Nerd Mentality

Dante's Inferno Impressions

Posted December 18th 2009 by Jordan Mammo.

When asked about the possibility of a sequel to Dante's Inferno, executive producer Jonathan Knight said that although the desire is there to create a follow-up, the source material makes it difficult to do so. Dante doesn't descend into Hell again, Knight said, and Purgatorio and Paradiso aren't ideal prospects for a second adventure.

Phew! Thank God these guys have the decency to refrain from taking classic, essentially non-violent works and turning them into bloody God of War knock-offs.

Oh wait. We still have Dante's Inferno.

This game has to be a joke. Not only does it completely butcher a classic work (that could've been predicted after the first trailer was revealed), but the rest of the game displayed in the demo is so unremarkable that all that's left to come back to and discuss is just how butchered the original work has been. It's actually kind of funny.

The game opens with Dante stitching a giant red cross onto the front of his huge, hulking body. He screams in agony as he pierces his flesh, and it is revealed to players that Dante is actually a Crusader who is fighting Muslims in the Middle East and believes that his sins have been absolved in the name of this righteous cause. Players are put in control in this setting, where they must fight the prisoners/heathens as a Middle Eastern city is bombarded by fire. After easily slaughtering about fifty or sixty of these prisoners, Dante walks into a wide open space where he is, somehow, snuck up on and stabbed in the back of the neck! Death then appears before him, telling Dante he will perish in Hell for his sins. Dante essentially tells Death to screw off, and the two are launched off into Space where they fight on a huge, floating platform. During this fight, Dante steals Death's scythe and proceeds to rip him in half with it via Quick Time Events, all the while Death pleads and begs for mercy.

Of course, Dante destroys Death, because come on, but all he really wants to do is go home and see his wife and kids. So, Dante heads home to his farm and wheat fields only to find his wife and child dead. And so he proceeds into the depths of Hell to rescue his wife. Or something like that. I think that's how it happens in the book.

On his way towards Hell, Dante comes across a wide array of powers he never knew he had. He finds that he is able to shoot Magic Crosses into the air and destroy demons and also earn points to fill up his Redemption Meter. Once he fills this up, Dante can redeem himself in the only way appropriate: by becoming an unstoppable force of nature that no demon can withstand. Most useful of all, however, is that Dante discovers that he can choose to Condemn or Absolve demons! Whoa! But wait, aren't demons already condemned to an eternity of hellfire by God?! I mean, why are they in Hell in the first place?! Who cares! This is awesome, especially since absolving enough demons earns you the ability to use Holy Powers. Hopefully the Big Fella up there won't mind when he keeps seeing more and more horribly deformed rejects knocking on his gates.

The unfortunate thing is that as funny as this all is on a level of ridiculousness, the gameplay is never at all engaging. Dante's Inferno so desperately wants to be God of War that it takes everything that game did and throws it up everywhere here with no regard as to whether or not it should. No matter how much blood is splattered and no matter how many times the word "Exalted!" flashes on the screen, the combat itself is boring. Canned animations and poor maneuverability hamper the gameplay, and nothing that looks at all exciting to perform can be done without the use of QTE's. During fights players will be prompted to initiate these sequences, and the game basically enters slow motion as button prompts are displayed on screen until Dante finishes ripping stuff apart. Not only is this too prevalent in combat, but even picking up health and recovery items requires players to rapidly jam on buttons.

This is pretty dumb, and not in a "dumb fun" kind of way. After releasing new properties like Mirror's Edge, Dead Space and Army of Two only to end up declaring a re-emphasis on established properties, this just looks like Electronic Arts seeing if they can, without even trying, sell boatloads of something that takes a bunch of dumb ideas from one game and makes them even dumber in a context that makes no sense.

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