When I first came into contact with Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy,” I wasn’t in a literature class, but rather a Web design class in high school. One of my assignments entailed designing a virtual tour in Flash about the poem. It talked about the different circles of hell and I ended up never finishing the assignment because I was too lazy to look up tutorials on Flash, but that memory of Dante’s Inferno lingered in my mind. EA’s Dante’s Inferno sounded much more interesting than some BS Flash assignment.

The poem features Dante aimlessly wandering through a forest and stumbling into hell. In the game, Dante is a Crusader who is killed in combat but manages to defeat Death and take his scythe as his own. Dante soon learns his wife, Beatrice, was taken into the underworld on the grounds that Dante broke his pact by being unfaithful to her. Hell-bent on getting her back, Dante descends into the nine circles of hell to reclaim her soul. Various events from Dante’s past are brought to attention in the form of animated cutscenes that resemble The Beatles animated movies and contrast the seemingly epic premise of the game.

Dante’s Inferno is a hack ‘n’ slash action game that emulates God of War to the core. As such, you’ll be slashing enemies, building up combos and performing quick-time events to dodge attacks or finish off enemies. As you defeat enemies, you’ll acquire souls needed to purchase new attacks and magic for Dante. When grabbing an enemy, you have the choice to absolve or punish their soul. Absolving an enemy will grant you holy experience points, while punishing will give you unholy experience points. These experience points are used to level up two sets of experience trees: Holy powers are more magic-based and empower your ranged attack that fires crosses, while unholy powers improve your scythe attacks. Both trees max out at 7.



When you aren’t fighting demons, unbaptized babies or naked, phallus-wielding lust demons, you’ll complete block puzzles much like you did in God of War. You’ll also find damned souls that you’ll be given the choice to absolve or punish for additional experience and souls. Harvesting these souls brings up a rhythm mini-game that involves timing an approaching “sin icon” with its respective button. You’ll also collect relics that modify Dante’s abilities and Judas’ 30 silver coins for the sake of having inane collectibles.

While I didn’t mind the blatant copy-cat approach of gameplay, the platforming segments and cheap deaths are an unnecessary nuisance. Starting with the fourth circle, Greed, the level design starts to fall apart. Essentially, this is when it becomes semi-broken platforming sections or repetitive combat challenges. The biggest offender is not giving you any camera control whatsoever. The camera follows Dante as he moves around and rotates when the game feels it should, but there were several instances where I literally made blind leaps of faith in the hope of landing on a platform (try jumping up several platforms with a bright light shining directly in your eyes).

You’ll also encounter instances where if you don’t move fast enough or don’t know any better, you’ll be killed by a booby trap. I’m a prudent person when it comes to platforming and if I’m rushed even a little, I’ll get pissed. An early section in the game featured a fallen wooden door that is used as a bridge and if you don’t go across the bridge fast enough, it’ll fall. Since the camera was fixed at an angle where I couldn’t see if I was going to run off the edge, I took my time and was punished for it. Another incident occurred where I was pulling a lever to make a door open and when you let go the door slowly closes back up. Meanwhile, enemies are taking shots at you while you’re opening the door, so I decided to take care of the enemies first then open the door, but suddenly some spiked walls closed in on me from out of nowhere. WTF!? Fortunately, you’ll restart not too far from where you died, but I’m not much of a fan of this “learn quick or die” mechanic.



The game isn’t terribly difficult other than the cheap deaths you’ll inevitably encounter. Combat is a matter of button mashing X or Y. The game will take no more than eight hours to complete and after finishing the main game you take on the Gates of Hell challenge where you’ll face off against 50 waves of enemies. You’ll also be able to replay the game with all of your acquired abilities from the previous playthrough. This basically gives you a chance to fill up your other skill tree if you only focused on one as well as pick up any collectibles you may have missed.

Anyone who saw the commercial for this game during the Super Bowl would probably be amazed at the visuals and I have to say that I was impressed by them. The pre-rendered cutscenes are amazing. I noticed that Visceral Games contributed a lot of care to the graphics and the animations during these scenes. This diligence extends even to the actual game. As I was descending into the inferno, I noticed that the walls I was climbing down were moving and in fact resembled a cage-like structure where you could see the souls of dead people clamoring for escape. It freaked me out briefly, but I overcame the effect.

Another visual element I felt necessary to bring up was the abundance of nipples. Given that the second circle is Lust, nudity is expected. A section in this area has you climbing up a structure while a giant naked female demon is attacking you. It’s one thing when I see I giant pair of breasts, but when the nipples are tongues and release babies, I cringe. And don’t get me started on the design for the glutton demons. I’m not prude when it comes to nudity, but some things go too far and Dante’s Inferno definitely takes it to that level.



Going along with the epic cinematic scenes, there is a rich orchestral score that complements the heroic feats you’ll perform in the game. Much like in God of War, the music kicks in at the right moment during boss battles. The voice actors are great and definitely bring out the epic premise of the title. Hearing the echoing voices of the damned as I traversed through the game sent chills down my spine and definitely added to the atmosphere.

Overall, Dante’s Inferno is a good game, despite not being terribly original. The game has its issues with a lack of camera control and the cheap deaths can be frustrating. If you enjoyed God of War, I would recommend checking the game out. It’s very short and even though there is DLC coming out in the near future, I’d say the game is still worth a rental.
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3/5[/b]