Features// Pocket Frenzy's Devil Love Cat Triste

Seeing as love, kittens and waiting for Rockband are conspiring to turn me into Alice Tinker from The Vicar of Dibley, I decide it's high time I stop mooning around in gamers' limbo; resign myself to its remoteness from me, and get some good old, honest, down-to-earth, family-friendly demon possession under my belt - just to balance things out.

First I buy Devil May Cry 4 and throw myself into it happily, but -and it may be the new cushions talking here - I can't navigate my way around the great hall to save my life or, more accurately, my sanity.

I like the Devil May Cry games. I like the feeling of being a mere step up from Castlevania-style platform games; the great striding running, the monster designs, the ridiculously Gothic scenery. So would Horace Walpole.

DMC4 has retained all the shoddy running, appalling unmoveable camera angles, the cheesy sound effects and repetitiveness of its forerunners but somehow this just endears it to fans, including me. Basking in its retro, unashamedly arcade-ishness may be enjoyable, but nevertheless the navigation problem is getting beyond a joke and I'm feeling ever more depressed as I try every corner, window and battlement for some hidden way out, until that moment comes when I turn it off and scan my shelves for something else to play to calm me down.

The Darkness was recommended to me by my friend The Spirit of Jazz back in the heady, amaretto and Emos days of summer. Unfortunately, at the time, as he extolled its virtues and I made the obligatory 'ooh' and 'ah' noises, my brain was on its own time making train-noises out of BioshockBioshockBioshock and leaving my ears neglected.

Thankfully, as I cast my eyes around, they alight on this game and a vague recollection comes to me of favourable things said - like a memory-trout glooping flies of recollection from above muddy river waters, opaqued further with sunshine and nostalgia. I bung it in the machine.

I'm easily scared when it comes to games of all sorts. The adrenalin rush from bingo makes me sound like I'm approaching orgasm; paintballing gave me panic attacks, only Monopoly seems to leave me unflustered, apart from the incident with the ghost that one time. The Darkness is just the right amount of 'atmospheric' to give me little shivers of excitement while still leaving me capable of playing it for long stretches into the night. Despite (it) being a bit, well, shoddy, I'm rather enjoying it. I have an attractive girlfriend, get to shoot a lot of lightbulbs and revel in a world of stock Mafia characters and demonic snakes.

I'm settled nicely into it when I get a late night call from my friend Fatoy. I manage to get Fatoy to explain the whereabouts of Anima Mercury that I was missing in DMC. A quick swap later and I'm back on with Nemo and deflecting fireballs again with just the penetrating stare of my cat reminding me of the price I've had to pay for this information. How does cat know what XKCD is?