To enjoy Devil May Cry 5, one must first enter into the spirit of it. It’s preposterous, but it knows it. At least I hope it does. The characters are so intense if they brood any more they’ll rip apart the fabric of time.

I’ve played a few DMC titles in my time, but I never remember the rosta. Of course there’s Dante but his cohorts over the decades either change regularly or are just too unmemorable for my pitifully small mind to hold on to. So there’s Nero. He’s got one arm. He had two, but one was a demon arm. This was ripped off by another demon, and Nero is none too happy about the mutilation. Happily for our cliché-spouting hero, his stump allows for mechanised additions rather handy for killing.

There’s V. He’s not terribly mobile and walks with a cane. Fortunately the slightly-crippled poetry fan (!) can summon a sarcastic bird, a thankfully-less-chatty panther and an invincible golem-type creature to maul his enemies.

Nico is Nero’s gobby, smoking (hilariously DMC5 whacks up a health disclaimer during Nico’s early scenes) saucily tattooed, van-driving mechanical arm engineer. She’s a ridiculous parody but vastly amusing as a result. Where Nero and V smoulder until lava spills forth from their eyeballs, Nico’s the ludicrous light relief.

As far as the story is concerned, all you need to know is there are fathoms of demons to kill, multiple fighty combos with which to do this and screeds of upgrades for our playable characters to improve matters.

DMC5 is cut-scene-heavy but when the script and voice acting is off-the-chart bat-plop lunacy like it is, sitting through them is rarely cumbersome. The button-press clang to progress between missions, along with the so-bad-it-must-be-deliberate “Devil May Cry” title-screen voiceover also give DMC5 a solid, not-unwelcome arcade feel.

I’ve not come across anything this silly since Final Fantasy XV (“I’ve come up with a brand-new recipeeeeehh!”) and that’s certainly no bad thing, especially as taking on 50-storey demons with fire-breathing mouth tummies is a terrific wheeze.

Go with it. It may be neck-high in cheese but there are more than enough crackers to go round.