Dante's Inferno – Eurogamer Expo-pinion
On being asked what he thought about comparisons of Dante’s Inferno: The Video Game to God of War, Jonathan Knight, Director of Dante’s Inferno: The Video Game said “It’s the greatest compliment we can be paid”.
I guess I’m about to make them another great compliment then.
If you asked me to describe what genre Dante’s Inferno: The Video Game was, I’d have to answer “God of war clone”, because that is exactly what it is. It feels simply like EA wanted to make a competent God of War clone, and the cheapest way to do that was find a public domain IP that they could exploit without paying anyone any money, and then assigning one of it’s better teams the task of aping Sony’s Olympian violence ’em up.
I’m actually having trouble separating memories from playing this and God of War III at the expo, luckily I took some notes.
Dante’s Inferno: The Video Games has combat where you press the buttons to deal different types of violence out on your enemies. There’s the small violence button, the medium violence button, and the big violence button. Pressing these in different orders makes combos of violence happen. Mix in some QTEs, and some boss fights, and that’s pretty much your game.
In this demo, I started off on a level that was the back of a giant. He was arched over, and the action was taking place on his spine and ribcage. I had to kill some smaller enemies, then damage a big one enough to make it let me climb on top of it. Once I climbed on top of the big one, I snapped the giants head off by pressing buttons when it told me to.
Then (whilst still on the top of the bigger enemy), I jumped onto a big set of crumbling walls, and I had to climb to the top.
This bit was pretty badly designed. I had to jump (pressing the X button on the PS3 pad) to scale faster, except if you weren’t lined up just right, you would get caught on the edges, and if you get delayed by more than a second, you are dead. Back to the bottom. I was hammering X to make sure I jumped fast enough, and as I reached the top (still hammering X) a QTE started without warning, and I failed it because I was still hammering X. QTE failed. Dead. Back to the bottom.
I very nearly ragequit there and then, but the (younger) person next to me had no trouble with this bit, and I didn’t want to look like a moron, so I persevered. I didn’t enjoy that section, but I guess I made it through it eventually.
Then there was a boss fight, that was ok. I had to time some jumps, and press more buttons when it told me to.
It’s very hard to be excited about Dante’s Inferno: The Video Game, it is certainly not pretty enough to get by on that alone, and it seems like an uninspired, unambitious take on a formula that far from short of more interesting competition. Maybe a God of War clone would be more attractive if a new God of War was not out so soon, and I would probably direct 360 gamers eager for some action to Bayonetta, or even DMC4 over Dante’s Inferno: The Video Game.
