Devil May Cry HD Collection

I was always hoping for a HD collection of my favourite video game series. And it finally came! It even came a day early, which was a bonus.

Anyway, the game....

Being a port of three PlayStation 2 games, don't expect anything new to appear in the game except for Trophies/Achievements, which, to tell the truth, I have always wanted to have for these games. All three Devil May Cry games look wonderful with their HD re-textured and enhanced, I mean really enhanced sound. You can hear things that you couldn't hear before on the PS2 discs. Some audio within the game seems to have changed as well, which is nice too. It's just a shame about some of the pre-rendered cut-scenes, which are pretty low-quality, arguably worse than what they were on the PS2 before. But all of the other cut-scenes that use the game'e re-mastered HD game engine look brilliant.

The gameplay itself, feels like it should. I absolutely love it. And with the new HD look, I think it is even better, as I'm sure many DMC fans would agree. This gameplay is what made me keep coming back to the series, and now that is in HD, I will probably come back to it even more.

The bonus content sadly, is such a let-down. While the hub menu you come across as soon as the HD collection loads up is quite cool, the stuff that was included in the "Vault" isn't quite so cool. It includes music from all three games (not all of it mind you. It mostly consists of Battle themes and not much else) and some un-released concept art. I'm sure everybody was hoping for so much more from Capcom here. I was hoping for so much more, but unfortunately, they failed to deliver here. And also, as with some other HD classic trilogy's, you cannot switch between all three games whenever you like. You need to restart the disc to go back to the hub menu and select a new game.

The un-impressive bonus content and the shoddy pre-rendered FMV cut-scenes really aren't enough to repel any long-time DMC fans away from this HD Collection. For any DMC fan who have always wanted to play this series on their PS3, now you can. It come's highly recommended from one DMC fan to the rest of you!

Good: This game is remastered in HD and it also comes with three games, music from the game, concept art from the game and all new trophies which allows you to challenge yourself to complete everything in each game which you're friends can also see, another cool feature to the trophies is that the trophies for each game are separate which allows you to easily look at all the trophies for that one single game. Three games means you're getting a lot of content out of this game.

Bad: The gameplay may be in HD but the menus isn't which is annoying because you will be playing the game in widescreen but when it goes to the menus it still has the old PS2 menus which makes the menus much smaller as well.

If you're a fan of Devil May Cry then your going to love this.

I have always been a huge fan of the Devil May Cry games, particularly 1 and 3:SE, and to have the first 3 on one high definition disc is brilliant. The HD makes a big difference to each game, (for instance, there are details on Phantom's body that were too muddy to make out on the PS2) but 3 benefits the most. There are so many details in the environment like bas-reliefs that are so lovely and crisp that you can clearly see what is carved into them. The gameplay it's self remains absolutely stellar and challenging and the level of hidden "techniques" for beating bosses is leading me to still come up with new ways to beat each boss a good 8 years on.

There are some little criticisms though. While the main game remains just as good as before, most of the menus retained their original aspect ratio, leaving big black pillars either side of the screen when you pause or pick up an item or whatever. It's jarring to the main game screen and I feel like they could have done something to fix this. Maybe make new menus, stretch and crop the existing ones or just put something to fill in the gaps. The first menu, the one where you select which DMC you want to play, is damn ugly too. It looks like a bad website from the early 00s. Nothing major, just a nit-pick. But a bigger criticism is that there are cutscenes that weren't converted into HD, and they all happen to be the most bombastic, action packed ones (Dante's tower dive in 3 for instance). The quality of them even seems to be downgraded from the original game and you could find them in better quality on Youtube. I can't imagine the reason for this as the majority of the cutscenes were converted into HD (though Dante's hair is fully opaque now, covering his eyes up from most angles).

It just LOOKS bad in these moments. The gameplay remains as solid as it was on the PS2, as do all of the unlockables. It doesn't really fix all the problems 2 had, but only a divine miracle could have done that. Aside from the fancy HD polish this collection adds, the home menu also has some concept art and music for you to enjoy, including rare designs back from when DMC1 was going to be a Resident Evil/Biohazard game!

Gamers who never played the original games should most definitely get this collection. The gameplay remains solid and fast compared to modern standards of action gameplay (if not even better) and is easily accessible to new players. My advice for new players would be to play 2, then 1, then 3 in terms of challenge and overall quality. The level of replayablity is huge and you will feel as crazy and badass as Dante when you really get into it.