8 Smart Video Games With Incredibly Dumb Twists

6. Devil May Cry 5 - Questionable Wordplay

Devil May Cry 5 was a smart game. Not because it had a cerebral story or like, even vaguely interesting level design or anything, but because it knew exactly what fans wanted, and because its dozens of interweaving combos displayed a geode-like glittering complexity. People occasionally describe Platinum-style character action combat as ‘balletic’, but I feel DMC5 is more of a shameless, riotous barn dance of unselfconscious, comically-slick abandon, with some dope cowboy hats.

The game also mentioned romantic poet William Blake a lot. This is fine. The bad part was the reveal that Blakean fanfic demon ‘Urizen’ is Dante’s rival sibling Vergil, with a line to the effect of ‘He’s your reason for fighting’.

Urizen. Your reason. As a dedicated proponent of puns, I rank this somewhere below “Christmas cracker joke your dad found stuck to his shoe on New Year’s Eve and proceeded to pull out the aux cord just so he could read it to the whole party, but halfway through started choking on the mouthful of mini cheddars he was still eating.” From now on, all DMC stories should involve nothing but dance-offs between Vergil and Dante. Combat. Dance off. Combat. Dance off. There, fixed it.