Making a game about hell it self is a large undertaking. Making a game supposedly influenced by the most respected work of literature on the subject of hell is an even bigger more daunting task.
Dante’s Inferno claims to be based around the general concept and work by Dante Alighieri on his Inferno work. I have read and become a fan of the original 14 century poem inferno (Part of the much larger work the Divine Comedy) and I found it to be all at once enthralling, disturbing and beautiful in a surprising way. It’s a work that keeps you reading, that rolls through the walk through hell with wonder and disgust.
It’s not hard to see why anyone wouldn’t be influenced by this masterwork and even wish to recreate it, but it’s such a large task that it would take a fool to attempt it.
Visceral Games indeed did apparently attempt that, I say apparently because so much is lost for the poems intent that it is a very loose connection.
In the game you do, as in the poem, follow Dante through his journey to meet with Beatrice, his lost love. Here instead of playing as the poet himself instead we follow the footsteps of Dante re imagined as a Templar knight, allowing for the conventions of the game world to slip into the story mold.
The realization of hell as a place is wonderful, in the disturbing. Bodies fall screaming from the sky, line the walls stitched together and pour out of spouts in the walls like water from jugs. There’s a complete and massive feeling landscape outstretching in front of you and every step is steeped in the dark and twisted.
The sound too is filled with the wails of the doomed and the depressed. Suffering itself is captured perfectly as you could picture it in the minds eye. The developers said they worked from the original poems descriptions for influence and at least at first it seems they are faithful. Only at first.
Over time the game, in all departments begins to suffer its own hell, its own decay. The sprawling stunning and disturbing world before you in the games first few hours eventually shrinking inwards. Loosing almost all imagination and wonder. The game becoming a last couple of moments crawl in order to get to the end. Where before you would be likely to spend time taking in the world, now you feel motivated just to be done with it, and not in the good “this is disturbing way”.
The game itself suffers the same problems in game play. Starting out as a capable and fun 3d action brawler with some good ideas, it slowly becomes a button masher due to the later areas limited vision. Taking its cues from devil may cry and more so god of war, the game does a good and capable job of recreating the action style of those games with little down sides. Giving 360 players at least a good alternative to god of war. Bosses are massive and something that you look forward to, spotting the king Minos in advance of your battle with him to come does all the more to add to the early stages sense of the world & to prepare you for what looks to be a great encounter.
The games lack of later imagination though removes the fun that the early part of the game contain. Turning Dante's final moments into a selection of challenge rooms that slow the action and storytelling down to a crawl. Later still just before his final encounter with Lucifer Dante is faced with a bridge of ice that slows the game down to an agonizing pace.
Its feels overall that development started well, but was rushed at the later stages. The developers being forced to push the game out much sooner and less complete then it should have been.
It’s not a bad game, the environment and opening areas are unforgettable and encounters with death (which sadly in future play through you don’t again get to experience) & others are amazing. The game does do a good job of creating a god of war style game for multi consoles, but it’s the last moments that make it fall short. Also basing a game so directly off a classic work like inferno leaves it only to disappoint. With sequels apparently in the works it’s going to be hard to see what they can do to improve the games problems. The game only really suiting itself to the hell portion of the divine comedy. Time will tell.
A competent but in the end disappointing game. That falls short of what it could have been and forgets what it was meant to be.