Come on… why are you so angry? Just relax, have a pleasant little lie-down at the entirely fictional X360 therapy sofa as we, your wildly underqualified and completely inexperienced shrinks, try to unravel what has made you so angry. Angry enough to disown a complete franchise in line with one [insert misspelled expletive here] spin-off. Angry enough to blister the web with pockets of bile, poor grammar and peculiar entitlement. Angry enough even to bombard the poor development team with hate mail and oddly creative death threats. So take a breath, clear your mind and we’ll ask an extra time – why are you so angry?

Is it the way of the sport? That seems essentially the most likely thing, especially provided that the unique reveal of the redesigned Dante – a tender, dark-haired punk in unfamiliar threads – was a transparent high point at the Backlash Bar Chart. Which totally does exist. We all know because we drew it ourselves. Ninja Theory wasn’t expecting a simple ride when it reinvented the gaming icon, but they do not even make hatches secure enough to be battered down and weather the type of shitstorm that followed. Within the context of a whole experience, though, we will be able to safely say that Dante’s new look works. It does. This can be a solid origin story that begins with Dante a tender man enjoying life – a bit an excessive amount of on occasion, apparently – thanks to being inexplicably brilliant at everything. His spiky demeanour is smoothed slightly over the process the sport as he learns his heritage, his loyalties and his true purpose so in case you were worried about playing a complete game as a snotty little punk, do not be. Granted, he’s still coarse and edgy right up until the instant the credits begin to roll, but at the very least by the top he’s a rebel with a cause.

And at the least, Dante’s makeover is as a minimum consistent with Ninja Theory’s interpretation of his world. The $64000 world is depicted as all washed out and gray – to the purpose of creating Birmingham look positively colourful – and on this humdrum landscape, Dante stands out as different, as unique. But as walls crumple, floors collapse and environments dissolve into Limbo (a plane of existence between the human and demon worlds), he feels right at home. The area of Limbo is an impossible clash of 2 extremes, just as Dante’s unique angel/demon parentage makes him a superb exception – a two-legged anomaly that walks between two worlds without fitting comfortably into either. After allowing Ninja Theory to give an explanation for itself in videogame form, we certainly don’t see any reason to get angry in line with the plush and fantastically realised visual style on display here.

Is it the combat, then? Many gave the impression to be concerned that Ninja Theory would drop the ball on this most vital of areas for the franchise. And in accordance with the studio’s prior form, this was for your time a legitimate concern. PS3 exclusive Heavenly Sword, the team’s fair first attempt at a genre Capcom had long since mastered, simply lacked the grace and bombast of Dante’s adventures (DMC2 notwithstanding) while Enslaved shifted focus faraway from melee combat, meaning that aspect of the sport felt somewhat underdeveloped and lacking extensive.

But first hands-on sessions were months ago and for some reason, many still refused to believe the words of these who had stepped into Dante’s new size-9s (“HEZ MENT 2 B SIZE 10 U DIX”) and located them incredibly comfortable. Despite a demo on the market, some blinkers remain on – it’s no DMC3 relating to precision or depth, sure, but that’s no grounds on which to trash a whole game. By that logic, 99.9 per cent of games are terrible, Assassin’s Creed is the world’s finest cut-scene and Halo 4 is irrelevant because Doom still exists. It’s just daft.

And after all, Capcom was keen to hammer home the truth that it’s been heavily excited about DmC’s combat and only the foremost stubborn of nay-sayers could claim that its expertise doesn’t shine through. There is a weight to the swordplay that makes it feel largely unlike anything Dante has done before but together, the notice to detail – to specific timings, to border data, to combo potential – proudly carries the Capcom watermark. It is a slightly more cinematic experience here, as evidenced by the frequent camera zooms, micro-cut-scenes and awesome slow-motion slaughters – visual shrieks of pleasure and satisfaction as action scenes climax. But none of those intrude at the moment-on-moment gameplay, making combat almost nearly as good because it has ever been. It might be courting the wrath of the fan base to assert that only DMC3 does it better but having aced all four previous games, we’d struggle to listen to it said that this wasn’t the case.

So is it maybe the weapons? No, cannot be – who could hate weapons? Well, except pacifists. In spite of everything, DMC has always had ridiculous weapons. a collection of ornate elemental blades fashioned from the bodies of dual demons, an electrical guitar that spits out bats, a suitcase containing literally every gun ever… nothing in Ninja Theory’s game even comes on the brink of the silliness seen in Dante’s previous loadouts. If truth be told, the gathering of demonic and angelic tools at your disposal makes for among the tightest arsenals seen in an action game. With every weapon available on the touch of a button and every serving another purpose, there’s as much depth as you might want to combat. Beginners can mash Y a group and stay with Rebellion attacks (a minimum of until enemies dictate the usage of other weapon types) to spam their way throughout the easier difficulties, while experts can piece together intricate combos that use all eight weapons in a single YouTube-friendly SSS extravaganza.

Ever since DMC3, switching weapons at the fly have been a staple portion of any self-respecting action game and DmC’s system refines the idea beautifully. The concept that isn’t exactly easy to soak up and likelihood is, you are going to be a great way through your first play before you actually unlock its full potential. At its most elementary, devil weapons are slower but more damaging while angel weapons function quicker, broader tools with which to work your orb-gathering magic. However extends far deeper as you upgrade your kit – individual moves with certain weapons fit perfectly into combos as comfortably as neighbouring puzzle pieces and before long, you should have a move for each situation and a combo ready for any opening you be able to carve. And with the addition of a duo of whip moves to either pull yourself towards enemies or drag them to you, decent players will come to be informed that combos don’t end until they are saying so.

Hold up – could or not it’s that the anger has something to do with the game’s difficulty? DMC has a history of being punishingly tough and while this certainly isn’t a simple task, the truth that we were in a position to tame Dante Must Die difficulty with far less stress than the older games’ equivalents presented (which was A HELL OF MUCH, as we recall) means that the sport is maybe easier than its predecessors. As does the more generous grading system, although DmC’s willingness to throw around high grades and slightly undeserved alphabetic appraisals is offset by the more fleshed-out scoring system, where clean runs, tight combos and a refusal to depend upon support items result in better overall numerical totals as you battle for control of leaderboards. It’s different, sure, but it’s on no account bad.

Well maybe it is the incontrovertible fact that Ninja Theory as a developer seems to champion storytelling over all else? Again, that’s a worry we will be able to entirely understand, having been troubled by the exact same thing at the game’s announcement. But while the sport does take pleasure within the indisputable fact that it gets to define Dante’s origins, it seldom places greater importance on narrative or performance than combat – we dusted DmC for Andy Serkis’s prints and it came up clean. Anyway, what’s there’s a simple, solid and usually well-told story that does not deviate too faraway from what we already know of the son of Sparda – Ninja Theory’s writers (with the aid of Alex Garland) don’t elect to say Dante was raised by pigeons, not do they decide that his demonic powers came from eating an out-of-date Twix, so that’s something.

No, wherever these still unresolved anger issues come from, Dante’s family issues are far easier to spot and understand. Mummy was an angel, daddy was a devil and that they begat him, The article That are meant to Not Be, besides a brother in Vergil, The article That still Shouldn’t be For The exact same Reasons Because the Other One. Mundus had mum killed and pa eternally imprisoned for daring to provide Nephilim offspring – conveniently, the sole people/things/peoplethings able to slaying him – and understandably, our young hero ain’t too happy about this turn of events. So partly seeking to find revenge and partly searching for Boy Scout badges, both induce to topple the demon lord from his throne atop the human race. Narrative is just not and hasn’t ever been a necessary component to the Devil May Cry experience and while Ninja Theory sets out (and manages) to weave a narrative around the entire awesome things which are happening, it’s generally well-written and well-delivered enough to make up for the action downtime.

Right, well could or not it’s the music then? That may be fair enough, in the end. DMC has long been drenched in shouty nonsense metal but this day trip, that’s joined by slightly of the old wub-wub to create what critics are calling ‘something quite noisy’. Just like the game’s artistic direction, though, it almost works in context – coarse loudness complements the action sequences really quite well (hence why it has become a specific thing) while the epic boss battles don’t taste any worse for the wealthy Dubstep Sauce where they’ve clearly been marinated. There’s the odd moment where comes dangerously just about tumbling off the bandwagon but generally speaking, Combichrist and Noisia fill their roles at the least adequately in providing a (moderately) musical backdrop for the high-intensity combo showcase.

It’s the hair, isn’t it? It should be. Some are still hung up at the new barnet, the flowing white locks of gaming’s #1 action hero cause for the shedding of tears. But again, it really is not a deal-breaker. From the streaks of white evident in Dante’s hair during certain cut-scenes to the shocking peroxide treatment it gets when Devil Trigger is activated, the seeds of that famous white wig are planted during this fledgling icon and people bleached moments even serve to provide a reasonably exciting sniff of what awaits Dante in later life.

Well… what if it’s… no, we’re out of ideas. Seems we’re terrible at this therapy lark, more often than not because we’ve done all of the talking and haven’t listened to a word you’ve said. But it surely is not just our therapeutic ineptitude that has caused utter failure in unearthing a single decent the reason for this is that DmC could or should incite and enrage – it’s just that those reasons don’t actually exist. While not cast from the precise mold Capcom uses in making Devil May Cry games, Ninja Theory’s freehand attempt at a reboot is phenomenal in its own right. Hell, if it didn’t carry the name, we’re sure DMC fans would lap this up as a more-than-competent alternative.

So there’s the issue. It is the name. The sport itself is categorically excellent or even if it is not quite what you could expect from something labeled Devil May Cry, this can be a robust, deep and brilliantly executed action game, let alone a sterling effort at reinventing something that was – if DMC4 was anything to move by – starting to grow stale. So it’s just the name that is the issue, then? Heh. Maybe we are not such shitty shrinks in spite of everything.

Score: 9/10