Dante's Inferno

A fairly enjoyable God of War hack n' slash clone with Dante imagery. Unfortunately, it's just not as memorable or groundbreaking as God of War, leaving it a pretty forgettable gaming affair. In fact, I'd forgotten this game existed for years, even after having beaten it!

"Dante's Inferno" the game is epic enough to be worthy of the poem it was based on. Sure, people are going to compare it to "God of War", and, from what I hear, with good reason. But I've never had the opportunity to play "God of War." On it's own merits, Inferno is an amazing game.

Dante Alighieri, the poet behind The Divine Comedy, has been transformed, for video game purposes, into one very cranky Crusader. He's as hardcore as video game heroes come. The kind of hardcore who sews his life story in pictures into a cross on his chest. The kind of hardcore who is willing to endure all nine circles of Hell to save his girlfriend, the "radiant Beatrice." The level design is the standout factor here. Inspired by Dante's poem, the 9 circles (with the possible exception of Fraud) are done justice. Lust is filled with phallic and yonic imagery. In Gluttony, platforms are made of what looks like huge slabs of fat and meat. In Greed, there's a river of melted gold. In Violence, the river is made of boiling blood. Notably, the game forms a steady descent through each. The only noticeable loading screen is when starting a game or loading a save file. Otherwise, each stage transitions naturally as Dante climbs lower and lower into the depths. At the same time, each circle has a color scheme and look that makes it unique from all the others.

Gameplay fits the classic "beat 'em up" or "hack 'n' slash" genre. Dante must defeat waves of hellions before moving on through each level. He can attack with either Death's Scythe (ganked from the Grim Reaper himself), a cross that shoots holy beams (way cooler than I make it sound), or various magic attacks (based on a supply of manna that can be depleted and replenished). There are also plenty of special moves and combos, all wonderfully simple and fun to execute, that can be unlocked with souls, the in-game currency. Each Circle of Hell introduces new enemies that will be encountered for the rest of the game. Limbo features unbaptized babies with blades for arms that coo when they attack and cry when being attacked. Lust adds half-naked temptresses. Gluttony brings forth nasty "Gluttons" who will swallow Dante whole. Heresy sees heretics, enemies that can perform black magic and are immune to cross attacks. And so on and so forth.

The only circle I found less than perfect was "Fraud." A few lines are spoken about the type of souls that reside in Fraud between bouts of Dante fighting enemies under certain conditions (fight with unlimited manna, fight without the ability to use manna, and the completely inexplicable, protect the innocents. What are innocents doing in the eight circle of Hell?) It feels more like some mini-games that should be unlocked after beating the game than part of the storyline. Fun, but it leaves me imagining what it could have been like if Visceral Games took the time to design a Fraud that was as detailed as the other 8 circles.

There's also some platforming and puzzle-solving mixed in there (though all the booby traps had me wondering where people go when they die in Hell.) Also, along the way, there are plenty of opportunities to talk to Virgil, Dante's guide from the poem. All Virgil does is quote stanzas from The Divine Comedy, but in this case, that definitely not a bad thing. In fact, one of the best things I can say about the game is it made me want to read Dante Alighieri's epic poems. Along the way, Dante also can collect hidden relics that effect his abilities and choose to absolve or punish the souls of historical and mythical characters that are condemned to the Inferno (such as Pontius Pilate, Orphues, and Attilla the Hun), causing Dante to level up either a Holy or Unholy Path.

Best of all, there's none of the cheese factor I was expecting when I started playing the game. The acquiring and trading of souls, the attacking unbaptized babies, the power of Beatrice's cross and the various magic spells, and the monstrous boss battles are all integrated in ways that I imagine are right in line with the spirit of Dante's epic, if not exactly the letter of it. Also, the voice acting's pretty good, especially when the closest thing to a big name celebrity doing the voices is Vanessa Branch, the Orbit gum spokeswoman, as the voice of Beatrice.

I bought Dante's Inferno because I read so many reviews stating that the game is very similar to God of War (it was also very clear from the trailer). I never thought that even the controls would be the same! Although Dante's Inferno is a nice game, with an OKAY story, but I am very disappointed that the creators of this game seem to have taken everything from God of War. Also, when you plan the game, the environment around you does not change, you are in inferno for almost all of the game. The change of background is very important in making a game succeed.

I rated this game as 7 because it is nice to play, bashing all the minions of Lucifer. My opinion is that I do not feel that this game will be as good as God of War, although the creators have tried very hard to do so. God of war will be released in a couple of days (16th March 2010). We'll see how that game would compare to Dante's Inferno.

Not sure what put this game on my radar, but I bought this game over a year and half ago and never got around to it. That is... until EA announced their upcoming server shutdowns, which includes this games dlc, so it was time to finally check it out.

The base game is lots of fun; extremely cool visuals and timed-moments where you have to either follow a button prompt to kill a boss in spectacular cinematic fashion, or to just simply kill a demon or absolve someone's soul. Especially loved a moment where you're walking a big demon to the last rings of hell and it just slowly zooms out as you get closer. Perfection.

So the plot is quite sick; about a man named Dante who made many mistakes during his lifetime, and now when he's killed, and defeats Death himself, learns that his wife has been killed too and is in Hell, where you, Dante, must travel back to find and absolve her soul. It's a trip of a game, supposedly based off the 14th century poem of the same name, but that doesn't really matter. You essentially just kill multiple kinds of demons throughout the game (the game has names for each "kind", but they're all demons to me) and go deeper and deeper through the 9 rings of hell. A ghost figure named Virgil (who is in the poem as well) gives you guidance through each new area, usually giving you lore bits and new relics. Also, relics. These, and the silver coins are what this games collectibles are. After playing the game twice (with no guides I might add) I still was yet to find every silver coin podium or all the holy and unholy relics. I was able to get lvl 7 in both unholy and holy levels and I maxed out all my abilities so I was good there. It's just those damn relics/coins. After beating the game a second time and maxing out Dante, it was time for dlc time. The first one, The Gates of Hell arena, was pretty simple; I think it was 30 rounds of just killing demons in the same map. Wasn't too bad but can't say it was mind-bending or added lore to the story. The 2nd dlc, the Dark Forest, was closer to the right direction the dlcs should have went, adding lore and somewhat interesting levels to the game, telling the prequel story that introduced St. Lucia. It was neat, but wow it was short; probably took me less than an hour to fully beat with both achievements unlocked. The last and final dlc, Trials of St Lucia, was a way bigger mix bag for me. Essentially, the lore of the game explains St Lucia and why she's in Hell, exacting revenge while also being Dante's "guardian angel". Sounds cool enough, right? Wrong. It's literally just playing user- created levels in the worst way possible. Essentially felt like Gates of Hell Arena since it's wave-based, but the developers decided to make it a headache and implement modifiers such as: Don't kill the prisoner (but the prisoner attacks you the entire time), or Kill only certain demons (which if the wave is on a high difficulty, it's damn near impossible sometimes) and ect ect. The only thing about this dlc that could have been neat is the EA trials, which are these user-created levels, but made by the Dante's Inferno developers. Let's just say,, if they added lore to each trial, I would of been more open to the absolute rage most of these levels gave me, but because there is no substance to these levels, I ultimately decided it wasn't worth the pain and suffering. The biggest factor was because I had 3 other games to play before their servers shut down, and with this dlc, you must connect to servers to play and because the servers were going down in early December 2023, i bit the bullet and ended my play through. Despite getting the rest of the achievements for the dlc, the EA trials were impossible to fully complete in time but I did end up completing like 6 of them. But yeah, after I'd say 20+ hours, I ended my playthrough. It's a fun game that may be frustrating playing on the hardest difficulty, but stick with it; it's got some great stuff for fans of this genre.

I was hoping this game would be a mindless hack and slash game when I got it with some nice scenery to look at. It accomplished this task for the most part, but was not quite as good as I was expecting it to be. The story has Dante defeating death and making his way into the depths of hell to reclaim the soul of his love, Beatrice. So you battle your way through the nine layers of hell using the scythe you steal from death and a cross from your beloved. Throughout the game you also run across damned souls who you get to either punish or absolve and this constitutes the leveling process of the game as you can add attacks to the scythe which is a unholy weapon and the cross which is of course a holy one. The combat is rather fluid and I tore through the enemies no problem. Of course, I had the game set on minimum difficulty so no surprise there. The game did offer some frustrations in the form of jumping from place to place and doing some swinging and climbing tricks. The enemies probably did not kill me once, however, I died numerous times thanks to falling into various pits filled with gold, blood you name it I fell into it. The level designs were somewhat good, somewhat not as good as I was expecting. I was expecting the lust phase of the game to be more risqué than it was and the final levels were rather underwhelming after the forest portion of the game. Still, it was a nice diversion for a bit, but this is made by EA so expect an underwhelming ending.