Devil’s Third Review

Introducing the Hack & Shoot:

“Devil’s Third” has been an on-again, off-again speck on the horizon for quite some time now, and then – almost without warning and extremely hard to believe – here it is. It made it. Against all odds Devil’s Third is on store shelves, but does it deserve to be in your home?

Story:

Devil’s Third has a story that, whilst entirely workable, is concerning. Director Tomonobu Itagaki’s previous design philosophy never had much of a place for narrative, with the early Ninja Gaiden games being wall-to-wall slaughterfests with little-to-no exposition, character development or really any semblance of a plot other than “stop the demons”. For an experience devoted entirely to its combat, this worked. Nothing got in the way of the flow of Ninja Gaiden, and I wish a similar approach had been used with Devil’s Third – especially as the story here really doesn’t elevate the game in a meaningful way. It only serves to get in the way of a game that might actually build momentum otherwise.

Tattoo fanatic Ivan is in a bad place. After having fallen out with his terrorism buddies he’s been captured by the government and put to (wet)work. His 850 year sentence looms but at least he’s allowed out on a leash every now and then and rewarded with treats like a drum kit or the latest issue of playboy. Devil’s Third focuses on the latest international threat, when a bunch of bad guys take down every satellite from the sky and throw the world into crisis. It’s up to our Riddick-ulous protagonist to take down all the bad guys and ‘fix the stars’

As steroid-fuelled tales go, Devil’s Third doesn’t tell a terrible one. There was even an early game twist that actually made me want to pay attention to cutscenes if only to find out how this narrative device worked out, and that’s better than most stories I’ve seen shoehorned into similar titles. It’s just that the narrative doesn’t really do much except break up the flow in a game that feels best at full speed.

The story also deals in cheap direction to deliver a point or to signal that someone is evil. Early on we learn that Ivan left his terrorist group because they killed some kids – who you literally come across piled up in a room as the camera tastelessly zooms in on the scene. I didn’t have a problem with the exposition – despite it being a blunt shortcut to paint your would-be foes a black and white shade of evil – but the crass execution left a lot to be desired. No matter how badly Devil’s Third wants to ape the likes of Tarantino with its Kill Bill-inspired flashback scenes, instead it ends up evoking hammy 90s videogame cutscenes that I’d hoped we’d long left behind.

Gameplay:

Devil’s Third is a fairly unique mash up of genres, aiming to combine third person shooting with a hack ‘n’ slash combat system when things get up close and personal. Initially this feels like a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ kind of deal, but about halfway through the second level everything clicks and you realise that it’s a pretty great combination after all – and honestly I’m surprised it hasn’t been done more often.

Levels are essentially corridors straight to the boss – interestingly designed but linear nevertheless. Despite first impressions, these arenas where you’ll blast through the games enemies are deceptively crafted. There’s almost always a level of verticality to a stage, allowing Ivan to clamber up to higher ground or find alternative routes around the action entirely. Thankfully Ivan’s parkour abilities are tight, fun and understated. In fact, I didn’t realise that a good chunk of the game was a platformer carefully disguised as a shooter until about half way through the campaign.

In combat, action is fast paced and solid, with an arcade-y speed and weight to the proceedings. Considering how convoluted this game could have felt as it straddled two abstract genres, I was impressed to find that everything felt pretty intuitive. This is due to some excellent control mapping, which meant I was never fumbling to do what I wanted, when I wanted.

Thanks to this, melee is fluid to dive in and out of during gunfights – something that would have really hurt this title had it been jarring or stunted in the slightest. Thanks to agile and aggressive AI the game forces you to utilize melee often in a genre where a gun would almost always be enough, and it’s a really refreshing twist that serves to mix up the action.

Unfortunately there isn’t much depth here aside from mashing light or heavy attacks. Ivan’s moveset doesn’t evolve or change and – especially compared to Itagaki’s previous works – this leads combat to feel shallow and boring after a while. Even the gunplay only offers so much before it runs out of ideas. Shooting can feel gummy with certain weapons, leading me to stick with forgiving assault rifles rather than try anything that relied on precision.