Your thoughts on his critique of Dante?
"I think my hatred for Dante stems from who he is and what he is, with all due respect, is an insufferable c***! He's that guy you went to college with is what I'm getting at. That guy who thinks he's God's gift to the world, acts like he's so much better than everyone else that it becomes all the more delightful watching him get his s*** ruined by someone else. Or to put it another way, he's that character I tend to notice in a lot of Japanese media.
The borderline self insert wish fulfilment who is ABSOLUTELY FLAWLESS in the cinematics of the game. Pulling gravity and logic defying bulls**t as a means to show off or convey to the audience "SHOWER THIS CHARACTER WITH AWE AND RESPECT!" yet when the game begins after a 10 minute cutscene you can't even replicate what you just witnessed. It's one thing to tell us characters such as Dante or Lightning from Final Fantasy are "awesome" yet unless we can actually do the utter bollocks you cram into the cutscenes then the character is only awesome because you say so.
Now Batman as much as I'm loathed to admit this IS awesome, for in the Arkham Games you CAN do all the shit he does in cutscenes. I guess you can say he's awesomely consistent. It's not really Dante's fault but it's a design choice I've come to loathe with Japanese games. An unnecessarily long opening cinematic, showcasing what the director would like us to think about their special little character, which in most cases has the opposite effect. Maybe I'm cut from a different cloth but I don't go for what I consider "a 13 year olds idea of awesome!" but if you've read my series you'll notice I tend to go for a misogynistic wanker who gets his ass kicked faster than you can say "Can I grab your tits?"
Raiden is a character I long suspected of this bulls**t, but in Metal Gear Rising you are able to perform crazier s**t in gameplay so I'll admit I was wrong about my break dancing cyborg ninja friend. So while Raiden from Metal Gear Rising dodged this accusation, I have a special place in Hell reserved for the likes of Dante and Lighting. Self insert mother....."
Well I'd say he's wrong because Dante is every bit as durable and agile in gameplay as he is in cutscenes, while it's true the original games were limited in not being able to use the environment as much as Dante does in the cutscenes I don't think kicking chairs is really that important to the gameplay.
In the intro cutscene for DMC 1 Dante uses air juggling with his guns, you can do this in game and he survives being impaled, you can get stabbed repeatedly in gameplay and keep going,
And for DMC 3 Dante fights Vergil in a massive show of swordsmanship and bravado, you do this in game, he fights enemies hand to hand, you do this with the Beowulf gloves in 3 and the Ifrit in 1, he slides around on an enemy, you can do this in game, it's called the Free Slide, you can even fire Ebony and Ivory while doing it just like the cutscene.
The only thing you can't do is eat pizza and throw a telephone with pin-point precision, and cut a pool table in half and kick it at people, not really missing much there but more environmental combat would be fun.
Gravity defying stunts is something DMC is all about, Air Hike is a staple move and air juggling is a core part of the gameplay, you can't just rely on Stinger and High Time only to get through the game in a fun way.
Basically, he's wrong on all counts because it sounds like he's bad at the game and can't pull off the combos. Really, I'd ask him how he feels about Final Fantasy 7 Remake and how it shows Cloud leaping 30 feet up from a falling platform like it's nothing but then having an item up on a ledge later in the game that you have to backtrack for ten minutes to get despite Cloud easily being able to jump that high, or how Cloud can slice through segments of falling building in the finale of the remake but can't cut through a rusty metal gate or the concrete around it to get to Tifa and Aerith in Hojo's lab. Now that's some real gameplay/cutscene disconnect and if his think-piece or whatever you want to call it was about that then I'd agree, he's just backed the wrong horse on this one.
