While the series originated on the PlayStation 2, the controls seem well suited to the Xbox 360's controller. Your pistols are assigned to X, your sword Y, jump A, and grabs to B. Your lock-on is mapped to the Right Bumper, and your specials are mapped to the triggers. This may seem limited, but it is not. You can charge your guns by holding X or streak towards an enemy by holding the lock-on and pressing Y. Depending on whether you are on the ground or in the air and the amount of times you press Y will give you different combos. Different uses of the lock-on with Y and with the control stick do different things as well. After just a few minutes with the game, you will be chaining gun, aerial, sword, and grab attacks together.

The melee combat is fun, but that is not the main appeal. The main appeal is the epic boss fights. The bosses are huge, monstrous demons. Beating them requires refined timing and knowing when to bring the combos. Taking down such gigantic bosses is immensely satisfying.

The only downside is you will not always be killing demons. There are a few times in the game where the action stops and the game makes you solve a puzzle or go through some 3-D platforming. The puzzles are quite frankly not even really puzzles. Often times, they consist of simply following the right path. Other times you simply had to hit something with your sword or investigate the most obvious thing in a room. My favorite puzzle had to be rolling dice. That is right; you have to roll dice until you have rolled enough spaces to unlock the next area.

The 3-D platforming is disappointing because while the platforming is in 3-D, you have no control of the camera. In other parts of the game, you do have camera control, but hiding relevant areas seems to be part of the platforming challenge. Therefore, the platforming seems needlessly frustrating. I wonder why they even put these platforming elements in these action games. Are gamers really going to be telling their friends about the awesome platforming sequence they just played?

Capcom delivers another amazing looking game. This is the first Xbox 360 game in a while that has surprised me by how good it looks. Backgrounds and settings have good detail and realistic shadowing. The character models are also very lifelike, but not in that creepy sort of way. Nero and Dante's character designs are far too similar for my tastes though.