An influential game from my youth

I started playing video games on an old PC with Windows 95. The games had to be run in DOS every time I wanted to play. For a while I didn’t play any games at all, then as a teenager I started again. I got more involved with gaming after purchasing a used PS2 just as Sony announced the upcoming PS3. Around this time there were a lot of well-made games being released. My favourite at the time, and still one of my most played games, is Devil May Cry 3.

For anybody unfamiliar with the title, it’s a third-person hack and slash game. I played it excessively, beating the game in every difficulty and completing a secondary challenge series. I maxed out the gameplay clock, which stops at 99 hours 99 minutes and 99 seconds, and then still kept playing. When they re-released the original three games last year on Xbox 360, I purchased the set and beat all three games one more time.

The game has a lot to like. It has a solid storyline – nothing spectacular, but it didn’t leave you snoring on your couch. The atmosphere was dark and gloomy, heightened by the grungy metal background music. Where the game really showed its true nature was combat. It was fast-paced and outrageous. You were constantly jumping and slamming baddies into the ground, and then throwing them back into the air again to juggle them around with pistols or some other overzealous weaponry. Boss fights involved a wild mess of dodging attacks and trying to slash some demon’s face (or faces) off.

It’s kind of odd but this game changed my life. I’ll explain. I have always been an artist. Even as a youth, I was drawing in my spare time or during class. My sketches started to include monsters and characters from the game. I fell in love with the morbid and creepy aesthetic and became the “weird creepy art kid” during high school. This preference of style hasn’t really changed since then. My taste in music was similarly affected. I really liked the game’s soundtrack, a mixture of gritty hardcore metal that combined rough, metal style vocals with smooth and clear vocals. After looking for music with a similar sound I stumbled upon gothic metal. Soon all my old music was moved off my MP3 player and replaced with new bands.

When I moved to Winnipeg, I got even more involved with the gothic and metal subculture by attending concerts and related events. The game’s introduction to these new ideas and themes, combined with my own curious nature, caused a chain reaction that dramatically changed what kind of interests I have today.

Now, the game franchise has been rebooted. Created by a different studio than the previous games, DmC (Devil May Cry) was released last week. I preordered it like the addict I am and beat it the next day – in hard mode. This game has everything I would have wanted as a teenager, with all the extra stuff I want as an adult.

Gameplay is more dynamic, largely due to a new combat mechanic that provides more variety to the battles. The new game references the original plot and revamps it with some Orwellian concepts that make the story more interesting. There’s a good chance this game will become to me what Devil May Cry 3 was to me as a teenager. Will it change the kind of person I am like the early game did? I doubt it. I think the damage is already done.