[youtube khGUPEdY-Fk Super FRIENDS] Welcome back, me, I've been missed. I've spent the last week in Tokyo and Osaka, visiting with various producers on many of our upcoming games, including Resident Evil 5 (two early words: "awesome" and "totally"), Street Fighter IV, Bionic Commando, We Love Golf, the Ace Attorney guys, various Mega Man producers and much more I cannot discuss without fear of reprisal from Capcom ninja -- sorry, shinobi* -- death squads. In the next day or two, I'll be posting some cool photos of the Capcom offices, as well as bringing you a guided tour to Devil May Cry fashions in action on the hip streets of Osaka. But in the meantime, enjoy this light entertainment. I dunno what's better: the open-mouthed gapery of Batman as Joey or the purely nonsensical Robin/Rachael pairing. * stupid inside localization/westernization joke

Kobayashi-san spent a few days signing 200 of the cool DMC4 CE tin boxes. These tin boxes will then have the slipcover placed over them, making it virtually impossible to see his signature. During his forced labor, he snapped a few pics with his cell phone and sent us his thoughts:"During New Year's vacation, I signed 200 copies of the US collector's edition package. On the back of the box, over Dante, I signed in Roman-ji, HIROYUKI KOBAYASHI. There are lots of them in these cardboard boxes!Producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi "

Man, I love working in the games industry. I just finished DMC4 after a marathon bout of gaming, I mean, "product evaluation," here at the office. The game is, in a word, awesome. Yes, I work for Capcom; Yes, you can and should take my opinion with a grain of salt since I am officially a Tool of the Man™. That said, I have been consistently entertained, challenged and blown away by all the elements that make up this fourth installment of Devil May Cry. Best news: it's harder than DMC2, but not nearly as hard as DMC3! More after the jump! I'm a huge fan of DMC, which I have found to consistently be one of the coolest and most challenging series of games out there. The integration of style, gameplay, design and control are found in few other places -- and most of the games that people would suggest with similar doses of both style and substance have obviously learned a lot from our boy Dante. Like most normal humans, I found the original US release of DMC3 to be incredibly frustrating. I was so ready for that game that I was bugging my buddy here at Capcom practically daily to try to snag an early copy. Of course, the game that originally shipped in the US was so spirit-crushingly hard that after several hours of Tourette's-flavored, Dual Shock-hurling gaming, I ended up popping the disc out of the PS2 and putting it back on the shelf. I looked back at my progress and found that over five hours of gameplay had gotten me to the fourth stage of the game, stranding me on a level that I was playing over and over while not making any forward progress -- kinda like being trapped in an MMO, which was my day job at the time ;) The next day, I wrote a letter (not an email, mind, I actually put pen to paper like some kind of unfrozen caveman) to Robert at Capcom that simply said: "Dear Robert, Tell Japan: Devil May Cry 3 is TOO HARD!" Of course, Special Edition fixed that problem with a much more forgiving difficulty level, along with mid-level saves (how those were not originally included is incomprehensible). DMC3 Special Edition is one of the few Greatest Hits versions of a game that was actually re-reviewed as a new release by the media, generally scoring higher than the initial release! Look, I like a challenge when I play my games, but I don't enjoy feeling like a developer is punishing me for not being super hardcore. Games like Ninja Gaiden are pretty as hell and interesting, but I don't need to play something that is going to consistently slap me for not having the reflexes of a weasel jumped up on grande double espressos. I don't usually select the hardest degree of difficulty on a game right from the get-go. I don't compete in Seth's Street Fighter tournaments. I'm not ranked in Halo. I just like to play games and enjoy them. If I become awesome at them, as I now am at playing tiny plastic guitars, that's just a bonus. Over the past year of working PR on DMC4, one of the first questions I usually get from the media is: "How hard is this one going to be?" Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that I just finished DMC4 on the harder of the two selectable difficulties. I did it without having to constantly refer back to GameFAQs, without having to have someone else beat a boss for me (a shameful habit I have developed as I have gotten older and found myself surrounded by younger gamers with more patience than I now posses. And skillz. Mad skillz.) I beat DMC4 on my own in a reasonable amount of time, without ramming face-first into an impassable wall of cackling, merciless gamer-hatery. Granted, my stage rankings are pretty low -- mostly C's -- but if that really kept me up at nights, I would go back and start trying to improve them. Difficulty levels in games are incredibly tricky things to balance and the DMC team has done an excellent job doing so with this game. Yep, bosses are tough, no doubt about it. There are some tricky bits of acrobatics and hippity-hoppity-jumpity, especially towards the AMAZING end. However, the game finds ways of compensating for your skill level and (more or less) helping you to help yourself. And I have to say, I took a fair degree in pride in the message that flashed at the end, which told me that, after all was said and done, that I wasn't so lame after all. In fact, the game has been so much fun that I intend to play through again when the retail 360 version shows up so I can snarf up the Achievement points. Long story short, if you've been thinking about holding off on picking up DMC4 after having your face summarily ripped from your skull, neatly folded and then handed back to you by DMC3, worry no more. DMC4 has two levels of difficulty to choose from at the start, as well as some other helpful pushes to not only make you a better player but to help you get over the frustration hump before it really kicks in. Don't fear it, master it. Oh, and one more thing: Shadow of the Colossus, you've been served! Snap!

IGN's has a vote going for the mother of all action battles right now (and one I'd like to see, preferably in a bloodier format than Smash Brothers). Representing the half-human/half-demon contingency is everyone's favorite dual-gun-wielding pizza fan, Dante. And in the other corner, standing tall for the half-human/half-god posse is learned-everything-he-knows-from-Dante, Kratos. Not to dis GoW (a fine, fine series of games, to be sure), but we know who Kratos copped his moves from, don't we? At last check, the race was dead even, but I'm sure pulling in a few of y'all from the community couldn't hurt Big D's standings. Now, please: get out the vote.

We just noticed that Gamestop is offering you extra cash towards DMC4 (through Jan. 13, 2008) for divesting yourself of those games that you've already beaten over the holiday. This is a perfect opportunity for you to get $6 instead of $5 for that copy of the Golden Compass game!