Dante's Inferno Review

I could sit here for the next ten pages & talk about how Dante’s Inferno compares to God of War, but what exactly would be the point in that? Yes, it is very similar but what about for people who have never played God of War? Anyway, onwards & upwards! 

Based on the Divine Comedy (a vision of the after life as written by the poet Dante Alighieri), Dante’s Inferno follows a knight who fought in the Third Crusade and is trying to reclaim his lover, Beatrice, from the pits of hell. You begin the game as Dante’s life ends; in battle with the Grim Reaper (also known as the Angel of Death), eventually defeating this foul demon with his own reaper of death, his scythe. Although this sounds like something that I should go a bit more detail in, Dante takes this in his stride and is nothing in comparison to what he shall be facing later on.

Dante now possesses the Grim Reaper’s scythe and so harbors the power that it holds. As soon as you get this instrument of death, demons start to pop-up left, right and centre, as it seems that you might have pissed the devil off a tad by defeating his angel of death. To defeat these demons you must violently bash the face buttons to do quick attacks, strong attacks and combos. Due to this button bashing frenzy, you slowly rack up combos with ease and reap the souls of the damned quicker and quicker. These souls can be collected and used later on as currency to purchase new combos of either the holy or unholy sort. 

The unholy combos involve you using your scythe a lot. They are more frequently used because of the violent button bashing but can be used very successfully if mixed with holy combos. The Holy combos consist mostly of Dante using his magic cross ability. This shoots a cross (if used in rapid succession three are shot) of holy power to obliterate the damned in a righteous power fashion. To build up your unholy or holy power, you can grab hold of enemies and either absolve or punish them. Additionally, you can get massive amounts of unholy or holy power by finding damned souls kneeling on the ground and choosing to punish or absolve these people. If you choose to absolve them, you must then complete a type of mini-game, which involves you pressing your face buttons as small red orbs (souls) travel down a crucifix (a button on each stand). The more you get correct, the more holy souls you obtain.

That is not where Dante’s combat skills end, oh no. He even has magic to aid him in his quest for Beatrice. This seems a bit out of place to me but what the hell, he might as well be completely overpowered. You use these magic powers by using mana, which can be refueled at fountains along with health and even extra souls. Along with these magical powers, Dante has relics, which improve his abilities in certain things such as damage or health.

All of this gives you a lot of customization power over Dante. The main problem though that I have with the combat, is that you are limited to only one weapon - your scythe. This could have done with a bit more development, for example adding more onto the scythe for ranged attacks or even a new weapon altogether.

        

The level design is visually striking; the backgrounds are filled with gore and the damned imbedded into the walls - although sometimes when you get close to these, they do look a little bit flat. There is an issue with colour within this game; it seems like because Dante is in hell, the level designers thought that they would punish the gamer’s eyes as well. They stick to a lot of dark colours – greens, reds and browns mostly. This also happens with a lot of the demons, which can make it sometimes confusing what is background, and what is enemy. 

Luckily the levels are broken up slightly more than just the mutilation of demon after demon. Every now and then Dante will have to solve a puzzle, which mostly consists of various jumps, but it does break up the gameplay a bit which is always a good thing. It can sometimes get confusing also to what you have to do in a puzzle but you will usually get there in the end.

One big thing that I really liked in Dante’s Inferno, was that the developers actually considered that some gamers may not be able to complete some levels. I began to get increasingly annoyed that I would end up at a boss fight with about a third of my life. The developers have made it so if you die about three or four times, you get a little bit of life back (along with mana) and then if you die another time, you get almost full health. This is something that I found very useful!

All in all Dante’s Inferno is a decent game. The combat is very enjoyable and fluid, the visual aspects could maybe need a new lick of paint but are satisfactory and the story is fantastic and keeps you gripped until the very end. A quick note though before I depart back to hell; in this game, female characters do not seem to like keeping their tops on for anything more than a few seconds, if that. Although this is a good thing most of the time, beware to get shocked and have your view change forever! Now, go to hell!