Devil's Third (Wii U) - Every Gamer Review

There have been some terrible games, from E.T., to Bubsy 3D, to Sonic 06, to whatever the hell Bioware shat out and somehow called it a Mass Effect game. Some bad games are usually left forgotten and that's the end of that. But there are some games that are so questionably horrendous to the point where they end up in the back of your mind, questioning how the developers screwed up so bad.

I've played my fair share of bad games, some I've reviewed and suffered for. It's not fun playing them, though curiosity gets in the way of playing something else worth your time.

With that said, having what's considered a bad game on the Wii U, a console that everyone shits on apart from those who defend it for multiple reasons, you're not doing yourself any favours here. And with that, a game that's legendary for being a pile of crap despite Famitsu saying it's OK.

Devil's Third (デビルズサード Debiruzu Sādo), developed by Valhalla Game Studios and published by Nintendo, it was released in 2015 worldwide, with Japan, Europe and Australia, getting it in August. The US would have to wait until December.

Valhalla Game Studios International Ltd. (ヴァルハラゲームスタジオインターナショナルリミテッド) was first opened in 2008 by Satoshi Kanematsu, who previously worked for Tecmo and was involved in the Monster Rancher series and Rygar. Joining him is Tomonobu Itagaki, who worked on the Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden games. With those credentials, they should be the right men to make a fun title. But Devil's Third was their first game, meaning that it took years to develop, roughly 7 years to be exact. And then you start to question how this game took seven years, which I'll explain in a bit.

Oh, fun tidbit, Valhalla Motion Pictures sued the company because their company name was too similar to their own. So I'm guessing the International part was added I guess.

Originally, Devil's Third was going to be published by Microsoft Game Studios as an Xbox 360 exclusive, but that plan fell through, so THQ was going to help publish it, and was going to be released for the PlayStation 3 alongside the Xbox 360, but due to being shut down at the time, Nintendo pulled a Bayonetta 2 and helped publish it.

OK, OK, onto the game's plot.

So some Japanese-looking dude, the head of SOD (as a British civilian, I have the privilege to cry out with laughter and say, “YOU FUCKING WHAT MATE?”), pulls a Kessler and destroys all the civilian and military satellites on the planet. This causes wars to occur, the world's power shutting down and the US put into Martial Law...even though realistically satellites do not mean the power shutting down for everyone...but FUCK COMMON SENSE, MAKE GAMES WE DO! And do we see the chaos that's happens in the world? Sort of...kind of...not really...eh!

So the US enlists former Russian SOD (AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA intensifies) known as Ivan (who's imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay by the way), to stop the SODs who are behind this.

There's a bit more to it but I just don't care, the problem is that the plot feels like something from a straight-to-DVD movie, the only difference is that it takes itself way too seriously rather than take this utterly nonsense plot and have some fun with it.

The characters are...meh, Ivan is that overly tough guy who can jump down huge heights and he's fine, the soldiers he teams up with are solider fodder, the main villains are either too goofy or...in terms of Jane Doe, is in fucking lingerie, and before you cry sexism, this is made by people from Tecmo, what did you expect? And secondly, Ivan, the muscular bloke that he is, spends the entire game with only trousers like he's in a Contra game because as Duke Nukem would say, “Armour's for pussies”. He also has tattoos...they don't explain why he has said tattoos and they can glow and the game never explains why or how, I mean he DID used to work for SOD, but that means nothing other than he's an invincible soldier. There's a lot of questions I could ask but...where's the bloody structure to this?

Oh, but it doesn't end there, we have horror in our game where some residents turn into evil zombies (GET IT?) and...it goes nowhere, the developers wanted it in the game to look cool.

Now onto the game. Like a drunk blending the rest of last night's take away, we sometimes have ourselves a third-person shooter and sometimes hack and slash where you go around shooting enemy soldiers...or use melee combat. In terms of the third-person shooting, it works like any other with one element changed: when you aim, your weapon, it does into this first-person camera as if you're playing a first-person shooter. See how confused this game is already.

The shooting mechanics are stiff and quite clunky but at the very least, is manageable after a bit of playtime if you haven't already thrown the disc out of the window. All the weapons feel the same, apart from the sniper rifle which is always a godsend, but despite the clunky shooting mechanics, blowing heads off enemies is very satisfying.

Then we have the melee combat, where you can use your Katana to slice down enemies in seconds. There are other melee weapons about but you're not going to use those, I paid £9 for this game and I want my gore for fucks sake, so it's either the Katana or those twin knifes that slices the shit out of enemies. The melee combat is simple to a fault, I think there's a special attack that you can use but you're not going to use that, because you're like me and you already forgot. Heck, there's zombies in one level and you just slice and dice them all because that's what works. VIVA LA DOMINANT STRATEGY!!!

The thing about this game is, the melee combat is probably the best thing about Devil's Third and it's the combat I used when I could get away with it. There are parts where you're meant to shoot enemies in far stretches, but once I shoot a few of them down, the rest is just running to them, you might get shot but you're a bloody sponge to an extent and start slicing and dicing.

The gameplay is linear, it's really stupid and it reeks of Call of Duty thanks to dumb plot, regenerating health and plentiful checkpoints. But in terms of the overall experience, it's an average game.

Itagaki, despite everyone shitting on the game, thought that Devil's Third would be a "breakthrough for the industry", and that it would elevate the genre to a new level. To which everyone and their mothers went and had the biggest laugh, more keks were heard louder than ever before.

But I ask of you Itagaki, HOW? The game feels like a budget game of other generic games for the time and even now, nothing about the game feels fresh or new and shoving everything into the pot doesn't make it a genre breakthrough, if anything, it shows absolute incompetence on the developers part, realising that some need someone level-headed to balance things out instead of this mish-mash of meh. I don't think having a bonkers plot would hurt a game, Metal Gear Solid and Devil May Cry had a good balance of seriousness and over-the-top nonsense, but Devil's Third has no idea what it wants to be and as such, is left as a game who doesn't know what to do for today at nursery.

Then we have the bosses, what an odd bunch of unimpressive SODs (seriously, it writes itself). The first SOD is a muscular dude looking like he either directed a porno or a sleazy drug Kingpin in Las Vegas. What does the first boss have? A room full of henchmen and the boss and they just gun the hell of you instantly unless you throw grenades to ease your pain, then said boss has a second form where he takes this serum to turn him superhuman and he can kill you instantly, the whole boss for that is you literally running in circles in the hopes that you can shoot him before he stamps your nuts into a fine wine.

Yeah, these SODs use serums to make them superhuman. Do they explain how the serum works? NOPE! It's cool to the developers so fuck anyone who was at least interested in the plot...though you should have given up already. I mean they try to give out some backstory as to who these SODs are...via loading screens...and they still don't give off much apart from their names, height and weight, come on, I really want to know their blood type, why can't I know their blood types, that would have been the complete equivalent of the full nine yards you hyperactive developers.

The second SOD is some muscular African man moaning about his people and DOESN'T STOP FUCKING ATTACKING ME! Seriously, he has no cooldown, once he attacks you, he will never stop...unless you change the difficulty and makes the whole experience bearable as a result.

The third SOD is Jane Doe and the only name I remember because she's in lingerie and the camera angles make sure you get to see the goods (I may give you a point for it in protest). And...she's easy...huh!

The Fourth SOD is an invisible woman...with the weirdest outfit I've ever seen in a character. Trouble is, her invisibility is kind of shit as I can see her...well done idiot!

And the final SOD is the leader...similar to the second SOD but because I changed the difficulty, he was bearable.

Yeah, the bosses are quite shit, apart from one that looks like something from Gears of War, that one was quite fun because having an RPG makes everything fun.

But the most enemies most deadly are of the utterly terrifying: BATS!

Now for the biggest elephant in the room and the reason the game was lambasted for: the plethora of bugs and glitches. We have the framerate chugging like its life is depending on it, collision detection in which it was difficult trying to pick up ammo or me spending three minutes trying to pick up a secret item, enemies going through objects as I kill them, some bosses not having any cooldown when attacking, graphics taking time to load up, it's a bloody mess. Though it's not gamebreaking at the very least, it doesn't work against you...though neither does it work for you, it's a simple case of nobody testing the game before it came out.

The graphics is like if you made one of the last PlayStation 2 games ever made, prettied it up and slammed it on the Wii U. Even for this console, it's quite poor. I...I don't have much else to say, the game isn't interesting, but bonkers for all the wrong reasons, where you give up on how bizarre the adventure is (had to do it, I just want to move on).

Overall, Devil's Third is a technical mess and...well, just a mess overall. But is it the worst game ever made? I say no, it really isn't. The gameplay is fine, I had an OK experience with it, but I didn't have a memorable experience with it. Like McDonalds', it's bearable and tolerable, it's a game where you play it for about 6-7 hours and you're done with it, back on the shelf or sold to a shop that pittied you buying it in the first place. It's an average game that has framerate issues for the most part.

But I think the reason why I was slightly entertained by the gameplay (sometimes) was because this had potential, there's a lot in this game that would have made it so much fun if they just polished it, what were Valhalla doing for seven years to come up with this?

OH! There's also an online mode...well there was an online mode, I'm guessing nobody played it so Nintendo pulled the plug on the servers, there's even a sticker on my copy telling me so. Welp, that's less work for me. Although, Devil's Third was ported to the PC...albeit the online mode so...back to Team Fortress 2.

I don't know if could ever recommend this game, but if you're looking for something to shoot, slice and be confused by whatever the plot is trying to say, I'd say give it a go if you find the game at a very cheap price, otherwise, there's much better games to play.

You can get it on the Wii U.