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This isn’t an argument that video games are legitimate forms of expression. I think we’re passed that point now. With games like Last of Us, the Bioshock series, Journey and a myriad of others from the past few years (not to mention our beloved childhood storytellers Squaresoft and the Final Fantasy series) I think we all know that video games can be art. However, I think we can also all agree that not all of them are. Even technically sound, fun as hell games with amazing graphics might look really cool and still fail at having great, or even good, stories.

For instance, I absolutely love the Army of Two series. They’re not the best third-person shooters cover-based shooters in the world but they are among the rare games that are designed to be two-player co-op. That, with the ability to play split screen on the same couch with your friend is a huge draw in the modern age of video games. They’ve got fun mechanics, acceptable graphics and I’ve had a blast playing through all three games in the series. Story wise though? Not so great. Despite having played all three of them I can basically tell you nothing more than “a bad guy has done and/or is doing something bad and two dudes need to stop them and kill a million other dudes.” In fact, upon writing that sentence I have just realized the Army of Two is basically just a modern day retelling of Bad Dudes. Anyhow, fun game with almost no focus or attention paid to a complex story.

That’s not what we’re talking about today though. Today we’re talking about games with good stories and terrible delivery. A few things jumped up when I started thinking about this topic. Namely a slew of original Playstation games. I played a lot of JRPG titles back in the day and terrible translation often made the delivery of otherwise wonderful stories downright terrible. Final Fantasy Tactics and Legend of Dragoon spring instantly to mind. Both games had their merits in terms of story but in the delivery? “I had a good feeling” is just the tip of the mis-translated folly of these games that are comprised of thousands of lines of text being translated under a deadline. Tactics has one of the greatest stories in video games but the hilariously bad translation of some of the dialogue stuck out so badly that they completely redid most of the dialogue on the “War of the Lions” re-release, they pretty much retranslated the whole game.

Of course, Capcom took it to another level with the absolutely God-awful full motion video segments of the first Resident Evil game (not to mention the terrible voice over throughout, who can forget the “master of unlocking” scene?). Somehow, in those early days we could consider a game to be “great” despite the delivery of the story being so crap. It was sort of like the “so bad it’s good” philosophy of watching a B-movie. If the gameplay was good, and the story was fun, even if it was terribly translated and voice-acted, the game could still be considered a success and an amazing game.

It had been years however since I had experienced anything like that until I played DmC, the PS3 reboot of the Devil May Cry franchise. Naturally, this game was released by Capcom, masters of video game camp.

As the game started up industrial metal blarred and the opening credits played over quickly cut together footage of 90s goths partying. One name caught my eye: Alex Garland. He wrote this game. Why is that noteworthy? This is the guy who wrote The Beach, the same guy who wrote the screenplay for 28 Days Later and Sunshine, all of which I’ve loved. Ok, so this game is going to have an awesome story right? Well, sort of. [MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD] You play as Dante the half demon/half angel “Nephilim” and need to travel through various iterations of hell to defeat Mundus (basically Satan) who previously killed your mom and your dad. That’s about it from a story standpoint. [END SPOILERS]

The actual iterations of hell and how they’re represented are extremely creative and if Garland had anything to do with that then my hat is off to him. The game is beautiful and the controls are sharp and demand a technical precision rarely seen on current generation games. From a technical standpoint the game delivers. It looks and plays great.

However, every other creative choice is so terrible it is comical. The soundtrack from Noisia and Combichrist is pretty good, but it is undeniably 90s industrial metal (think KMFDM or Fear Factory). Does it sound cool? Yes. Is it super dated and hilarious for a game released in 2013? Also yes.

The voice acting and animation are in the same vein, every single character seems 100% obsessed with being cool as fuck all the time. It makes even simple things like deciding what to do next almost a comedy as every character acts like a badass cool kid who could not possibly give less of a fuck whether they lived or died. Throughout the game Dante is just spewing one-liners that make him sound like the biggest douche-bag in the world (or netherworld). I loved it.

This guy being a badass nonstop all the goddamned time like he doesn’t care.

I was laughing almost every single time any character said anything ever, and when the distorted guitars started playing before an action sequence I was super pumped up. Yes it was super cheesy and would absolutely not fly in a million other scenarios. But coupled with a very good looking and great playing game? It somehow all fit together.

I sort of want to see more of it. I make no attempt to hide my love for terrible movies. Terrible video games are hard to find though (that is to say, good video games that have terrible stories and voice acting but still succeed in other ways). Most of the time when a company pours a bunch of money into making a game good, they’ll also spend some time making sure that the voice acting will be up to snuff.

You hear that? Sometimes it’s ok to suck a little, as long as you know you suck and have fun with it.

Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.