new "Dante's Inferno" game...

[creatix]

i just sincerely hope for once that this game just plain ol' BOMBS... you get your weapon from beating up DEATH for christsakes... why the hell does he have to do anything else if he can beat up death from the get go?

oh yeah.. and Lust's pierced tits.. RETARDED.

I think you are looking for more validation that you "GET" a masterpiece of literature written in the 1300s that you wish bad things upon the entire creative efforts and artistic freedom of others. How fucking bitter are you? Ok, so you are a literary genius and critic. People interpreted it differently. Maybe AS A VIDEO GAME, the way Dante wrote the poem would be BORING AS FUCK, so Visceral Games gave it their own VIDEO GAME spin to it.

I'm pretty damn sure that Dante did NOT write the Divine Comedy JUST FOR YOU. Remember that when you wish ill on others trying to draw something, animate something and otherwise make a paycheck in an industry with enough studio closures and lost jobs...If the game absolutely bombs, then perhaps some people lose their jobs. Thats money that puts food on the table for some. To wish that because of how cool your are for truly understanding what a 14th century poem is about just makes you a selfish prick.

ITS A VIDEO GAME. GROW UP.

[Movenski]

wow chill out son,

you do realize that by taking the time out of your day to get on a forum and chastise me, someone you don't even know, for having an opinion, it makes you look even more childish and immature than you think i am right?

i'm certain there are things in life that you've disapproved of and vented your disappointment/frustrations to others about, be it on a public forum or not. the big difference here is that you actually took the time to click on the link read the posts, get fired up and then type out TWO tirades about what a bad person I am, TOTALLY UNPROMPTED. if my opinion (and others mind you, you may wanna get to letting all the other poor souls in this thread what awful immature selfish "pricks" they are" ) upsets you DON'T READ THE THREAD. for someone who talks about "moving on" you sure need to practice what you're preaching. to put it as eloquently as you have,

ITS AN OPINION. ABOUT A VIDEOGAME. GROW UP. MOVE ON.

[Orunitier]

I think you are all overreacting. It's a game. Good game, bad game whatever. The only reason I'm interested in this game is Wayne Barlowe.

[Movenski]

yeah before thatmy intere whole debacle, above, i have to say the levels and monsters are well done and interesting, when i found out they brought in wayne barlowe, my interest was piqued as well.

[phoric]

I've played the demo on PS3 a few times and personally can't wait for this to be released. Yes, the main character looks like a douche, and a few of the cut scenes are a little cheesy, with random nudity etc... But the concept and gameplay is a blast. I love the poems, and don't really see an issue with making creative interpretations of Dante's hell (which of course was absolutely necessary in order for this to become a game).

[wiggum]

Well I've had a busy couple weeks, with the release of BioShock 2 and Mass Effect 2 I've been pretty busy. Dante's Inferno was a low priority, but my buddy got it and let me borrow it, so I figured I would go through it as quickly as possible.

The game starts off fairly strong, but one of the things I noticed early on is that it takes forever to kill your enemies. Even the basic guys are able to obsorb a retarted ammount of damage. They aren't hard, they just take forever to kill. This was on medium difficulty, so I set it down to easy in the interest of saving time and this presented me with the exact opposite problem. Other than that though, the first few levels of hell aren't bad at all, King Minos, Cleopatra and Cerberus presented some fairly good boss battles, and I found myself having a reasonably good time.

Once you get past gluttany though, I discovered that the game became a string of uninspired puzzles and awful platforming with a few spectacularly cool sections. There is one section where you discover that you've been on top of a giant demon for like 5 minutes without even realizing it and another segment where your running through a collapsing cave that is both fun and exhilerating.

But when this game gets bad...holy fucking shit it gets bad. There are two segments in particular that come to mind, one is an M.C. Escher type puzzle that was so poorly designed that I nearly flew into a blind rage trying to figure out what the game wanted me to do. And a segment later on where you have to complete ten challenges in the Malebolge...SUCKS. One challenge forces you to stay in the air for 8 seconds and kill two enemies, I had to look online to figure that one out...although once I did I'll admit I was a bit embarassed.

Another thing to note is the lack of real boss fights after Cerberus, there are a few minibosses that are astonishingly lame and when I finally got to the end I was very disappointed with Lucifer...I won't say any more about him. Oh yeah, and you remember that big red fire demon you see in the preview? You totally don't get to fight him! Although you get to do something else that would have been freakin' sweet if they had actually done a bit more with that segment.

I played the game on a 46" 1080P Sharp HD flat panel TV. It is a very nice TV that I am very happy with, and even in HD there are numerous parts of the game were it is extremely difficult to see where the hell the next platform is, I died more times from not being able to see what I was doing than I did from the combat with the demons of hell.

Also, despite the upgradability of it, the main weapon is stupid and not much fun to play with. You run out of combos surprisingly fast and the addition of the laser crosses or whatever and other magic don't add enough variety to save it. I'll admit there are few battles dotted throughout the game that are very good, but they are surprisingly rare and every time I ran into enemies I found myself getting annoyed by the fact that I had to fight...that isn't a good sign in an action game.

The game also overuses quicktime events, someone at EA thought that it was a good idea to force players to go into a quick time event every time you wanted to go to a health fountain...or open a door. And it is never clear when a quick time even is comming up, there are some segments that seem like they are for quicktime, but end up being realtime. The vast majority of the time when this happens I end up falling off a cliff.

The art design is also a mixed bag. The main character, as we are all well aware, is the stupidist looking thing many of us have ever seen. His scythe looks like some plastic Costume Prop you'd buy for a 5th grader at Halloween USA, and the rest of it is just a mess. They would have been better off just leaving him in the crusader outfit he wore during the prologue.

Most of the enemies are pretty lackluster as well, but the succubi, glutteny things and the big ass goat demons are notably for their coolness. The first three bosses are cool, especially Minos, I even though Cleopatra was pretty awesome, and the interpretation of Cerberus is one of the best I've seen. But after that all the bosses are lame as hell, even lucifer himself.

The levels are better in design than most of the creatures, but you still get this problem where everything falls apart after you get out of gluttany. I know its hell, so there is only so much you can do, but everythings is just so brown/grey that after a while I'm not even interested in seeing the next level.

And then there is the story, which really isn't all that bad for the type of game this is. You fight through hords of demons to save you dumb ass wife who made a deal with Satan (because she's dumb). What gets on my nerves is that it is never explained why Dante can kill death itself and then rampage through hell choosing to absolve or punish sinners. What gives Dante the right to decide if someone can go to heaven after they were assigned to hell? And if he punishes them what exactly does that mean? Where do they go, they are already in fucking hell for Christ's sake! But the minigame you play when absolving people is actually a lot of fun (I had more fun with that than the combat as a whole).

I could say more (like how are the sequels going to work? Is he going to rampage through heaven and kick Jesus' ass? GOD THIS IS SO STUPID!!), but I think you get the idea. If you have a PS3 don't waste a second thought on this piss, wait for God of War 3 and you will be a lot happier for having done so. If you have a 360...you might consider giving this a rent, but it isn't worth $60, not by a long shot.

[FightingSeraph]

You should be a VG critic, Wiggum. Other than a few typos, it's better than what X-Play host Adam Sessler could do. On a related note, you should check out Bayonetta when you get the chance.

[wiggum]

You should be a VG critic, Wiggum. Other than a few typos, it's better than what X-Play host Adam Sessler could do. On a related note, you should check out Bayonetta when you get the chance.

Thanks man. I have actually played a little bit of Bayonetta, and it seemed pretty good. Its by the same people who developed the Devil May Cry games and as a result seemed to have many of the same problems.

I only managed to play a few hours, and a lot of that was watching those retarded cut scenes. And then when it actually let me play it blared J-Pop at me in a continous loop until I couldn't stand it anymore. I did like the combat though, I just didn't think I could handle all the other Japenese weirdness that came with it so I never got around to buying it myself.

I might do a few more reviews, I'm really looking forward to Red Dead Redemption though. I'm more excited about that than anything else thats been in the chute for a while.

[albernbowen]

* Uneven quality; way too many cheap deaths; mediocre gameplay overall

Dante’s Inferno is based on the 14th century poem written by Dante Alighieri. It follows the main character, Dante, who has descended into the depths of Hell to try and save his wife Beatrice’s soul. While Dante was off fighting in the Crusades, Beatrice made a bet with the devil that Dante would not cheat on her with another woman. In return, the devil would make sure that Dante survived the wars and could return home. If Dante were unfaithful, however, then Beatrice’s soul would be forfeited forever.

As you can easily guess, Dante wasn’t faithful and returns home just in time to see Lucifer take his wife’s soul. Dante then follows them into Hell and fights through the Nine Circles of Hell – Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, etc. to try and save her.

The story and setting in the game are definite strong points. Dante’s Hell is equal parts fascinating and horrifying and the creatures you fight along the way are well designed. What is most interesting is the way in which the story is told. There are normal realtime and CG cutscenes, but also some simple animation-style cutscenes that fill in the gaps of what Dante did during the Crusades. The story isn’t unpredictable or surprising, but it is interesting and satisfying and well told here.

[Straight Edge Ryan]

ok I'm going to try and avoid writing a wall of text here and just sum things up: On more than one occasion I died due to some small environmental thing, i.e. I would pull myself up from a ledge and the camera angle would make me walk off the edge to a firery death. I also blatantly walked into small pits of fire/filth/death that was just randomly scattered about the land several times, some of this was due to my own retardation, but I feel like the bulk of it was due to "meh" level design (or at least "meh" highlighting of horrible death areas)

Deviates from the poem quite a bit, but hey they needed a reason to explain why Dante was in hell and why he was staying there so going after a girl was as good a reason as any. Rips off god of war a lot, but god of war was a pretty kick ass game so it kinda works out. One thing did annoy me though and that's the fact that the decision to absolve or punish souls throughout the game has no effect on the overall story. I mean, yes it does unlock certain holy or unholy powers but even if you dismember every tortured soul you meet on your way to Lucifer you still get painted as an alright guy at the end. Maybe I'm just jaded, but I'm used to the moral choice system leading to either a pat on the back "good for you! you're not a bastard!" ending or a "really? you thought you could be a dick in hell and not have any sort of repercussions?" ending

Overall I'd say D- for originality B+ for execution

[Dusty]

Designs by Wayne Douglas Barlowe in a video game? I could not be happier. Barlowe was one of my earliest artistic inspirations, so I am stoked about this game. So far, I have only scratched the surface, but it feels like they took Barlowe's art book, "Barlowe's Inferno", mashed it up with Dante's Inferno and made a game loosely based off of that in a God of War-style.

Yup. Damn fun game for me, even if just to admire the environments.

[Zweit]

Meh, I'll just wait untill God of War 3 is out.

Speaking of which: HOLY SHIT!

[wiggum]

Designs by Wayne Douglas Barlowe in a video game? I could not be happier. Barlowe was one of my earliest artistic inspirations, so I am stoked about this game. So far, I have only scratched the surface, but it feels like they took Barlowe's art book, "Barlowe's Inferno", mashed it up with Dante's Inferno and made a game loosely based off of that in a God of War-style.

Yup. Damn fun game for me, even if just to admire the environments.

Enjoy it while it lasts. This goes from a mildly enjoyable knock off to a steaming bowl of elephant piss just after you get past gluttony.

[FightingSeraph]

I wonder if any of you guys remember the '86 Dante's Inferno? If not, here's a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnsWceYWNpQ

[jonmorris]

I wonder if any of you guys remember the '86 Dante's Inferno? If not, here's a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnsWceYWNpQ

I had to watch all of that just to see if there would be a C64 version of the flatterer's stuck in poo. Alas there was not that I noticed.

[SpiderMage]

've read/seen the reviews, watched my roommate play the demo and I know I won't ever buy, rent or borrow this game, especially as a fan of the book and more so as a student of the game industry... Dante's Inferno is basically a palette swap of God of War.

[N D Hill]

've read/seen the reviews, watched my roommate play the demo and I know I won't ever buy, rent or borrow this game, especially as a fan of the book and more so as a student of the game industry... Dante's Inferno is basically a palette swap of God of War.

That's exactly what it is. I purchased it got bored with it the 15th heretic arena or whatever it was. The game feels incredibly padded out which is no wonder considering how little original content there was to it. Naturally as soon as God of War 3 was released, I haven't touched it since.

This review sums it all up quite nicely.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...Dantes-Inferno

[thinairart]

've read/seen the reviews, watched my roommate play the demo and I know I won't ever buy, rent or borrow this game, especially as a fan of the book and more so as a student of the game industry... Dante's Inferno is basically a palette swap of God of War.

Which is exactly why I bought it! No God of War on the Xbox 360, so Dante's Inferno is as close as I can get