..Devil May Cry 4 refrain..

REVIEW |

Author: Scott Vanderheyden  

Don’t let the two-dollar price tag fool you; Devil May Cry 4 refrain isn’t even worth a penny. A shoddy port of a three-year-old cell phone game released in Japan, refrain is badly designed in all respects.  

Unlike previous Devil May Cry games, which offer challenge and depth, DMC 4 refrain offers pretty much nothing. The typical extensive combo system doesn’t exist, and the frantic, twitch-based combat is replaced in favor of repetitious, slow-moving fighting in which all enemies can be defeated by button mashing. Every inept enemy and boss can be defeated the same way: simply tap the onscreen attack button over and over. Every once in awhile, tap the punch button to grab enemies for some variety. Rinse and repeat. The first boss, an eight story high, flaming lion that could shoot out fireballs from his face and honestly seemed quite daunting was easily dispatched by walking under his legs and repeatedly mashing the attack button as he stood still.

- Bosses are gigantic, but they're just pushovers -

As you defeat brain-dead enemies in barren houses walking at a snail’s pace, you collect useless skull gems that act as experience points. Between each five-minute level, the game automatically uses your easy earned points to unlock new attacks that are worse than your basic attack, that is if the game reads your touch commands correctly and you happen to execute the attack.

Fortunately, the ugly, open environments devoid of any interactivity or fun help distract from the just a little bit worse gameplay. Devil May Cry 4 refrain looks like a grey, muddy, low-resolution cell phone game from three years ago, which it is. The ugly field map gives no information and the still shot cutscenes appear to be decompressed, jpeg renders meant for an email, composed of cutscenes from a better game, Devil May Cry 4. Enemies are repeated over and over and have one attack animation. If you happen to be hit by an enemy’s slow-moving attack, you are launched across the screen in a non-interactive, rotoscoped recoil animation that looks like nothing and could accidently be interpreted as a glitch.

- Let's see. Dante's somewhere in there, and that thing is... -

The game also crashes randomly at times. At least the bosses are big and look mean. However, there is one thing that is worse than the awful graphics and gameplay: the music and sound effects. The grating screaming death metal is second only to the annoying repeated one-liners from our uninteresting protagonist.

Devil May Cry 4 refrain isn’t worth anyone’s time or money. Refrain from buying.

GameDynamo's Score for Devil May Cry 4 refrain (Mobile)

Scott Vanderheyden He's always enjoyed the artistic craft of video games and received a Bachelor in Fine Arts for Animation. He also creates his own games!

More from GameDynamo

Dante and Devil May Cry Headed to the Silver Screen

Pokédex for iOS now available in Japanese iTunes App Store

Angry Birds reaches 1 billion downloads

Rovio Entertainment acquires Futuremark; opening new studio in Stockholm