Capcom, lately, has been holding itself afloat with re-releases of some of their past hits onto the new consoles, namely the Devil May Cry series. A while back DmC by Ninja Theory was re-released with improvements for “next-gen” and this week saw the release of their newest remastered game, fan-favorite Devil May Cry 4. Now whether you love or hate this trend of re-releasing old games with updates as opposed to releasing brand new ones, all can agree that it is nice to see what some of your favorite past games can look like on newer hardware. Devil May Cry 4 was the game that got me into the series (the demo sold me on it) so I was interested to check out the remaster and see how it held up to the 2008 original release (it’s already been seven years!).
Back when 4 came out on the Xbox 360 and PS3 it was met with general approval from fans and press alike. The game looked nice, played very well, and had a solid amount of content to boot. What you’re getting with the Special Edition re-release is generally the same thing, although a bit aged. The new release still looks alright at times, and the 1080p resolution helps, but you can see its age still and the content is largely the same. Capcom did add a few extras, and a new difficulty mode for those looking for a new challenge, however. The one thing I really enjoyed was the ability to play as Virgil, Trish, or Lady this time around, as they have different styles, and makes playing the game again feel fresh, even if it’s the same missions. If you really enjoyed the game the first time around, playing with another character may be enough to make you thoroughly enjoy this package. So, basically, I don’t want to sound too down on the re-release, because it does feature added content and improved resolution/framerate, it may just be more general fatigue of the re-release trend at this point. There were some things about the game’s initial release in 2008 that I didn’t like, and Capcom really didn’t do much to change these items in the game, or any of the game’s basic structure aside from the addition of the characters. Some weird puzzles and a lot of backtracking still make me wish for a new Devil May Cry game for current gen that fixes these issues.
Overall Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition is a solid package for people who loved the 2008 release exactly as it was, but wanted a bit sharper image and higher framerate. It gives people who’ve played the game multiple times a fresh look by allowing the use of three new characters in every mode, yet still suffers from some of the gameplay issues that marred the original release. That being said, Devil May Cry 4 is a very solid action game, and if you never played the original release and got into the series with Ninja Theory’s DmC, you owe it to yourself to play through a “proper” Devil May Cry game. You may want to wait for a sale, but Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition is a solid re-release with some solid changes for fans of the series to enjoy.