DEVIL MAY CRY III, Publisher: Capcom. Format: PS2. Price: £39.99. Family friendly? 16+. VIDEO games are supposed to be challenging.

A game that's a cake walk offers no incentive to play through. It's also poor value for money if you can breeze through it in a couple of hours.

But there's a very fine line between a game that's a challenge and one that's frustratingly hard to play.

Devil May Cry III - Capcom's prequel to its popular hack 'n' slash fantasy series - is certainly a very big challenge indeed. It's probably the one of the hardest games currently available for PS2 owners to complete.

Laughably, there are five difficulty levels but even the easiest will occasionally have you throwing down the PS2's pad in sheer frustration at the unyielding game play.

It's not just the insanely hard-to-kill end of level bosses that make this so difficult, it's the fact that you can't restart mid-level so if you die (and you will, frequently) it's back to the beginning again.

The control system asks a lot of you as well. In the heat of battle, you have to know which weapons to use, which game mode is currently selected (short range, long range, evasive or defensive) and what's the best attack for getting out of trouble. Sometimes I felt as though I needed an extra brain as well as another pair of hands.

Playing Devil May Cry III is an exhausting experience that leaves you physically drained (and with aching thumbs) at the end of an extended session. The agony of getting within an inch of completing a level only for Dante to get killed is almost exquisite in its unfairness.

This would probably be enough to condemn Devil May Cry III to purgatory were it not for the fact that - crazy difficulty aside - it's that rarest of things: a sequel that's actually better than the original.

Several thousand years have passed since the demon warrior Sparda saved the human race. Fans of the series will know that Sparda is the father of Dante - the half-human, half-demon hero of the first two games. However, Dante was not the demon's only offspring.

The three-quel tells the story of the fateful clash between Dante and his half-brother and flushes out the character's back-story, answering some of the questions you may have had from the first two episodes in the Devil May... series.

When you get the hang of the complexity and it all comes together, Devil May Cry III is an immensely satisfying experience.

The earlier two adventures were no slouches in the graphics department but this instalment takes visuals to a new level.

The cut scenes are superb as well; for once you won't mind the lull in game play as cinematic scenes spool onto the TV screen. As well as driving the plot, they give your thumbs a much needed rest.

Capcom is keeping mum at the moment, but if this is Dante's last outing on a PS2, then he certainly goes out in a blaze of polygonal glory.

Just don't expect this particular PS2 adventure to be the usual stroll in the park.

COMPETITION

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