Joystiq [PlayStation]

For game journalists, Devil May Cry 4 hasn't gotten a lot of real "preview" time since the same footage and levels have been on display for nearly a year. In an effort to correct this at Capcom's Gamer's Day, the game's producer, Hiroyuki Kobayashi, showed off a ton of new material on both Nero and Dante -- tickling gamers' fancies and implying that Dante might have a much larger role than we originally thought. We'll make a list of the new stuff that appeared, just for you!

• The big brawl between Dante and Nero is showed off at last -- it serves sort of as a tutorial for getting used to Nero's controls. You use his Devil Bringer arm to smash Dante into the ground a few times, then you get to fight him like a full-fledged boss. Kobayashi admits there's still some tweaking to be done, as Dante continually kicked the crap out of Nero.
• The Devil Bringer arm was only thought to move you from place to place or grab enemies, but when powered up, as Kobayashi displayed, it has much more functionality. The description IGN used doesn't make much sense, but we imagine it as something overly dramatic and stylish.
• Kobayashi introduced the female fighter Gloria -- she's not playable, but her intro is "humorous" and has been labeled as Kobayashi's favorite female character yet. Probably due to her overtly sexual behavior.
• Nero was also shown fighting a new boss: some weird floating snake demon with a lady in its mouth. Sounds cool and all, but without seeing it, some of the magic is lost.
• Dante gets all his familiar fighting styles (Trickster, Swordmaster, Gun Slinger, etc) and he can switch between these styles and weapons on the fly. Kobayashi showed off Dante's Gilgamesh fists/boots, which veterans should be familiar with what to expect there. A new weapon, Lucifer, was shown off. These were like metallic wings that attached to Dante's back and seemed to serve a primarily defensive purpose.
• Pandora's Box! Dante's last new weapon shown was a briefcase that could churn out any number of insane weaponry -- explosive arrows, a chaingun, a giant missile platform, you name it. Of course, these will be difficult to use, so keep in mind tweaking these powerful weapons will probably entail making their use extremely limited.

As for the Q&A session with Kobayashi, it's been determined that the game isn't two separate tales as originally thought (Nero and Dante going off and doing different things), but one long tale. You play through Nero's portion from start to finish, then swap over to Dante to complete the remainder of the game. Our hero still gets to take the glory, it seems. There are a large number of extras, which are still secret, and no word on downloadable content. We're excited. Let's just hope it remains about as difficult as the third entry into the series, so we'll have something else infuriating to play on the PS3.