Many games borrow disparate elements from other popular entries in a genre, mixing familiar
pieces together into something new and exciting. Very few games attempt to emulate the source
material as blatantly as Dante's Inferno does, though. In this case, the muse is God of War,
and Dante's quest to save his forsaken bride from Lucifer's grabby hands feels an awful
lot like Kratos' latest adventure in the netherworld. This isn't an inherently bad thing, but Dante's
adventure fails to live up to its lofty inspiration.
In the early going, you'll be hard pressed to separate Dante's Inferno from its superb
inspiration. The decent into hell from your earthly home is overloaded with rising landmarks
beckoning you from a distance, gargantuan monsters begging to be eviscerated in blood-splattering
ways, and epic environments that hint at the impressive scale of your adventure into the
heart of darkness. For the first few hours, you will stare in awe at your impressive surroundings,
and the feeling of déjà vu is more than welcomed.
The first few circles of hell are bursting with disgusting imagery that paints an eerily
accurate representation of the reprehensible land of damned spirits. Lust and greed are
two of the deadly sin you will traverse through early in the game, and they are utterly repulsive
in their portrayal of these crimes against humanity. This may sound like a bad thing,
but the visuals are so shocking and unrestrained that it only builds upon the foreboding atmosphere
of your quest. In lust, you battle condemned prostitutes with exaggerated parts of typical
female anatomy, and though it's gross, it certainly makes you believe you are truly
traveling through this corrupted land.
As you dive deeper into hell, though, very few disturbing abominations await. Early on,
you fight grotesque prostitutes, incredibly obese monsters who
typify the gluttony mentality, and even an army of unbabtized babies this is sure to
disturb even the most jaded of players. But once you get past the first few hours, the
imaginative enemies fade away, giving way to predictable hack and slash. Battles and
levels blur together, resulting in an often monotonous trek through the nine circles of
the damned. And while it is certainly shocking fighting these horrible beings when you first
encounter them, they stay with you the entire adventure, which diminishes the initial hint
of repulsion you tasted. It certainly makes sense that you would fight prostitutes when
in Lust, it makes a lot less sense that they continue to show up in Anger, Hersey, and
every other circle.
The epic level design from the early stages also disappear after the first few hours.
Initially, you would see a titanic being far off in the distance and you knew you would
have to fight it when you finally made your way through the obstacles between you. But
that feeling of making progress through the depths of the underworld quickly goes away,
replaced by a series of smallish rooms that don't even hint at the larger world around
you. Unlike God of War, Dante's Inferno fails to evoke the feeling that you are a tiny person
surrounded by monstrous creatures in a hostile land. Aside from the constant screams from
the damned who line the walls, it's often easy to forget where your adventure takes
place as you dutifully march from one area to the next without any noteworthy encounters
to break up the drudgery.
The combat is also lifted wholesale from God of War and, like the enemy design and level
layout, it too only gives a taste of the source material without ever doing justice to the
real thing. Battles are vicious and bloody, letting you tear into the flesh of your angry
enemies without reckless abandon. It is certainly fun slicing and dicing your way through these
despicable beings, but the combat has a few flaws that make it a bit annoying. When you
start a combo, Dante will see it through to completion, even while you're slamming on
another button so you can avoid an imminent blow from you enemy. Also, you have a projectile
attack you can use at any time. This works well when fighting one-on-one battles, but
the auto targeting is way off, making it a pain to hit a specific enemy when you're surrounded
by a seething gang.
There is a clear distinction between the quality of the first third of Dante's Inferno, the
middle third, and the end. It starts out as an epic adventure with gloriously disturbing
imagery, then loses the imaginative aspects but still has enough fun combat to keep you
motivated. But the final third of the game is awful. For the final few hours of the game,
level design and clever enemy battles has been completely removed in favor of objective-based
combat on floating platforms. Instead of being introduced to vile caricatures that exemplify
the sins of being a traitor or politician, you fight the same enemies as before with
artificial constraints tossed in, such as "Don't use magic." This is not fun in the
slightest and feels like a way to pad the game out so it doesn't end quite so abruptly.
It's a shame the entirety of Dante's Inferno couldn't match the imagination presented in
the first few hours, because it seemed like this game was going to be a worthwhile alternative
to the superb God of War series. But most of the game falls flat, and the final few
hours are tedious and uninspired. This is a pale imitation of the real thing, and though
it's fun for a while, there are much better action games out there.