For the first time ever, Devil May Cry 4 is playable here at the Games Convention 2007 in Leipzig. Today us press people got our hands on it and tomorrow regular visitors can take a peek. It wasn’t easy to get our hands on the game since there was quite a long line in front of the booth where both Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions were playable.

Due to the long lines, we only had a few sessions of 10 minutes or the Capcom employee would inflict some pain on our sorry asses. The reason that we had 10 minute sessions was because of a timer which abruptly stops your killing spree. Short as it may be, we all got a fairly good impression of what DMC4 will eventually turn out to be as we were saddened that it was so short.

Above’s statement already gave away that this beta, if you may actually call it that, was very playable. It’s unfair to criticize a game that isn’t finished yet on a bug here and there that’ll probably be gone in the final version. The game’s story wasn’t explained at all and we got to play a fairly simple level without too many objectives. The first noticeable thing is the great looking 60 frames per second which is really mandatory for this type of game. When there’s such fast action and plenty of combos to perform, you really can’t have any slowdowns. Usually 60 fps games look less good as their 30 fps buddies, but this is not the case with Devil May Cry 4. The atmosphere and architecture are quite amazing and resemble the first iteration of the game which also had plenty of cathedrals and churches.

Games don’t become successful with good graphics alone in most cases, solid gameplay is also required, but it looks like Devil May Cry has both. The awesome combo system from Devil May Cry 3 has now been upgraded with a bunch of new moves. Since you’re now playing as Nero instead of Dante, you have the “Demon Arm” ability which can be used in a variety of ways. You can grab enemies with the B button (or Circle on PS3) and smash them to bits on the ground or extend your demon arm by pressing a combination of buttons to use it in mid-air to deal damage. It’s also used to overcome obstacles like large gaps where you can grab a ledge which is normally out of reach. As we progressed through the level we unlocked a few new combos which are very much like the ones seen in Devil May Cry 3.

What we’ve seen so far, both graphically and the short gameplay impressions all looked very good though it was a little too short unfortunately, and it was just a tiny portion of the entire game. One of the key elements of the series are the many the boss fights, and there weren’t any in our preview build so we can’t pass judgment on that unfortunately. This small taste we had today definitely made us want more, but this might take longer than we want since no official release date has been announced yet for either of the platforms.