Previews// Devil's Third

You’d be forgiven if you told me that this was the first you’ve heard of Devil’s Third. In fact the first I’d heard of it was when The Bosses at SPOnG banged on my door, wrote the embargo details on my walls in permanent ink and left my usual payment of £20,000 in £5 notes on the table.

I did my usual research routine of watching YouTube trailers and reading Wikipedia and was a little surprised that I’d not come across it before. Firstly, its lead producer is Tomonobu Itagaki the man who injected life back into Ninja Gaiden and created one of my favourite series, Dead or Alive.

This is his first attempt to branch out alone and it’s been a long time coming. Itagaki left Tecmo back in 2008 and this is his first release since. It’s had a troubling development process, and failed to gain enough enthusiasm to be featured by Nintendo at this year’s E3.

Warning lights began to flash and they were made even worse when Nintendo of America had apparently decided to no longer publish the game. This didn’t mean that it wasn’t coming out in America, just that the game needed another publisher to step in.

Since these rumours started though NoA have announced that they have some more information coming regard its release soon, so even if they had stepped aside (which has yet to be confirmed) they aren’t disowning it.

No surprise really as the game is clearly made with an American audience in mind.

Devil’s Third is a hack and slash shooter. I don’t mean in the same way that DMC or Bayonetta is a hack and slash game with bullets in it - this literally has two gameplay types and they can be switched between on the fly.

It’s an interesting take on a genre that could do with an interesting take, and from what I’ve played, the two gameplay styles are handled well. A simple left trigger press pops you into first person mode and letting go lets you return to sword play.

You play as Ivan, an ex-terrorist and the definition of meat head. Once broken out of jail he joins forces with the US Army to take down his former partners in terror. While his new brothers in arms follow you taking pot shots a the enemy, Ivan shows them how it’s done, running off into the distance and slicing off limbs before putting bullets through some skulls, turning around and mumbling a line and then strutting off like a bad-man.

In terms of gameplay the player is treated to a lot of options in combat, be they shooting from cover or chucking swords at enemies. The left shoulder button is used to evade attacks as well as blocking punches and deflecting enemy melee and fire arms include shotguns, machine guns and sniper rifles.

Everything is in place to make Devil’s Third a superb action game but after my short experience with it, I’m starting to worry.

As I write this I’m about four chapters in and so far it’s done nothing to convince me that it’s anything more than a low-budget mess. Choppy frame rate, terrible enemy AI and awful visuals has my optimism at an all time low and unless the game starts to pull itself together I can’t see Nintendo of America confirming that they’ll be publishing it any time soon.

I wonit fully judge it until I’m done but you have to wonder where all those years of development have gone, unless its main focus is on the Multiplayer.

Itagaki has said some very strong things about its competitive mode. Stating that it will take a step forward for the genre in the same vein as Halo did and I hope he’s right because this game needs something special to convince me that this will be anything more than a flop.

And that will be heartbreaking. I love the concept behind Devil’s Third and it’s convinced me that split genre gaming can be something worth looking into. The core ideas here are good and given to the right developer could create some intense and satisfying gaming. And, if the Multiplayer is as revolutionary as Itagaki is claiming, then I can forgive it for its seemingly shoddy campaign.

But at this point, it has to do a hell of a lot to turn me around.