DMC 4 is a genuinely well done game, with awesome cutscenes, humor and style, but repetition kills us all one day.
The game is short, repetitive, but as long as you can bare the backtracking, it is quite good.
The combat of the game is pretty similar to the previous Devil May Cries.
You have a gun, a sword, the devil trigger which gives you some melee damage boost, and adds some awesomeness to the appearance of the character.
And what, something new too?!
The first protagonist you play with, Nero, has a magical demonic arm that can grab enemies, or launch you at enemies, particularly bosses.
Also, as you proceed through the game, you gather experience from monsters, which you can use to buy new combos, devil trigger bonuses, guns, and a bouquet of flowers.
The combos aren't that much like combos, as they are more just hits like the first one, only just look more awesome or different.
Also, there aren't any connecting combos, like let's say, Tekken or Killer Instinct etc.
You must do sword tricks that you have in your "trick book", just like you would with button-mashing. One hit, one hit, one hit, only with the hits launching enemies into air or doing some other things.
The game goes through very many environments with different climates.
While you walk around, cautiously in the snow, because there's a storm and you can't see far away, if there are any enemies, after going through a church/monastery/house thing, you get to a waterfall.
Then, you have to get near the waterfall to get into a tunnel, which is behind the waterfall, a la MGS 3.
When you left a snowy environment, only 20 meters away, if you go through the tunnel, you reach a sunny, warm rain forest.
After proceeding through the lush jungle, you reach a long, long alley which takes you another boss, and another house.
Then, you get into a big house, again, and there you find the main antagonist and some of his friends.
You will notice that this game has alot of bosses. Well, when you confront a huge avatar of an old demon, a big statue.
He (the antagonist), who controls the statue traps Nero inside the statue, which brings out the old protagonist from the Devil May Cry series, Dante.
He promises to rescue Nero, and kill the old geezer.
Now, as you probably know, you're going to take the place of Dante.
As you may notice, the thing that added some new to this game's arsenal, and probably your favorite thing in the game, the Devil arm are gone.
They are replaced with Dante's speciality, many flavors of kicking a**.
You get to choose from 4 categories of "styles".
There is Trickster, which allows you to dodge enemies, Swordmaster and Gunslinger, and I think you can guess what they do.
And then there's Royalguard, which basically improves your blocking, and give you some nifty blocking tricks, which apparently sees Dante blocking with his hands.
Nevertheless, Dante may, or may not be more suitable for your playing style.
While the Devil arm was fun, Dante is more useful, and better to play with, because he has better combos from the beginning, and he has many different styles to choose from.
Also, with defeating bosses you get different weapons. Most of them are pointless, because you have unlocked already many abilities which are better with the current weapons.
And you also get new guns, like the Pandora's Box, which is a very nifty weapon, since you can go through different phases with it, which makes Dante lift the weapon a little bit, and it transforms into something bigger and more damage-dealing.
And you can obviously get hit while doing all that.
Now, the next thing you may notice is, uggh, that you just basically go back the whole trip you just went through.
Fortunately for us, the unhappy and angry players, Dante is more funnier, and shows off more awesome, mostly cinematic fighting moves, when he meets the bosses.
At last, when you confront the last boss, you have to go through a long fight, so prepare.
And you can't save while doing it, at least you can't resume the fight, after you've loaded.
Anyway, in this fight you have to fire your laser.
Seriously, you have to hit things, to activate lasers, which totally makes sense.
The fight starts and ends with an epic fight, with Dante doing stuff you would never imagine doing, even in a movie, but he's a half demon, so no surprise there.
Then, you play again with Nero, as you have to go through a little puzzle game you encountered earlier. You have to hit a dice, and then the character moves.
Unfortunately, it's a circle, and your avatar can go past the button that leads to the next door.
So also prepare for a long sequential play.
See, one thing I don't like here, is that you can't resume from half-way through many things, but rather the developers see you start from the beginning.
When you finish it, and defeat each boss at the portal that leads you to the next stage, you see the boss, who you kill, and live happily ever after with Nero's love interest, Kyrie.
I haven't tried the harder difficulties, but this game is much easier than the previous Devil May Cry games, so no one should be afraid of this game, because they think it's too hard.
It isn't.