DGC Ep 160: Devil May Cry (part three)

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our discussion of 2001's Devil May Cry, discussing underwater controls, the camera, combos in combat, and other topics. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played:
Missions 11-17

Issues covered: the two scariest words in video games, the underwater sections, forcing emotional stress through cumbersome controls, putting the player out of her element, pulling you out of the experience because your character is usually a superhero, sailing the ghost ship, game play "jokes," collision detection and keeping the player on walkable space, testing against 2D instead of 3D, 2D thinking in level design, walk boxes, moving the world around the ship, camera relative controls and camera switching, everyone's playing in the pool and Mario has an inner tube, having to model everything and yet keeping a set of fixed cameras, making the mistake of designing the camera around the levels instead of vice versa or in concert, framing for coolness at the sacrifice of player cohesion, being curious about where the camera ends up, attempt to make more vertical game play in Republic Commando, believing you can do anything with the camera and players proving you wrong, making 3rd person game play with a first person mentality, making a test case or prototype that proves out your camera design, lack of block and blocking with an attack, going without block to promote fast and forward motion, having trouble with Sparda, streamlining combos down maybe too much, finding the combo rhythms, physical mastery games, Brett puts the petty in competition, reading the telegraphing of bosses with the camera, the stress of restart/lives mechanics and boss battles, learning for one boss but not gaining thereby, trial and error on bosses, cultural appropriation, being able to defeat Phantom in the hallway, experimentation in game play to find information and secret missions, chapter endings in the Resident Evil series.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Jedi Knight, Resident Evil (series), Frictional Games, Amnesia, SOMA, Halo, The Goonies, Sony Santa Monica, God of War, SCUMM games, Grim Fandango, Thimbleweed Park, Ron Gilbert, Republic Commando, Super Mario 64, Tomb Raider, Soul Reaver, Remi Lacoste, Prince of Persia, Ubisoft, Full Throttle 2, Mysteries of the Sith, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, Super Mario Odyssey, Diablo III, Dark Souls (series), Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Kirk Hamilton, Maddy Myers, Kotaku Splitscreen, Derv_PNW, Super Metroid, X-COM, Half-Life, Link to the Past, Gothic Chocobo, Ben "from Iowa" Zaugg, Jak & Daxter.

Next time:
Finish the game!

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