Not this shit again. There was no need to "shake up" DMC. DMC2 almost buried the series. DMC3 resurrected it and in doing so set a bar that hasn't been reached by any action game since, with the arguable exception of Bayonetta. And Bayonetta was much more about perfecting DMC1's gameplay. Kamiya could have included DMC3-style cancel madness, but chose otherwise. I'm getting ahead of myself, though. DMC4 was released and proved to be a solid entry in the series, introducing Nero's Max Act system and the Devil Bringer (which was promptly copied by everyone, confirming that DMC still had trend setting power). Unfortunately, there was too much backtracking in the latter half of the game, and although style switching made DMC4 Dante the most versatile incarnation of the character yet, something essential was lost in the transition to the current gen.
The fact is, DMC deserves a definitive current gen version. DMC5 should have been that game, a logical next step in DMC's evolution that synthesized the best elements from the previous titles, shook out all the major kinks, and offered substantial replay incentives in the form of multiple playable characters and a better arena mode. We should have and could have had that game, but for inane reasons (greed and a misdiagnosis of DMC's issues), Capcom prostituted their most promising franchise, still bursting with untapped potential, to a studio that specializes in cinematic storytelling rather than solid combat mechanics. Capcom could have courted PlatinumGames or even Vigil (whose lean but deceptively deep combat system is the most impressive aspect of Darksiders 2), but the series was handed over to Ninja Theory instead, who, by the looks of things, managed to break everything that didn't need fixing in the process of extruding a comically bizarre "modernization" of DMC.
But never mind all that. Change is good. It could be just what the series needs. Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to puke up an omelet. Or something like that.
