Dante’s inferno is the second game to come from Dead space creators Visceral games. The game loosely follows the 14 century poem the Divine Comedy. In this the poem follows the tale of a crusade solider called Dante and his journey via the nine circles of hell. However in the game it’s Dante’s main aim to rescue his lover’s soul from the devil himself.
There is a very brief tutorial for the game which finishes when Dante is killed and then you encounter your first boss fight of the game, with death. Once you defeated Death the game rewards you with one of the main weapon of the game, Death’s scythe. Then after a short sequence where you see your lover get taken to hell you obtain the second weapon of the game. The second weapon is a crucifix and then the doorway to hell opens up and the adventure starts.
During the trip through hell you will kill countless enemies which give off orbs. Some of these orbs can be used to upgrade your weapons depending on your actions in the game. Other Orbs can be used to regain health (green) and magic (Purple). During some point in the game you will come past noticeable historical figures. For example you’ll come across Electra, and then the player has the choice to either forgive them for their sin’s or punish them.
If you decide to punish them then said historical person will meet the business end of the scythe and then the unholy branch on Dante’s laurel will increase. If you decide to save their souls then you’ll start a mini game where you start to forgive the sins that they have done. With any added saved souls it will added to your white orb count, also it will also add to the holy branch of the laurel. So in essence you could play the game one way and save everyone’s soul and a second play through you could become the punisher.
I have done my best to keep away from talking about the similarities to the god of war series. This is because I am attempting to prove a point. Yes the combat, weapon levelling up and eventual magic feels like a carbon copy of the Sony Excusive. However that sometimes isn’t always a bad thing, I mean games like Halo 3 and Modern Warfare 2 has been copying the style of Wolfenstien 3D.
The combat in the game feels really good, from the moment you swing the Scythe, to the moment it makes a sickening impact it feels like it actually does what it was designed for, I for-mentioned the use of the cross attack, this is actually pretty good for doing damage from both close-ranges to distant attacks. Alike the god of ward games Dante has use of magical powers in this game. The additional attack’s feel equal to each other and in the later stages of the game I found were using the magic equally as much as both the scythe and crosses.
The scythe is used to help you traverse across large area’s and in some cases the camera shows the area that could lead in giving the player a dose of vertigo in the process. Some of the character’s design can be described as both beautiful to look at and disgust you in a heart beat and it feels like they should be there. However it could be argued that character design’s at some point in the game did take it too far however I will mention that when I am talking about the negatives.
Narrative wise it’s broken up with in game rendered graphics from the game engine and it features some beautifully drawn cartoon’s which seems to blend together. The animation is used to give some extra background on the characters which Dante encounters through out the game.
In this game you come across some Denizens of Hell. These are the bosses of each circle of hell ranging from King Minos, Cleopatra, Marc Antony all the way to the Devil himself. Each of these bosses can offer a good challenge and when you have finished the quick time event to kill the boss it can feel like you should be earning an achievement yourself. Don’t get me wrong this is not an easy game to play and at times the game seems to punish you for the slight mistake.
One example of this you reach a mirrored room where you have to get from one side of the room to the other to get out. I believe I actually died a hand full of times trying to time a double jump to perfection. Once I worked out the timing of flicking switches and when to jump it was pretty much plain sailing to the other side of the room.
The sound design of Dante’s inferno is perhaps one of the best I have heard in 2010 so far. From the ranging sounds of people screaming to people begging for forgiveness the sound design makes you feel you are equally trapped in hell. Also including the incredible soundtrack filled with a booming choir makes the trip that Dante is undergoing feel Epic in scale.
However when looking back at the game I am pretty torn up about the game. The main problem with the game is that it suffers from Jekyll and Hyde personality. While I am singing the praises of the first half of the game I could rate this up there with God of War quite easily. The first half of the game is something which is highly enjoyable.
However from the second half of the game you get to a point where it’s pretty much like a battle arena situation. By this I mean you reach an area which gives you a set amount of enemies to defeat these battle areas includes a time limit where if you reach within a set time you also obtain extra orbs. As I played through this part of the game I felt that the game lost some steam. I don’t know if the designers of the game felt like they needed to pad out the game. However when playing through the trials the sudden change of pace and game style destroyed what the original half set up
Also the imagery used within the game felt like it was being used for shock tactics. I know they wanted to show what hell would be like however I felt that some of the images used by the developers put in the game were going overboard. The best example of this is the un-baptised babies which feature within the Limbo level. Just picture skinned babies with knifes for hands making happy baby noises which seemed disturbed.
Finally the fact the game feels too much like God of War shows. From the style of combos which could be done with the scythe, to the way the orbs collected would float around and blend into Dante and then some enemies requiring a killer QTE. I could understand the developers wanting to give the god of war player an easy cross over to there game. However perhaps the biggest problem with this approach could be people would only see Dante as a reskin of Kratos
When the developers worked on dead space they took the survival horror genre by storm because they took a risk. While taking elements of games like say Doom and Resident Evil 4 but yet created something new at the same time with the Zero G sections of the game. So when you were first asked to cross the vacuum of space to reach a new area of the ship it felt like a whole new experience for the gamer.
However with Dante’s Inferno it felt they looked at the general template of what made the God of War games successful and then decided to reproduce it until they included the battle arena element. I felt that the game was strange and beautiful piece of art however it did feel that the developers wanted to rush the gamer through the whole level to get to the next set piece.
In closing Dante’s Inferno is a game which pretty much suffers from trying too hard to be God of War. While the design of the level’s are grim and beautiful to look at and will challenge a gamer on the normal setting. However the sudden change of pace and game play style is too jarring and feels like it was tacked on to expand the length of the game.
If you’re a gamer who has the PS3 then I would highly recommend you to avoid the game unless you are the sort of person who love’s the hack and slash genre. However if you are just a Xbox 360 gamer who loved the God of War games on the PS2 and need a decent clone of those successful PS2 games then this is a good substitute, however do not expect it to set the world on fire.
Dante's inferno gets 2.5 stars