, how good the gameplay you stack onto that turd is becomes irrelevent. A game about vomiting and eating your own vomit might control really well and do out to simulate what it does perfectly, but it still sucks because at the end of the day it's still a game about eating your own vomit.

See my quotation from before: "They don't have my opinion, they sold out!" If the reviewer thinks the game is both a good game AND a good DMC game (as many reviewers have stated) what does that say about people who haven't played the game calling reviewers sellouts?

The thing is that a lot of the sources doing these ratings, contributing to metascores, and the like, present themselves as reviewers, and wind up carrying a lot more weight than they probably should.

So what about the critics/reviewers who like DMC and who HAVE played the other DMC games? Are their opinions magically chop liver? You do realize how this entire section to the end of your post sounds?

"Oh man, these stupid people are swinging the metascore positive, because they don't know what DMC is REALLY about!"

It sounds really elitist.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I guess another problem Donte had growing up was how to dress himself. His clothes in the game look like they're in need of a good washing. That costume for Neo Donte... just... ... I mean... ... Who the fuck dresses this ponce in the morning?!

It just think it's bizarre how the director thought THAT was "cool". Tam Tam just does some of the most mind-boggling shit I've ever seen

 

[Vyress]

Another interesting thing is this Metacritic chart [http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/dmc-devil-may-cry] on favorable and unfavorable reviews of the game.
So the average User score is 4.1 out of 10 with 130 negative reviews out of a total of 224 reviews. At the same time, no negative review from a 'video game critic' can be found... coincidence?
Paying the sites and critics to give good scores to a bad and - let's be honest - hated iteration of a game won't make it good. And it ain't smart marketing either.

That's probably because the average user is a whiny little cry baby who doesn't like change. Besides, what does the user score have to do with anything besides reinforce the idea of "If other people don't like it then I don't like it!"

Not that I disagree with anything else you said but yeah, Metacritic user scores aren't worth shit as far as I'm concerned.

Thank you for agreeing with me on the other points. ^^

About the review thing I'll try to explain. It's the lack of any negative review on the "professional" side that amazes me considering the backlash the game is getting. Quite a noticeable amount of the target audience is apparently not all too happy with the game, right?

You'd think a game that is so well-received by all the magazines and stuff would be a hit with the consumers since that's what reviews should be there for: checking games for their quality/enjoyability. Obviously, they are doing it wrong looking at all the negative comments in forums or the negative user reviews the game is getting. And it's not just on Metacritic. It's the same on every other gaming site. You'd expect that they could at least name a few things people might have problems with but all I see is praise in all areas for the game. What good is a review of any game if it is in total contrast to the feedback of the audience?

And let's be honest here: this game has huge problems aside from just its aesthetics. I won't go into detail but from unbalanced weapons to horrible enemy design and really low difficulty... there are quite a few things to point out. Other than all those sites being paid *cough* asked by Capcom for making the game look good I can't think of anything else to explain all those good reviews because just like Resident Evil 6: the game REALLY isn't that good.

 

[DaKiller]

CAPCOM: We're money grubbing whores at this point!

Doesn't a series need to die before a reboot is deemed necessary?

 

[Therumancer]

To be honest I think there is a problem when a reviewer evaluates whether a product is good or not purely on it's own merits as a game when there are other issues involved.

This is so wrong it physically hurts to quote it. I mean, just look at that sentence. Jesus.

There's a common misconception that "the fans" have a coherent, singular voice. They do not. There is a common misconception that change is bad. It is not. There is a common misconception that vocal minorities speak for the entire fanbase. They do not. There is a common misconception that reviewers should have to kowtow to the needs of a highly select group of fans who consider themselves the "core audience." They should not.

A review who capitulates to the whims of a special interest group is shit as his or her job, no matter what label that interest group might choose.

DmC's radical departure from previous games should factor into reviews, but to approach change as an inherently negative force is not only mind-numbingly stupid, it's damaging to the medium as a whole. That line of thinking is what leads to sequels churned out on a yearly basis, characters that never grow or learn and the money-hungry stagnation of the AAA sector of the industry.

Edit: And oh sweet baby Jesus on a bicycle made of dicks, people are quoting Metacritic as if it's a source rather than a breeding ground for morons looking to vent their anger. Try subtracting every review of 0 from that score (and don't come at me with the whole subjectivity argument; the fact DmC works is enough to put it above several titles, meaning a score of absolute zero is ludicrous) and you might have something that resembles a coherent public opinion.

I disagree with you in the strongest possible way.

Your correct so far as that the gaming community does not speak with a single voice, but there is still both a definite majority voice, as well as that of the core fan base when it comes to established products. It's the core fans, regardless of what you might think of their obsessions, that support a product and have made it what it is, without them a franchise would not exist for branding to even be an issue. Their opinion is pretty much the most important one when it comes to a franchise since they are your foundation.

In general right now, a big part of the problem comes down to who companies decide to listen to. In general if people tell them "we don't like this, this is what we want" they get ignored even if they represent an overwhelming majority, while developers tend to listen to the "Ra-Ra" brigade. Don't like what they're hearing? They dismiss it as a vocal majority, declare the comments "toxic", and cease to care.

The thing to understand is that someone has to care quite a bit in order to actually login to game forums and sound off, especially to do it regularly. If the majority of your community winds up becoming hostile and stays there it's a good sign that this is how the majority of the fans feel, not the results of a vocal minority. After all if they were a minority you'd see far more positive traffic than you typically wind up getting. You'd hear praise from the community outweighing the negativity over your product throughout the entire online gamer cosm.... and truthfully, there are many games that show this to be true by generally having far more favorable discourse than negative discourse accross both their own forums and the gaming community itself. Valve for example gets it's criticisms but is viewed very favorably in pretty much every forum you run into. Bioware used to be in that catagory until they slotted off their core fans to the point where the negative outweighted the positive, excepting professional sources.

When it comes to metacritic you have to understand that the reason why you generally get these "0" ratings and even campaigns to crash game scores, that a lot of it is done to counter professional "reviews" (note the quotes, I won't point any specific fingers though for obvious reasons), and of course company shills (some of whom have been caught in cases like Bioware). Someone actually getting up off their butt long enough to do something like this has meaning in of itself, and when it happens in massive numbers, especially over the internet where coordinating ANYTHING tends to be an exercise in sisyphisian futility, that says a lot. If enough people show up to pan your game, assigning unreasonably low scores to counter unreasonably high ones, that it actually has an overall effect, that in of itself is a message.

I will say that I agree with you on the stagnation of the industry in a general sense, BUT we're not really talking about that. We're talking about franchises. The idea of having a series and building up a core audience is specifically to produce more of the same. A label becomes associated with specific kinds of content, and continues as long as there is a demand for it.

If a gaming company wants to try something new, then it should create an entirely new IP, not taking an existing IP, slapping it's name and some of it's conventions onto a new product, and then claim it is that IP. That's the fundemental problem here. This is being presented as a "Devil May Cry" game when it is NOT a "Devil May Cry" game other than slapping some names and labels onto it. It's a counterfeit product for all intents and purposes, and should be treated like one in reviews because of that label.

If someone created a similar game to DMC with the changes they wanted, it would be fair to review it on it's own merits as a game from there on out, as long as they called it something differant as it's own IP. In the case of something like DMC, it should ultimatly rate a '0' and be dismissed from any further consideration when it carries a franchise label but is clearly not a part of that franchise.

I agree industry stagnation is a problem, but this kind of approach to trying to "solve" the problem just makes things worse. If it succeeds the best that you can hope for is to create a horrible morass of stench like they turned the "Sonic" games into by continueing to use the label for all of these "updated" titles, it got to the point where even most pro-critics can't take Sonic seriously anymore.

At the end of the day if a Franchise is failing, the right thing to do is let it die, and revive it (as itself) much later perhaps, you don't change the fundementals of the characters, storyline, gameplay style, and then slap the label on it and say "it's the same thing". Even if you produce a good game that succeeds, you are going to manage to divide your fan base.

Thus the solution to industry stagnation in my mind is again... to create new things.

I'll also say that people want the familiar. I used comics as an analogy to this and why comic changes in their main universe are never permanant, and radical sidelines/alternaverses are published alongside, as opposed to instead of, the real thing (with a few notable exceptions like the Amalgam Universe stunt). You might do radical things within a storyline for a while, but at the end of the day The Hulk goes back to being Green, The Fantastic Four operate as The Fantastic Four instead of "The Future Foundation", and Spider-Man puts on his classic duds again instead of his funky black and white (or white and black) costume or "Iron Spider" armor. When they do a "Reboot" they put it into it's own universe and release it alongside the real thing, such as "The Ultimates". Even DC understands that no matter how many "Infinite Crisis" events they run at the end of the day everything goes back to the original status quo and personalities with fairly minor changes (a few exceptions to this exist, like everything however).

There is nothing wrong with that incidently, and games can indeed remain more or less the same while still evolving. You can create deeper gameplay along the same line. Nobody cares if you add more weapons, moves, and tricks to Dante's arsenal, or have him kicking butt in differant locales with an expanding rogues gallery. They do not however want to see Dante and his entire world changed, with him turning into an Emo all the time, and donning subdued dress. If they wanted that and felt it would sell, they should have simply created a new beat 'em up franchise using similar mechanics (sort of like we saw with Bayonetta) and left Devil May Cry alone.

 

[Maxtro]

Heh, I preordered the PC version and got the classic skin for free.

Interestingly enough, classic Dante fits in so well I can't even begin to guess why Ninja Theory felt a redesign was needed. With the skin on, Dante and Virgil really look like brothers since they have the same hair color and texture.

Also, the classic Dante skin shows up in the vast majority of cinematics. There are a couple where new Dante is used, and while it is annoying, they aren't that often.

So far I've finished the first two levels.

 

[Malfy]

snip

So it sounds like you'd be fine if they made this game with a different main character? There was no way Capcom would make a game that look, felt, and farted like Devil May Cry without involving it in the title of the game, even if it isn't up to par with the best of the series.

Reboots to a franchise can be done right (Rayman, RE4, Mortal Kombat) and can be done wrong (Sonic, Other M.....drawing a blank now) but I won't fault publishers and devs for trying something new. Even game makers recognize that the market, which includes their own franchises, can become stagnant and want to shake things up instead of churning out the same exact games with better graphics and making an easy billion dollars. There are plenty of popular franchises out there now that get lambasted for always maintaining the status quo with its characters, style, and combat (most FPSs, JRPGs, Sports franchises, even Mario), so whether a franchise decides to take risks or not, its damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I also didn't prefer the new DmC myself, which is why I didn't buy it, and still have DMC 3 sitting in my room ready to be played whenever, but the opinion that reboots and changes should never be made to established franchises is something I don't agree with.

 

[Warachia]

What the fuck is that horrible inhuman monster in picture 2? That's literally one of the most hideous things I've ever seen.

Picture 3 sucks too, I hated the new Dante design but I'd have been fine if they stuck to what they made, won't going back to the old design just highlight how much this game isn't like the previous ones? It's like metroid other M with DLC for metroid Primes armour, you're just reminded of what you could be playing.

 

[Frokane]

Im really not one to attack fanboys, but its a bloody costume, get over it.

 

[DrunkenMonkey]

Remember when costumes were unlocked after beating a game? I sure do, that's what really added to replay value, not this cash-in dlc bullshit.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

Angry Joe predicted this in his review. It was pretty damn obvious they were going to pull a stunt like this.

 

[Seracen]

It amuses me that only a few years ago, I could have simply unlocked new skins by beating a game a few times. Now, I get nickel and dimed by the companies I used to support?

Then you have the audacity to ask me why I buy used/wait for GOW when a million versions release within a year of the drop date?

Quite frankly, even if the skins WEREN'T on disk DLC, which I doubt, a 50MB file a week after release strikes me as disingenuous.

Well, at least it released faster and cheaper than the SF vs Tekken DLC's. I really hope the sales for these DLC's are abysmal, since nothing short of bankruptcy seems likely to get through Capcom's stupidity.