Abandon all hope for original gameplay, ye who enter here.

Rating: M (for violence and male and female nudity)
Players: 1
Genre: Action/Hack-n-Slash
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Visceral Games, Artificial Mind and Movement
Release Date: February 9, 2010 (NA)

RENT

You know that dream you have where it seems so awesome, that it ought to be a movie? And it’s not until it’s done and a day passes that you realize that – whoa, it already is one? Maybe that only happens to me, but the simile is still apt.

Dante’s Inferno is like that. It’s a fantastic idea that starts out beautifully executed until you finally get to a point where you wonder if you’ve seen it before. And the thing is, if you’ve played any games in this genre before (specifically a series starring a certain Kratos character), you have seen it before.

The game is inspired by the first book of Dante Alighieri’s classic epic poem, titled “Inferno,” if you didn’t know that much already. The similarities are as follows: Each features a guy called Dante, who goes to Hell and hangs out with Virgil. There are still nine circles of Hell, and they stay in the same order.

Mmm! Giant worms!

However, since this is a video game, well, Dante needed some sort of motive. This comes after changing the premise a bit. In the original, Dante’s traipse around Hell was intended as a giant metaphor representing Dante’s difficulty in finding the right way to salvation – that is, Heaven. In the reworked plot, however, Dante is a soldier who doesn’t quite understand how a tattoo works (he’s actually sewn a crimson cross into his skin) with some sins in his past. He finds his beloved Beatrice murdered, and decides to go after her through Hell or high water. (Okay, there’s actually no high water involved. Just Hell.) He opens the Gates of Hell, and he goes off on his way to rescue Beatrice from Lucifer. (As far as the real-life Dante goes, he never actually married Beatrice, just admired her from afar until her death.)

As far as gameplay goes, it’s fairly standard. One button for heavy attacks, one for light. You get Beatrice’s Magictastic Glowy Cross for a completely unlimited basic magic attack that holds its own throughout the entire game, and other magic types are funded through your Mana bar.

Oh, hey there, you sweet little...oh dear.

Of course, it’s not limited to just that. Some combos are unlocked via a two-branch upgrading system. On the left, your “unholy” attacks, on the right, your “holy” ones – you purchase attacks on each side with the souls you get from defeating enemies. You unlock different levels of each branch by choosing to punish or absolve your enemies. You can also choose to punish or absolve the Shades of the Inferno, which amount to famous figures (like Pontius Pilate or Attila the Hun) scattered through the nine levels that you also choose to punish or absolve.

Punishing is, nine times out of ten, very simple. Absolving involves either a lot of button-mashing (for common enemies) or, in the case of the Shades…a rhythm game. A rhythm game that eats 30 seconds of your time and is only really good for getting extra soul currency.

After all that absolving, are the holy powers much more awesome than the unholy ones? That answer is a resounding no. You’d think that with the holy powers, Dante could skip through Hell like a schoolgirl on a hopscotch board, going all “the power of Christ compels you!” on the evil spirits and tortured souls. Nuh uh. Doesn’t happen. Holy powers aren’t any cooler at all. So, really, there’s no reason to choose one path over the other. If there had been some kind of reward or punishment for choosing one path over the other, this mechanic might make more sense, but as it stands, it’s completely pointless. You have to both absolve and punish to get anywhere. (I personally chose to absolve most of the shades, because with the little bit of backstory they give you, I was usually able to rationalize my decision. “Oh, sure, you cheated on your husband, but he sounds like a big meanie, so I don’t blame you.”)

In addition, you also occasionally get to ride giant beasts. They, like Dante, have two main physical attacks and an unlimited magic type. Swing your arms or stomp the tiny things in front of you, or blow fire at them. Occasionally, a monster tries to take your ride away from you, but all it takes to ward them off is some more button-mashing. You get to the top of them via a series of quick-time events, and QTEs show up at least once per boss fight, so get used to them. (The pink square button is pretty difficult to see due to not enough contrast between the pink and grey, so also be prepared for that.)

The environments start out strong. Climbing on walls of the Damned is freakishly creepy, and Lust is beautifully designed, with fornicating figures all over the place and holes in the wall that greatly resemble female anatomy. Greed is practically made of gold.  By the time you finish Wrath, everything just starts to seem…dark. Each area from then on has about one distinguishing feature, and the rest is just dark stone. (A river of blood is one standout.)

One of the best design features, aside from the early levels, comes in the form of 2D animated cutscenes. These start out happening fairly frequently, but unfortunately don’t show up nearly as often by the end of the game.

I can't imagine why people like this screenshot so much.

The traditional computer-animated cutscenes are freakishly beautiful and detailed. In one early scene, I found myself staring at the tiny hairs on Beatrice’s chin and nose, rather than fixating on her naked breast (which is probably where they were wanting me to look). Speaking of nudity, there is quite a bit in the game, in both the traditional (Beatrice and Dante) and nontraditional (Cleopatra has unbaptized babies coming out of her nipples) sense. If that offends you at all, it’s probably best that you steer away. Also, the amount of violence in this title goes without saying. There’s a Circle of Hell called Violence, for Paradiso’s sake.

One thing I noticed is that the level design gets incredibly predictable very quickly. Entering a somewhat larger room with two narrow exits? You’re about to get locked in and face a swarm of enemies. Is that fountain difficult to get to, or slightly out of the way? You’re going to find a special item. After a couple of hours, I found myself predicting my predicament out loud and getting it right about 95% of the time. There are a couple of surprises, but nothing that made me reevaluate the way I was classifying rooms. The puzzles you run into are never difficult, just fairly frustrating. You’ll likely come to dread the sequences that take you from one Circle to the next – the rope-swinging and spine-descending just gets old after a while.

At the end of the day, I can see why they needed to release this game in February. There’s something very similar coming out in March, so why challenge it in a head-to-head? However, for being the first action title based on classic literature (unless we’re counting BioShock’s obvious Ayn Rand inspirations), this is possibly the best way to do it. The way that Hell is structured provides the perfect setup for a game, and if they’d executed it in a more original way, this would definitely get a Buy rating from me. If you’re just looking for a hack-n-slash action title, though…well, you’re better off waiting for God of War III, even though Dante is pretty good. It’s just not excellent.

I hope this ushers in a slew of book-games. And not just games-based-on-movies-based-on-books, either. I want Jane Eyre and Don Quixote. How exactly those will work, I’m not sure, but based on what Visceral’s got going here, I think it can be done.