Unashamedly stealing the best bits from God of War, Visceral Games spawn interactive entertainment from a sin-filled 14th century poem
Format: PS3, Xbox 360 (version played), PSP Dev: Visceral Games Pub: EA Out: 05/02/10 Players: 1
Dante’s Inferno is EA’s latest hack-n-slash adventure game, loosely based on the classical poem (The Divine Comedy), which follows a knight of the holy crusade as he fights his way through Hell to rescue his girlfriend.
Dante’s Inferno comes from the studio that brought us the grim, sci-fi horror, Dead Space, so expect strong violence and imagery. It is definitely not for the fainthearted. The enemy design is truly gruesome and the levels are the epitome of depressing, which is, of course, quite fitting considering you are in Hell. The game takes you through the seven Circles of Hell, as described in the poem; each offers its own unique theme and different enemy classes.
Similar to other hack-n-slash games, Dante’s Inferno is made up of combat, puzzle solving and platforming. Your main weapon throughout the game is the scythe, which can be used to slice up your enemies and grab them from a distance to keep your combo metre running. Also, to aid you in combat you can acquire different magic abilities. The level system works by collecting souls from dead enemies. You can also vary which abilities and combos you unlock by collecting different types of souls, either holy or unholy. These are gained mostly by certain damned souls you will encounter in Hell, such as Judas Iscariot. You can then choose to either redeem them with your Holy Cross or punishing them. Although simple, it does offer a choice which can affect how you progress with the combat, but has no impact on the story.
As for the basic combat gameplay, Dante’s Inferno is very similar to hack-n-slash classic, God of War. In fact, the button layout is almost identical. However, this is not a criticism. Players looking for a unique, fresh experience may be disappointed by the stark similarities, which also include QTE finishing moves and giant boss fights. Dante’s Inferno takes these inspirations and adds its own unique style on top of them.
While promising at first, Dante’s Inferno never capitalises on its major selling point – its story. It is meant to be a tale of despair and redemption, but none of this ever really comes through when you’re playing the game, which is massively disappointing. Also, another feature which had a lot of promise that didn’t really deliver is the seven Circles of Hell. None of the levels are distinct enough to separate themselves from one another, they all blur together in a mix of unoriginal and generic designs.
Overall Dante’s Inferno is a game that showed a lot of promise, the direction EA took was commendable: taking a well known piece of literature for inspiration is an idea which other publishers could take note of. However, they never truly capitalise on it, instead it feels more like an excuse to kill demons with a big scythe. They played it safe, never venturing outside of their comfort zone to do something creative or innovative enough to make a memorable game. If you are a huge fan of hack-n-slash and are interested in the story than give it a rent – it isn’t very long (about five to seven hours). If not, then there are plenty of other hack-n-slash games that are more worthy of your cash – notably God of War III coming in March.
Stuart Kent
Tags: action, dantes inferno, ea, hack-n-slash
