Devil May Cry 4. The fourth installment in a video game franchise – developed and published by Capcom in 2008 – famous for revolutionizing the action genre in gaming, priding itself in its extensive combat mechanics, and bringing us some of the greatest moments in gaming history.
Devil May Cry 4 is one of those special gems that encourage me to possibly pursue a minor in Game Design, and what impresses me in particular is the engine on which the game runs, called MT Framework. Reverse-engineered from what was originally a PC engine, MT Framework has astounded me with just how much Devil May Cry 4 had going for it. Specifically its frame-rate of 60fps, complete in-game graphics, and solid performance, to name a few. For a game released 8 years ago, this was incredible production quality, and still is even by today’s standards. I commend the developers for prioritizing those aspects of the game, which are so important to get right in gaming that even current developers still struggle with or just flat-out neglect.
If anything, I see this as a shining example of polishing a computational project for maximum performance, as well as a standard to uphold, negating modern triple-A game developers excuses of sub-par performance in some of their games, despite multi million-dollar budgets and large development teams.
Link to a review of the game (link will take you to specific timestamp):
If you’re interested, here are links to combo videos that showcase the sheer potential of the combat: