Let me begin a small prelude to this preview: No, I won’t be saying anything about the way EA is campaigning Dante’s Inferno. Personally, I think it’s very unique, and it’s accomplishing what it’s trying to accomplish: gaining a lot of public and media attention. Now that all of you hate me, I’ll start the preview.

I had the privilege of playing the demo of EA’s Dante’s Inferno at GameX in Philadelphia this past weekend (October 23rd-25th). The game’s target release date is Februrary 9, 2010. Dante’s Inferno the game is loosely, and I mean very loosely, based on the medieval poem written by Dante Alighieri’s called “The Inferno”. Electronic Arts was demonstrating a portion of the Lust level of the game. Why they chose Lust at an event that families were definitely going to be attending, I will never know. It certainly felt awkward fighting the Lust boss, Cleopatra (yes, that one), while her bare breasts were bouncing all over the screen-spilling demon babies-and hearing young boys behind me exclaiming, “WHOA!” I personally don’t find the content of the Lust level offensive in any manner, if anything it brought out the immaturity in me seeing so many phallic references (subtle and not-so subtle) and straight up sexual scenes on statues and sounds from enemies.

After getting over the penis pillars, vagina walls, and female enemy mobs with…spare parts…I started concentrating on the game itself. It’s really as everyone else claims it to be, a God of War clone. Very similar in flow and movement to God of War, even the quicktime events and how you regain health is almost exactly the same. That is not to mention how visually and graphically they’re both similar, and stunning. A God of War double isn’t a terrible thing to some. I know I enjoyed my time with the game still. When starting the demo level I was immediately bombarded with the demon females with “spare parts”. After defeating the waves of enemies with controls that are really easy to grasp and learn (I didn’t bother with the Tutorial before starting and still figured it out rather fast) I had my first couple puzzles to solve. I’m not going to give anything away, of course, but I feel the puzzles have a nice balance in difficulty. The puzzles aren’t “throw-your-system-out-the-window” hard, but just challenging enough to the point where you may have to think about it for a few minutes; it seems like the puzzles will make you really explore every crevice of your surroundings to check if there are levers, ropes, etc for you to use to your advantage. The game has “RPG elements” too, like God of War. Dante doesn’t level, of course, but you do get ways to obtain new skills and strengthen yourself. It’s a shame you couldn’t play with any of these elements during the demo. There was no way for me to test it since EA set you up at a certain level with the skills you would have if you were actually play, but no way to get anything new.

As far as RPG and stories go, when I say this game is loosely based on the original story I mean it. The only aspects taken from the original story were the names of characters and the usage of the layers of hell. Virgil was also torn from his role as the “tour guide” of hell, always by Dante’s side, to more of a background character. Probably the biggest difference of all is the fact that Dante is featured as a Templar in the game. Apparently, EA didn’t think a poet wasn’t cool enough to play in their game. Well, putting it that way I guess I can’t disagree from a gamer stand point, but from the point of view of a college graduate with a degree in Literature it’s highly disappointing.

Dante’s Inferno has a lot of potential with its kick-ass hero, Dante, and the dark, disturbing imagery that flows throughout the game. My main concern is, since the game a lot like God of War, will this hurt it or help it? Like I said, I still enjoyed the game despite the fact that it’s almost exactly the same as God of War. I still had fun fighting the huge boss and solving the puzzles. Will most people snub their nose at the game because of the similarities or be more willing to pick it up because it’s something familiar? We’ll see in February!