DMC: Devil May Cry review: Love's keen sting

There is a fine, bleached line between "trying too hard" and "confident in your own skin." The two descriptors can look disturbingly similar: Some people use hair dye, awkward yet fashionable clothing and violent curse words as a mask for their insecurities, while for others these are outward expressions of the very personality quirks that the first group attempts to hide.

At first glance, it's difficult to tell which category DMC: Devil May Cry belongs to. In the marketing leading up to DMC's launch, publisher Capcom released videos of a naked Dante sailing through the air, manly bits covered by slices of pizza, and infused its material with metal songs and f-bombs. It had reason to put forth such a ridiculous effort following backlash from the game's radical style shift: Dante's hair black rather than white-blonde, his body decked out with new clothes and his personality given a modern twist.

With such a rabid fanbase, the only thing that could redeem DMC from reactionary internet infamy was to turn that unique, new styling into an homage to a beloved series. To be confident in its skin and own all of its style choices unapologetically, while still retaining the crux of the series, the combat.

DMC does this in spades ? er, scythes.

View Gallery:DmC: Devil May Cry (11/1/12)

DMC's world is as much a funhouse mirror of our own reality as the game itself is to its previous installments. It's a neon, urban landscape ruled over, in secret, by demons bent on controlling the human race through hypnotic soft drinks and manipulative news networks. Limbo, the demon world that exists on top of this reality, crushes and cracks the city as Dante travels through it, creating a distorted yet beautiful playground for battle.

Dante, a Nephilim (the product of an angel and demon's unholy union), is

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