Capcom's DEVIL MAY CRY 4 is a big, loud, garishly goofy game.

It's stupid fun.

It's cotton candy.

It's pure sugar and brilliant color, frenetically spun until it looks huge and appetizing and substantial.

One taste, two, and you're smiling from ear to ear. Three tastes, four, and the immediate sugar rush tightens your smile into a line. Five tastes, six, nausea begins to rise.

I liken the game to a Jerry Bruckheimer production, big and slick, a well-oiled entertainment machine that dazzles with its bells and whistles and tries so hard to deliver on its promise of sheer spectacle that it just ends up numbing us into quiet submission. No brains, no soul, just empty thrills. Not to say that this is such a terrible thing. In small doses, cotton candy can be quite delicious.

Nero, the quintessential angry young man (with white hair and a demon arm) is hung up on a girl and ashamed of his demonic power. He harnesses his gnarled demon arm in a sling, out of view, faux-broken, to appear human, normal, but when it's time for battle he unleashes the sucker and pulverizes his enemies with its ungodly power (the best part of the game). An active member of the Order of the Sword, it's Nero's job to slay the occasional demon and preserve the peace. When Dante (the protagonist of the first three DMC titles) crashes an Order of the Sword ceremony and assassinates their leader, a pope like figure named Sanctus, Nero is tasked with hunting him down and bringing him to justice.

However, while Nero obeys orders and chases after Dante, all is not as it seems. Sanctus, resurrected by his minions, turns out to be a fraud in that he's a demon himself. He wastes no time in opening a trio of demonic gateways, allowing hordes of demons to lay siege to the city. Playing the risen savior, he begins a crusade to slay the infernal creatures and gain the worship of the masses.

Plot twists, betrayals, Nero's undying love for his girl Kyrie and a surprise playable character swap with Dante halfway through the narrative round out the game's plot points and provide a nice framework for the endless barrage of demon bashing.

Combat is stylish, fluid, fast and pretty much the only reason for playing any DMC game. Nero (and in the second half of the game, Dante) uses a wide variety of standard attacks and special moves that utilize an impressive arsenal of swords, guns and demon powers. These distinctive attacks can be strung together into multi-hit combos that make quick work of the baddies while at the same time boosting your player ranking. Casual gamers should have no problem pulling off fun, stylish moves, while hardcore brawlers will eat up the fairly deep combo system and take the fine art of pummeling to glorious new heights.

What else? Let's see.

The backgrounds are beautifully rendered (as should be the case with all new-gen titles). From castles to forests, everything looks great and the environments do a fine job of framing the action.

There are some beautiful cut-scenes and nicely designed character models. Although, I think the standard demons, the fodder that populate most levels (not the bosses) are a little ho-hum. They aren't particularly menacing and they move kind of swishy.

Though the game is combat heavy (a good thing) there is a bit of puzzle solving involved, nothing too taxing, but there are a few annoying instances of retrieving this object in order to make that object work only to be tasked with retrieving yet another object to make another object work. I'm still waiting for new-gen titles to break from typical puzzles and give us something fresh and exciting. For all the innovation in graphic design and general gameplay, I am getting awfully sick of the same old puzzle solving mechanic that's been in standard practice since those NES days of old.

Alas, a few frustrating puzzles do not break a game (GOD OF WAR comes to mind), and what with DMC4's solid combat and shiny beauty, you'd figure we'd have a bon-a-fide winner on our hands. Well, almost, but the game breaks a cardinal rule - it's repetitive and manages to go from brilliant to boring in about ten hours (I played through the whole thing in roughly sixteen hours).

Here's the deal (SPOILER ALERT) once you play through eleven of the games twenty chapters a convenient plot twist flips the script, imprisons Nero within the chest of a demon god, and puts you in control of Dante. Suddenly, game play gets a shot in the arm because Dante, the true star of the DMC series, comes with a wide array of unique, badass moves and his fighting style has a completely different feel than Nero's. I was pleasantly pleased with this abrupt character shift. Though I enjoyed Nero's portion of the game, it was beginning to go stale, and at first, while learning Dante's satisfyingly fresh, dissimilar skill set, I kept thinking how cool it was that Capcom was essentially giving us two games in one.

Premature applause rang through my head with each novel sword swipe and gun blast.

New games run $59.99 and the more bang for my buck the better. Unfortunately, my joy was short lived. Dante's chapters are exactly the same as Nero's. Exactly the same. He basically just works his way back through the levels you just spent the past ten hours running Nero through. You traverse the same terrain and fight the same bosses and must pull off some of the same annoying puzzles. It got to the point where I was ready to throw in the towel. But $59.99 is $59.99 so I persevered and finished and grew more and more pissed with each been there done that moment.

But whatever. I'm over it. I've been down this road before. I've seen TRANSFORMERS and ARMAGEDDON and I am used to be being dazzled and then bored and then irritated. I'm used to spending my hard earned money on cotton candy and empty spectacle.