About the gameplay:
For anyone that's played Ninja Gaiden and knows how fun and challenging the AI can be (some even call it hard), DMC3 is absolutely nothing like that. The enemies in DMC3 are completely stupid and your attacks are extremely limited. The gameplay in DMC3 is more like the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beatem up game, where you just have stupid ugly drones come at you in waves and you just mash on the buttons to defeat them. There's no requirement like Ninja Gaiden to constantly block and roll and time your attacks. You just shoot and slash mindlessly with Devil May Cry 3 and the enemies all just die like cannon fodder. In Ninja Gaiden if you just run straight into fights without blocking rolling and jumping you will get slaughtered. In DMC3 you just constantly use the same attack button and don't have to think at all because the AI is so dumb and easy. The combat in this game is very repetitive and requires no thinking or skill whatsoever. My immediate thought and what I told people who I spoke to about the game at E3 was that the game would be totally unacceptable for anyone who has played Ninja Gaiden now. Ninja Gaiden raised the bar for the genre in gameplay expectations. The mindless gameplay in DMC3 and other action games might be a little bit forgivable if the game at least had amazing graphics but this was the ugliest PS2 game at E3 that I saw.
"For some of the other complaints though, like depth-of-field blurring, you kind of have to see it in motion (as I learned in the last thread about DMC3 screens)"
I did see it in motion and I laughed out loud because it was so pathetically obvious that they were doing all that ugly bluring to cover up the horrible jaggies in the game. The jaggies are unbelievable, no PS2 games look like this anymore.
"Bloom lighting is the new lens flare."
Well they need to stop using it in low poly/low res textured games in order to hide graphical shortcomings. I like to see clearly the details on the screen, not have everything blinded and blurred out of focus. I'm sure bloom lighting used sparingly and when appropriate can create a dramatic effect. When used constantly as a shortcut to hide flaws, it creates a very unappealing game.
Looking at Capcom's record over the last year DMC3 will be par for the course. Although Resident Evil 4 was one of the best looking and playing games at E3, it is the rare exception. I warned people here about how bad the TMNT game was going to be and many people here did not want to listen to me.
