The Divine Comedy, composed with thoughtful consideration over thirteen years, is wholly abused and exploited to make a video game full of tits and demons—but as long as you don’t try to take it too seriously, Dante’s Inferno is an entertaining experience.
Visceral did a great job capturing the setting described in The Divine Comedy, and the enemies that you encounter are well designed and tie back to the source material. When it comes to combat, there isn’t really any innovation and while it sure can be gory, there is no real depth. You get moves through the upgrade system but they just promote mashing. The things that move towards more advance combat, like the countering system, aren’t compelling enough to use and not really necessary to finish. Platforming is well guided, and the fixed camera keeps you moving in the right direction. There are plenty of little touches that make the experience smooth and minimize possible frustration. There are plenty of Quick Time Events as well, all of which work just as you would expect. What really makes all of these fairly simple pieces work together is the frequency that you go between each aspect. When you are fighting you have the ability to use a QTE finisher on any enemy to break up basic mashing, when you are exploring there are fountains littering Hell for you to break for souls or health recharges, or hidden demons that you kill for relics, or condemned souls that throw you into a sin-catching mini-game.
With all of that, you would have a competent, fun, character action game and if you are a fan of the genre, that should be enough to pick this game up. What really put Dante’s Inferno over the top for me was the Cronenberg-esque levels of craziness going on everywhere. I kept playing to see the next thing that they would throw at me; huge monsters you get to control, babies with blades for hands, poles made of corpses, inane and insane cut scenes full of sex and murder. I couldn’t believe what was happening and before I knew it, the game was over. It was a fun eight hours and a pretty easy recommendation.
