Let’s clear something up to start with: I use the word ‘review’ tenuously at best any time I write a ‘review’ blog. I’ll at least try and keep this vaguely cohesive for a change!
By now you should already have read my post on the Dante’s Inferno: Death Edition special features DVD (and if not, why not?!) Since writing that, I’ve played through the game not once, but twice (thanks to the achievement whore in me wanting to explore the New Game + — or ‘Resurrection Mode’ as it is called — options and max out my Trophies).
Length and Replayability
The first time through, DI took me approximately 11-12 hours to complete, searching all the nooks and crannies I could find, on Zealot (normal) difficulty. This didn’t feel too short or too long, but just right for the type of game it is. For anybody who just wants a fire-and-forget game, then this may not be the best value for money you can buy, however. There are much longer games for a similar asking price.
The beauty of DI’s longevity, however, is in its combat and upgrades system. I’m relatively certain that you simply cannot upgrade everything on both Holy and Unholy sides of your customisation trees on your first playthrough. The Resurrection Mode enables you to take your character you finished playthrough one with and send it into Hell a second time, complete with all your upgraded abilities and the Relics that you have collected along the way. This doesn’t quite double the length of the game, though unless you’re using a walkthrough to find everything, it may actually take longer to play through the second time to collect the lot.
Gameplay
It’s God of War, but without Kratos. The controls are ever so slightly different, but not enough to adapt to within minutes. Anybody who has played GoW1/2 (or 3’s demo) will know what to expect here. And, contrary to a lot of the reviews floating around on the net, I can’t say it has an inferior combat system in any way. Animations were fluid and easy to control, the attacks were brutal and had serious weight behind them, and there were some lovely kill attacks.
My only criticisim in the gameplay variety is a criticism that a lot of games share: the bane that are Quick Time Events. QTEs aren’t as prolific in Dante’s Inferno as they have been in other games and, thankfully, they tend to have a preset pattern rather than be completely random in which button you have to press like GoW’s earlier versions do. I still think GoW3 has it right here, though: if you absolutely positively have to have QTEs, at least put the relevant icons on the side of the screen appropriate to the button press. Something that simple really cuts down on the frustration for those of us who can’t always remember which way round Circle and Square are on the controller.
Presentation and Sound
I had an issue with the darkness of the game — an issue I have with a lot of ‘atmospheric’ games: yeah, I’m lookin’ at you DOOM 3 — so I had to turn the Brightness setting up a notch, but on a whole I’m very impressed with DI. The creature design is generally excellent, the sound has the ecclesiastic bombastisism you’d expect from a game about religion and Hell, and the lighting effects and texture work are mostly top notch.
Special mention must be made about the four CGI movies in the game: they’re beautiful pieces of cinema, so well lit and rendered that at one point I actually thought they’d switched to live action for a couple of bits. The final movie especially has some absolutely stunning anatomy and texture referencing, and the lip syncing is spot on.
There is a mix of cutscene styles in the game: from pre-rendered footage using ingame engine, realtime footage using ingame engine, some stylised animated bits in a couple of very visceral styles, plus the CGI movies above. I can’t say I was let down by any of them, though the pre-rendered ingame stuff was occassionally witness to a few rendering artefacts, but nothing to pan the game for.
The music and voice acting is generally spot on. Dante himself doesn’t sound like an all-American action hero, which I thought was a nice touch. Admittedly, he doesn’t sound like a Tuscan either, but that’s a minor niggle I think a western audience won’t care a jot for.
Achievement/Gamerpoint/Trophy Whoring
I assume both XBOX360 and PS3 have the same achievements, but I haven’t looked at the 360’s list to check. Dante’s Inferno is nice in that it doesn’t have that annoying “And now play the game on the hardest difficulty” achievement that so many games have these days. Most of the Bronze and Silver trophies are obtainable on the first runthrough as 80% of them are related to the story, or killing a certain number of a specific monster that you’ll naturally fight over the course of the game. There’s also trophies for getting a 50 and 100 point combo (both very easy) as well as one for the unsurprisingly 666 point combo (which took a bit more work).
Add to this “collect all the unholy relics” and “collect all the holy relics”, maxing out either side and then both of the Holy/Unholy trees and Absolve/Punish all 27 shades of the Inferno, there’s quite a bit for you to find and work at (I admit, I used a walkthrough for this final bit, as there were a couple I simply couldn’t find, and with no “mission select” feature, if you miss something, you have to play it ALL again).
Of special mention is The Guide trophy, which I would have got on my first playthrough, if I’d realised that you have to keep on talking to Virgil until he disappears for it to register for the achievement. D’oh.
Final Thoughts
I like the God of War series. That style of game is the reason I own consoles in the first place (well, that and Final Fantasy XIII). So when a game that isn’t quite God of War comes out, its still worth a shot for me. If you have GoW up on a pedestal, and aren’t willing to challenge your preconceptions, then Dante’s Inferno is not really the game for you. If you’re like me, however, and have a thing for mythology and neat artistic design, then you could do a lot worse than give Dante’s Inferno a rent from your nearest store.
Just don’t buy the Death Edition. Seriously. Not value for money!
The Verdict
8/10 – Good
(Hey look, I managed the whole review without mentioning Lucifer’s fully rendered CGI peni….gah, ALMOST HAD ME!!)





