Review: Devil’s Third

Tomonobu Itagaki might be famous for the Xbox’s Ninja Gaiden, but I have a feeling he’ll become infamous for Devil’s Third… because his latest game is so bad.

So bad.

In development limbo for a number of years, it really shows. Devil’s Third looks like an early PS2 game, and worse, plays like a launch PlayStation One title. Outdated and “edgy” – quotation marks definitely in there for effect – I honestly am struggling to find anything remotely nice to say about it.

Devil’s Third puts you in the muscle-bound shoes of Ivan. A terrorist, Ivan — complete with his “edgy” (there’s that word again) Japanese tattoos — is released from Guantanamo Bay and tasked to fight other terrorists. You see, an evil organisation called The School of Democracy has blown up all – ALL – of the world’s satellites, and as a result, the world is plunged into chaos. Channeling all of the craziness of Metal Gear Solid, but with none of the qualities that make it endearing, Ivan is matched against Big Mouse, sniper C4 and a number of other hollow caricatures.

A hack-and-slash title, you’re encouraged to mix it up with sword- and gun-play. The problem is, neither is very good. Early on, the sword should be your weapon of choice, but that changes after a couple levels when enemies come equipped with RPGs. After you change it up, so too does the enemy; thankfully, neither a conventional gun nor sword will work against riot shields, so explosives it is.

Combat in either form is buggy as all hell, clipping most of the time and with controls that seem like they’re in pre-alpha status. Sensitivity is just broken, either offering up movement that’s either way too slow, or ridiculously touchy. Aiming itself, switching from third- to first-person view, adds to the sensitivity problem, and on the whole made me feel a little queasy. Sword animations are probably the most detailed thing inside Devil’s Third, and while they’re initially enjoyable, get repetitive very quickly.

Enemies themselves make combat even worse, all with AI that looks like it was written and locked-in sometime around 2005. More often than not, you’ll enter a room before the enemies get their trigger command; I made a game of counting just how long it took before they all decided to react. Enemies even die in stupid ways, with headshots sometimes blowing legs off opponents, or blunt weapons slicing through goons like a hot knife through butter.

Further dating the game are a number of uninspired quick-time events, bosses with ridiculously long health bars and the like. You can see the influence of titles like Ninja Gaiden in Devil’s Third, but you wonder where all the good bits went. Or, if you’d hate Ninja Gaiden if you played it today.

The game has a multiplayer offering that’s also being ripped from the game itself and made free-to-play on PC. You can tell, too. You’re given enough in-mode currency to carry on for a while, but you won’t want to, with all the bugs of the single-player campaign moving across to online play. There are countless other free-to-play multiplayer titles that offer far better gameplay, so I wouldn’t even recommend the download when it’s eventually offered.

This isn’t even a fun game to play and make fun of, people. Avoid it at all costs. Unless, of course, you do so only to make the completely obvious “Devil’s Turd” reference.

Devil’s Turd Third was reviewed using a promotional code on Wii U, as provided by the publisher.

Review: Devil’s Third

The good Not much.	The bad Outdated. Uninspired. Awful combat mechanics.

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