Dante’s Inferno Review: Well Hell’s Bells

And she’s buying a stairwell to hell

Turning to one of the greatest pieces of literature was a bold move by EA and Visceral Games, the developers that brought us Dead Space. Choosing Dante’s Inferno, according to the developers, was a no brainer: the poem lays out in plain English all of the levels, bosses, and characters. All that really needed to be done was some story tweaking, a combat solution, and creating the world.

Does Dante’s Inferno do the poem justice?

Yes, but ultimately it doesn't live up to the standards that Visceral Games set for themselves. That is to say, they made a pretty good game, but Dante's Inferno doesn't live up to the hype, and more importantly, up to it's full potential.

After a slow start, some brief CGI cinematics to get players in the mood and a trip to hell, I was knee deep in the dead. Killing Death and taking his scythe was easy enough, an interesting design choice considering the only people who cheated Death were those who beat him at the game of your choice, a la Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Meaning, Death is a panzy who loses to a mortal with zero powers and magic to aid him. What the hell.

Setting that aside, Dante plunges into hell after his love, Beatrice, only to find Lucifer himself has come to claim her soul. This is, of course, awesome: players get to dive into hell, go through all nine circles, and end up with a final boss, Satan. How could this not be a good game? Only an idiot could screw it up.

To our delight, idiots didn't recreate hell, but whoever did must've been queasy. The touted difference between Dante's Inferno and the much adored God of War franchise, hell itself, is not incredible. It's like a haunted house: all the scary stuff is hidden in the back somewhere so you don't scare the kids. On the one hand, hell has never before been done so well, and on the other hand, it just isn't scary, horrifying, or as repulsive as we'd hoped. Besides a few scenes, such as the opening of Gluttony, it just doesn't feel like hell.

This isn't just because of the design, but also because of the scope. For the first half of the game, hell is a small, contained world, only giant during cutscenes. It isn't until entering the City of Dis that we really see just how massive hell is, which is about six hours later than it should be. The first site of hell should be "holy crap, this place is huge!"

There are plenty of enemy types to go around, though none are remarkable. The glutton pukes and defecates, the harlot shoots out tentacles from her crotch, unbaptized babies have knives for hands...yet we see them so often that they become commonplace. Perhaps my favorite is the worm, which pops out of the ground and attacks with a giant mouth, if only because this attacker appears so rarely that it's a surprise when they appear.

Yet it's in combat that Dante's Inferno succeeds. Say what you will about how similar it is to God of War, but Dante knows how to kick ass. Using a combination of Death's Scythe and a holy cross, as well as a leveling system for gaining new abilities and attacks, and this badass will make you come back for more. Top it off with a few customizable magic attacks and a choice between being good and evil for points, and combat is thought provoking and fun.

Combat also succeeds because of the excellent pacing between high-intensity combat, platforming, cinematics and traveling from circle to circle. It's all fine tuned so well and so subtly that going from one circle to the next is always a revelation, a "where am I" moment, one which Virgil, the poetic guide, is always ready to help with. Rarely does the game ever feel overbearing or underwhelming, though at times you will be frustrated to the point of the 5th circle.

Even the plot and dialog are left mostly intact. Sure, liberties were taken with the story a to make the game work, but nothing ever oversteps the boundaries and takes you out of the experience. No dialog is ever so modern that it feels out of place, which is remarkable in and of itself. Even the artistic liberties, such as making Cerberus more worm-like than dog-like is brilliantly done.

Then the huge letdown: the finale. Lucifer proves to be pitiful at treachery, his supposed art, and it makes the finale pretty weak. There may be some greater scheme, spanning across another game or two (it is a trilogy of poems, and it is EA), but that's no excuse.

Dante’s Inferno is a surprising title. Not only is it well designed, it sticks with the original poem as close as possible while still keeping it a game. Yet at the same time, the vision of hell we see is not as epic or as memorable as we’d hoped. Bodies on pikes? Not so bad. Sinner walls which must be climbed up and down? Meh. With exception to the entrance of Gluttony, nothing in this hell is memorable. It simply isn’t, ironically enough, visceral. This is something Doom managed to do nearly twenty years ago, through manufactured intestinal floors and heads on spikes.

This may be because of the far camera, which makes it a challenge to really feel and see the world up close. Yet we contend that there is an utter lack of suffering in hell, that Dante can almost leisurely stroll through, skipping along with rose petals, occasionally hacking at an unbaptized baby or harlot with tentacles out of the wazoo. Where is ultimate suffering? Where are the screams for mercy, the constant pain and misery of millions? Mostly absent, to say the least.

Furthermore, Dante’s personal struggle with sin is minimal. Even though we find out later that he belongs deep in the 8^th circle himself, his whole voyage through self-discovery and repentance is pretty weak. There’s almost no emotion as our hero braves the darkest, most horrifying place in all the universe, and just a drop more when he see’s his own sins. We have no emotional ties to Dante whatsoever.

The Lowdown