Funny stuff in Devil Kings

Devil Kings is a new action adventure game (read: beat'em up) by Capcom for the PS2. The game looks incredibly pretty (insofar as the limits of the PS2 hardware goes), but gameplay-wise it's pretty much a Dynasty Warriors clone (although the move-customization part is more like Devil May Cry), right down to your contingents of allied generals and (AI-challenged) allied grunt soldiers that you sometimes have to fight like a madman/woman to save. Unlike Dynasty Warriors, though, this game doesn't seem to try to have a serious plot at all... at least, it certainly is not the case with the plot of the character I'm playing right now.

Her name is Venus. She seems to be a super ninja assassin type (mixed with a healthy dosage of your typical eyecandy game blonde bombshell bakunyuu type). When her story starts, she's sneaking around the ceiling of some castle looking for this guy called Frost so that she could kill him. So she finds him while he's poring over some map (probably just more vanilla plotting to take over the world), drops down from the ceiling, and proceeds to do the usual vainglorious "get ready to face your death" announcement (I thought assassins are supposed to kill swiftly and SILENTLY?). Then he turns around and a maelstrom of rose petals pops out of nowhere to frame his smiling, perfectly bishonen face. And she, um, melts. So when he comes over to sweep her off her feet and spew absolutely idiotic bishonen pickup lines at her ("just like the thorn on a beautiful rose, your eyes have pierced my heart", ugh), she was too smitten to resist him. Not only did she drop her knives, but as he moved in to embrace her (in an absolute fury of petals flying around everywhere... who the hell picked all the flowers in the garden and turned on the electric fan?), she was laughing giddily and making these absolutely ORGASMIC noises. Seriously. Although there's nothing even remotely R-rated in the footage, the noises she were making are absolutely NC-17. Herbal Essences stuff, if you're old enough to remember those commercials. Suffice to say that by the time the first battle started, she was Frost's faithful servant (in more ways than one, I imagine) and sworn to defend him to the death. LOL. Those homages to the glorious bishonen tradition had me rolling on the floor laughing for quite a while. :)

From what I hear, most of the characters have tongue-in-cheek storylines like that. That ought to make the game a little more amusing (though it'll still play like what it is... a Dynasty Warriors ripoff)... well, that and the beautifully done anime FMVs (only seen one so far: Red Minotaur's intro before the second fight in Venus's campaign. But it was truly awesomely animated -- and I swear it's done by either Sunrise Studios or Bandai Visual, because it looks almost entirely like Gasaraki [and somewhat like GiTS: SAC too]).

EDIT: Watch the intro for yourself, courtesy of the incredible convenience of youtube. --K. 2/26/07