Dante’s Inferno (Xbox 360) Review

Posted by Adam Larck on 03.26.2010

Going to hell has never been this entertaining. Find out how the game plays inside.



Title: Dante’s Inferno
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Visceral Games
Genre: Action-Adventure
Players: 1
Rated: M for Mature

While the PR attempts for Dante’s Inferno may have been a bit over the top, Electronic Arts had a good idea when they decided to publish this game.

For those that don’t know, Dante’s Inferno is actually one of three books in “The Divine Comedy” from fourteenth-century poet Dante Alighieri. The book follows Dante as he progresses through the layers of hell. The game adds in rescuing Beatrice to give players more meaning to go through hell.

Along the way, the poet Virgil follows Dante on his quest and gives him information. In the game, this information is on new areas, upcoming bosses and more. Virgil can usually be spoken to multiple times in an area, and will give more detailed information about what’s coming up and sometimes even give Dante a relic, which will be discussed later.

Before going to hell, however, the game starts off with a small tutorial level where Dante kills prisoners before finally being stabbed. In this tutorial you’ll come to a quick realization: this plays a lot like God of War.

Most of the gameplay mechanics have been seen in GoW, from the fighting style to climbing on walls and ropes to even the quick time events. However, given that the Xbox 360 has no God of War game and that Dante’s Inferno offers enough to make it unique, this copying can be overlooked since the gameplay is still solid.

Anyways, after being stabbed, you face off with and kill Death, taking his scythe. After advancing a bit farther into the game, you’ll then get a cross from inside a church, letting you use ranged attacks to give a balance to the close ranged scythe.

After getting both items, the church gives way and Dante falls to hell. While he starts to explore the layers to find Beatrice, he meets up with Virgil early on as he goes farther in.

Throughout the game, both the unholy (scythe) and holy (cross) paths will be able to be upgraded, giving access to stronger attacks, magic, health and more. All enemies drop experience. However, enemies will only drop holy and unholy experience by absolving or punishing souls.

Absolving and punishing common enemies is easy enough. You just have to grab them, choose the move you want to do and sometimes do a QTE. You can also find The Damned as you go through, which are special people with brief stories that you can absolve or punish as well. Punishing them instantly happens, while absolving has you do doing a button pressing mini-game to get as many souls as possible. Eventually, by collecting three Beatrice stones, you can auto-absolve The Damned as well.

Back to the game, you’ll also find early on that you can sometimes control bigger beasts and fight with them for a short time. This is few and far between, but it’s nice that these aren’t overused and gives a good break from taking on enemies by yourself.

A reoccurring theme you’ll see early on is that you have to kill a set amount of enemies to progress. However, as you do this there is normally something in the environment closing in to kill you, making these timed areas. While this normally wasn’t bad, I ran into a few parts where the time was just too fast and I had to rely on my magic.

Speaking of magic, I want to touch on it briefly. Unlike the cross attacks which use no magic, the various magic attacks you get use a moderate to large amount of magic that last for shorter times. While most of the magic are for attacking, the one I used the most of was Divine Armor, which, when powered up, left Dante invulnerable for a time as well as healed a good amount of health back.

Going along with magic are relics which gives buffs that are always active. Once you’re fully upgraded, you can equip up to four at once. These give effects such as magic regeneration, a chance to stun when blocking and more. Some of these also require a certain holy or unholy level to use as well.

In the game, each of the nine layers of hell looked unique and great. From Lust to Gluttony to Avarice and more, the layers were great to go through and see, and really represented the sin they related to. The transition from these layers is pretty fluid, and the game always lets you know when you’ve entered the next layer.

While going through the layers, a cutscene will normally appear relating to the sewn-in cross on Dante’s chest showing how he committed the sin on Earth. Also in each area is a unique enemy that relates to the sin as well. These enemies also start appearing in each additional layer of hell.

One of the enemies in particular, Heretics, are annoying in that they are immune to your cross attacks and can protect other enemies around them as well. It’s normally best to take these enemies out first to let you take on the other enemies without a problem.

Another enemy that needs mentioned are the unbaptized babies. These things have blades where their arms should be and I honestly felt a bit bad killing these. Instead, I started going through absolving all of these when I came across them. It just felt right.

There are a decent number of bosses in the game that give a good challenge until you figure out their pattern. After beating most of them, they give you a new magic or relic. Bosses range from Marc Antony to Cerberus to even your dad before ending with Lucifer himself.

Also, later in the game puzzles start being used a bit more. Gluttony had an interesting puzzle by walking through portals, and boxes seem to be a reoccurring puzzle item as well. Another thing that pops up later is arenas that want you to complete a task in a certain amount of time. While it was a nice idea, this just seems unneeded and could have been done away with.

However, the game isn’t without a few problems. Players on SDTVs will notice that the text in the game is hard to read at points. HDTV owners won’t have this problem, but it is disappointing to see problems like this pop up.

Another glitch is that while grabbing an enemy, other enemies won’t attack and enemies that were already in attack motion won’t damage you. There were a few times I used a grapple to get out of a hard hitting attack without taking damage.

The game itself is fairly short, and can probably be beaten in about nine hours. After beating the game, players will unlock Dante’s Crusader outfit, as well as the Infernal difficulty and Resurrection mode, which is basically a New Game + mode. Also unlocked is the Gates of Hell Survival mode, which has players go against waves of enemies trying to beat them before dying or having time expire.

Honestly, I felt that the layers of Dante’s Inferno was captured really well. They surprised me with how they looked, and the music fit the areas nicely. While the gameplay itself may be from another game, it’s nice to see that 360 owners can experience what PlayStation owners have had for years.

Pros

The individual layers look great.

The story in the game is told with some interesting cutscenes from Dante's cross.

The cross attack and combos with the scythe were great to try and use against demons.

Cons

Most of the gameplay mechanics have been seen before quite often.

Game is fairly short, with the story lasting around nine hours.

Killing wave after wave of enemies can get bit repetitive after a while.

The 411:

Visceral Games really captured the story of “Dante’s Inferno” and did a great job bringing it to game form. While the game may pull a lot mechanics from other games, it’s still fun to play, especially for 360 owners who normally couldn’t play God of War. The game may be short, but fans of hack-and-slashers will find a good game here. Fans of the genre or even people curious about how “Dante’s Inferno” translates into a game ought to pick it up. Other gamers may want to do a weekend rental.

Graphics	8.5	The layers of hell looked amazing. Each layer looked unique and really added to the game. Outside of this, the rest of the graphics were still good.
Gameplay	8.5	The fighting is very akin to God of War, but the cross attacks and the ability to absolve/punish gives this game a unique appeal.
Sound	8.0	Virgil helps add details about each area, and the music fits nicely in areas and battles. Plus, the cutscenes sound good when finding out about Dante’s corrupt past.
Lasting Appeal	8.0	After you beat the game, the Resurrection Mode, new difficulty and arena mode open up. Maxing out your character and taking on the arena will give reason to come back until the new DLC releases.
Fun Factor	8.0	While the hack-and-slash style may have gotten a bit repetitive from time to time, seeing the layers of hell and seeing the book come to life kept me entertained through the whole game.
Overall	8.2   [ Very Good ]

Screenshots
All 7 Dante's Inferno Screenshots