DMC 4 Demo

I have been an XBox guy for as long as the brand has existed.  I briefly owned a PS2, but I never played any of the Devil May Cry games.  So, I was pretty excited to finally get to see what all the fuss was about when the demo was released on XBL late last week.  I was even more excited since DMC is a Capcom game and I absolutely loved Dead Rising.

The first thing that I noticed about the demo is that the game is very pretty.  It is very Japanese in style, but the graphics are amazing for what Capcom is going for.  But the gameplay seemed extremely weak to me.  It felt like I was playing a beautiful version of Castlevania.  The demo leaves the impression that it is just a button masher.  It may get deeper as the game progresses, but, if so, the demo didn't do it any favors.  I also hated the targeting system.  It would auto target the enemy that was closest to me and I couldn't see any way to override this auto targeting.  Most of the time, you will want to target the nearest enemy, but there are times when you want to finish one before moving on to the next to reduce the number of enemies that can attack you.  I won't hold that against the game too much because there is likely some way to change the target and I didn't spend a ton of time playing around with this.  However, the biggest complaint that I have with the demo is the camera.  Why is it that the camera can't go through a freaking door with me?  If you walk up to and through a door, the camera immediately switches to the other side of the door essentially making the controls a mirror image of what they were before you walked through the doorway.  Thus, you have to change the direction that you are pressing on the L stick as soon as you go through the doorway or you will wind up walking right back through the doorway that you just walked through.  That is freaking insane and very 90s for a AAA title released in 2008.  I am sure that you would get used to this switching camera, but that just begs the question of should I have to.  This ridiculous solution to a real camera problem on previous generations of consoles was probably the best that could be done at the time (the early Resident Evil games - also Capcom - did the same thing), but why is it still employed in 2008 with consoles that can seemlessly follow you through the doorway?  I don't know if this system is included as nostalgia for the long-time DMC fans, but it was irritating to me.  Another issue that I had with the camera is that it isn't adjustable during the platforming parts of the game.  Having an off-center side view when trying to leap from one ledge to another makes the timing more difficult than it should be. 

In the end, since DMC 4 is a single player only game, I was likely only going to rent it before I played the demo.  That hasn't changed now, although the demo has convinced me to drop DMC 4 a few spots in my Gamefly Que.  What did you guys think of the demo?