Dante’s Inferno, the first part of the legendary Divine Comedy, loosely inspired Devil May Cry. Which begat the 3D action genre as we know it. The 3D action genre begat God of War, which gave the action genre more fluid combat, tighter controls, and well-paced action. It only makes sense that Dante’s Inferno become an action game.
From the moment the game starts and the player is fully in control, this basically feels like God of War in every respect: light attack, heavy attacks, grabs, blocks, dodging and quick time events. Even timing the block on an attack is similar. But the reason why that isn’t a bad thing is because the combat, just like God of War, is superbly smooth and fluid without being tedious and needlessly difficult, like Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden. There’s even magic. a meter to make Dante super and upgraded skills but that’s where Dante takes a different road.
Making use of the religious themes of the book, players can either ‘absolve’ or ‘punish’ enemies for being heathens. Doing either gives players holy or dark experience points, which opens up attacks to use in a skill tree. And most of these attacks aren’t just palette swap attacks. It may live up the 60 moves that’s being hyped.
Now, if you have a 360, this may be the game Too Human should’ve been: a combat heavy morality tale. And with it’s release date coming a month after Bayonetta, it may be keep your action fix going. The PS3 has Bayonetta in January and God of War III in March, which may make Dante’s Inferno an ever tougher buy because if you’re gonna have fast combat with slightly forgiving mechanics, why not stick with the source.
Another concern is the amount of moves: it was fun to dispatch enemies using the same combo over and over again, and doing different moves doesn’t net you any different rewards, so let’s hope that the boss battles provide opportunities for varied combat.
Finally, there’s the story, the classic tale of Dante going to hell in order to be with his lady love, Beatrice…maybe making it an action game is probably not the best way to go and it’s hard to keep an open mind when the animated cutscenes just seems like it’s taking a knife Dante’s Alighieri’s grave.
Despite the mechanics, Dante’s got a long tough road to travel if anyone wants to consider it a decent game.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I heard that it is so-so.