To Absolve or to Punish? Dante's Inferno Review!
You are Dante, a crusader who has a self mutilation complex. Your goal is to get home to your love Beatrice. Both of you had not partaken in the "joys of the flesh." Beatrice then makes a deal with the devil himself that Dante would remain faithful. The wager, her soul if she is wrong. Dante then fights his way through a castle, and ultimately gets stabbed in the back. You then battle the Grim Reaper and take his scythe as a weapon. You also obtain Beatrice's Cross as a weapon, this is your "ranged" weapon. You get no other weapons other than these two, bummer right? After some rather lackluster cut scenes later you enter Hell!
"Abandon all hope, ye whom enter here."
You then begin your epic journey through the many circles of hell. You meet Virgil who is you guide through hell itself. You collect souls to then cash in on abilities and upgrades on either the Holy or Unholy paths. Each have their pros and cons. I find Holy to edge out Unholy slightly because the cross weapon is far more effective than the scythe. You have access to relics which provide stat increases and misc goodies like auto opening of heath, mana and soul wells. These relics are both Holy and Unholy and they have requirements you must meet in order to equip them. There are also 3 Beatrice stones to collect to unlock Auto-Absolve when you meet a shade like Pontius Pilate. However playing the Guitar Hero like Absolve mini game nets you more Holy experience and souls than auto absolving them. Then there are 30 pieces of silver to collect, which give you a soul boost through the game, these offer no stat increases or modifiers at all.
Lets talk about the bad parts before the good, this game suffers from 2 big issues...
First and foremost, the repetitiveness. You meet a small family of enemies and that is all through the game. You then fight hundreds of the same enemies, and by the time you get far in the tree of your choice they are a push over even on the higher difficulties. Pull switch, jump on platform to reach another landing, fight 5 of the same enemies, open a door, turn a switch, fight, jump, door, well, save, repeat. That is the layout of the game. Throw in some rappelling, and some annoying camera angles at times and you have it.
The second issue with this game is its length. I rented this game on the 15th and had it beat by the late afternoon of the 16th, and that was a very casual play through, if you push yourself and dedicated a good 6-8 hours you can have this game beat in an afternoon. Plus past the halfway mark the game and its story just seems to drop off, I felt that the developers got lazy at times and purposely let this scene, puzzle, fight get sloppy and random. The boss battle was more of a joke than anything. I encountered swarm battles more challenging than the boss fight. So, enough of the bad talk, you are asking what about the good right? Well lets talk about the good.
The graphics are amazing in this game, the design team really put in 110%. The various levels of Hell have their own personality and flair. I really enjoyed the visuals of this game, and the soundtrack too was a fantastic compliment to the game. The details of walls, and statues was quite a scene to behold. I cannot praise the design and aesthetics of the game enough. Although I keep reading that most did not like the 2d anime style cut scenes, I can say I enjoyed them. It added a nice change to the gameplay, and provided a nice separation between gameplay and cutscene.
This game did a great job of providing the gamer with an interpretation of one of history's greatest works of literature. The base story of Dante's Inferno was a great backdrop to a game which I wish they spend a few moments more on. Going through the circles of hell and meeting famous shades and listening to Virgil was a great experience. Just to stop and listen to the cries of the damned and them trying to explain their actions was very entertaining. Good job on this, its just upsetting that the gameplay did not reach the same level that the surroundings and experiences we got simply walking though the realm of the damned.
This is a good rental, I feel buying it at full retail would be a big letdown. The game is far to short and as much as I enjoyed the ambience and the graphics, I could not justify paying 60+ dollars for it. This is 1000% an A++ rental. Its a hard sell as a buy.
Dante's Inferno gets a very well earned 3.5/5. Great graphics, awesome ambience. However, far too short and very repetitive. Since this is a game and not a movie I cannot give this one a higher score than that...
