Devil May Cry 4 - hands-on

It's been a long road for Devil May Cry 4 from E3 teaser blip to playable product - so long, in fact, that the series' hero, Dante, has been retired in favor of a younger-looking demon slayer named Nero. After a couple years of waiting, we finally got a chance to take Nero for a spin at the Tokyo Game Show. And while we weren't surprised - Devil May Cry 4 feels about the same as every other game in the series - we were entertained.

White-haired and wearing a big trenchcoat, Nero looks and plays like Dante Junior. He can pull off acrobatic flips and juggle enemies with barrages of slashes and bullets. He carries a single pistol (with unlimited ammo) and a big sword, and he's got a lot of the same moves. But Nero has a few advantages over the shirtless demon-slayer - he's a little faster than Dante (and gets even faster the longer he runs), and he's got an ability Dante doesn't - the "Devil Bringer" power, which lets him yank over enemies and slam them around. We're sure it'll be an ability you can upgrade and unlock new moves for, but in our short time with it, we found it worked best as a deadly finisher to our sword combos.

Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.