God of Inferno.
Dante of War.
God of…Dante.
Okay, you get it, it’s a God of War clone. Perhaps the cloniest of the clones, even, whereas most God of War clones seem like the second or third generation down, this game feels just like someone grabbed that fairly lame Hades sequence from God of War and expanded it into a 6 hour game.
God of War. Sorry, just needed to say it again.
And yes, that does imply what you’re thinking, it is, itself, fairly lame. It’s not for lack of effort, to be honest. Dante’s Inferno gets some things right, some very, very important things. For the most part, the game looks good, and the game does a surprising job with the source material. I didn’t think a story about someone walking through hell could turn into much of an action title, but the team behind the game found an angle to work.
Dante’s Inferno is a simple enough revenge story. Man goes to war, wife is killed while he’s gone, wife is…taken by Devil, man goes to carve path of destruction through hell to reclaim wife guided by Virgil. Still fairly simple, overall, just extraordinary circumstances. Inside that story is lots and lots of hacking and slashing, starting with a fight against Death, and culminating in the “if you didn’t see this coming welcome to Earth here’s a sample of our historic literature that’s been heavily influential in one of our major religions” fight against Lucifer himself. To get there, Dante has to carve through armies of demons and the damned, though those armies don’t have much variety.
There are a few varieties of the main grunts, but they’re generally only going to take a few hits before dying. There’s a few grunt-leader types, occasionally upgraded with a better weapon or a shield, but nothing overly special considering they’re big demons until the end of the game. A fast unit with an upgraded version, a berserker unit, a priest unit…there’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but the designs work well with the theme.
The good news in all this is that the combat is quick, it’s furious, and it’s smooth. Visceral Games did a great job of making the control responsive as can be, and the game manages to keep 60 FPS throughout, a damned important thing in an action game that often doesn’t end up being the case. Props for that. Bad framerates mean slow responses, either due to not seeing something in time or because the system takes too long to get to the command. Dante’s Inferno blocks when you tell it to, the combos key in correctly, and the timing isn’t too picky without being so loose to make people do something other than they wanted. It’s a shame that the platforming doesn’t hold up to the high standard of the combat.
The platforming is a mess of bad angles and strange jump arcs. Dante seems to jump eight feet high and two feet long with a running start, aided by one of the worst jump animations I’ve seen in a long time, which is stranger as I think it’s motion captured. But it just looks off somehow. Dante needs to get right at the edge and jump perfectly, even off a swinging rope where he seems to forget the laws of physics exist and shoot straight up from any point in the swing, even right at the bottom. Woe be to ye who fail to read the bad camera angle as well, not going far enough away from the camera, or too far, slamming into one of the many invisible barriers.
Other times, the camera will just get too damn close to an area so players can’t see where they’re jumping off to, forcing a leap of faith which often ends two inches to the right of the needed goal, meaning a respawn, a trek through an annoying jumping puzzle, and another fountain smash/soul redeem. It’s telling that two of the game’s items serve no function but to lower tedium, even at the cost of benefits in one case. The camera is the deadliest thing in the game, and this is a game that has far, far too many instant kills players have no way of successfully navigating the first time.
When the game is at its peak, it’s got a strong artistic style and fluid combat. Unfortunately more often it’s in the Malebolge, flailing at players angrily. The climbable walls look like Disney’s Haunted Mansion really, surfaces that are supposed to be textured like a stack of coins just look like gold circles with poorly drawn shadows rather than any bump mapping or depth. There’s a lot of nudity for shock value, rather than for actual artistic design, and the circle of Lust, naturally, falls victim to this in particular, though it’s not a surprise there. Some of the design is clever and subtle, some is as ridiculous as Cleopatra’s breasts having tongues.
There’s also a lack of an artistic palette too often. Most of the game glows bright orange when a significant portion of Inferno is indeed lacking in flames. It’s too bad, because Limbo has some excellent setpieces and designs, as do the lower levels, beyond the city of Dis. The fiery theme is great for Heresy, but it feels wrong in Limbo and the other places it shows up, especially compared to such strong areas like the Suicides.
Ultimately, Dante’s Inferno really tries, but ends up in the realms of cheese or derivation far too often. The combat is a high point, the platforming is a very, very low point, and everything else swings wildly back and forth. And for a game that can be finished in 7 hours or less, there really needs to be more than two hours of great compared to the five of “meh.”
Dante’s Inferno gets 2 out of 5. Enjoyable moments, great spectacle, brilliant framerate. Terrible platforming, terrible cameras, and too many “gotcha!” kills and nitpicks. Major God of War fans should give it a rent, the rest, pass on it.
