Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our discussion of 2001's Devil May Cry, discussing enemy introductions, the mission structure, grinding to find your difficulty level, and other topics. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: Missions 5-10

Podcast breakdown: 0:32 Devil May Cry part one 34:32 Unintentional break 34:56 Devil May Cry part two and feedback

Issues covered: enemy introductions, bosses or more fodder enemies, finding first rooms for enemies that fit, introductions in Republic Commando, first person camera intros, marionettes and dread, weapon intros, smoke and mirrors in intros, ceding character for game play, cutting polygons from a model, high poly counts smoke and mirrors, introducing weapons, lacking weapon introductions in Jedi Starfighter, ideal intros, devoting a mission to introduce a new unit, limited introductions in Diablo, Japan and "cool" culture vs "hot" culture, cultural appropriation, snapping your fingers to open the door, Dante's insouciance when talking to a giant boss, changing and growing Capcom's brand identity, time pressure, teaching the player that time is a factor in getting the best rank, timed levels in games, being all about speed, eating your health away and an avenue to increase time, integrating time into games, kill streaks and time, overlaying a mission structure on a physical location, saving the game between missions, putting the mastery forward, giving frequent feedback, using trophies as a means to give feedback, ranking play in general, intrinsic gratification vs feedback, having multiple save slots and experimentation, being able to go back to earlier sections of the castle, limited resources in Resident Evil, upgrade stations being in the world, being able to move back and forth through the world, fast loads, grinding to find your equilibrium difficulty-wise, increasing player skill, using all the tools and feeling accomplished, using the shotgun for the banshees, taking another look at Bayonetta, level capping in Diablo and Paragon, ways of elongating games (as a service), accessibility in games, interpretative difficulty, commercial benefit to being "the difficult game," being more positive on the Internet, Nintendo and difficulty, doing a good job of making a hard game, feeling "guilty" about lowering difficulty, applauding commitment, the accessible controller.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Ben Grimm, Lobot, Professor X, Nick Fury, Republic Commando, Todd Howard, Fallout 3, Jedi Starfighter, Nintendo, Blizzard, Starcraft (series), Warcraft (series), Diablo (series), Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents, Metal Gear (series), Hideo Kojima, Suda51, Ghost of Tsushima, Infamous (series), Akira Kurosawa, Capcom, Resident Evil (series), Clover, Platinum, Bayonetta, Viewtiful Joe, PN 03, DOOM (1993), Metal Gear Rising, Jedi Knight, Reed Knight, Matt Tateishi, Unreal Tournament, Quake III Arena, Gran Turismo, NES/SNES, Castlevania, Metroid, Pit Droids, Kingdom Hearts (series), God of War, Alpha Protocol, Destiny II, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Darren from Ohio, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, War and Peace, Captain Underpants, Tacoma, Gone Home, Steve Gaynor, Return of the Obra Dinn, From Software, Souls (series), Bloodborne, Patrick Klepek, Super Meat Boy, Celeste, Keza MacDonald, Jason Killingsworth, King's Field, Microsoft Game Studios, Nathan Martz, Once Upon A Monster, Sesame Street, Hidetaka Miyazaki.

Next time: Missions 11-17

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