Inferno

As consumers, we constantly whine and complain that there aren’t enough unique ideas or new intellectual properties in the video game industry. If any game has a number stitched on the end, almost everyone throws a tantrum. Innovation is almost desired to the point of absurdity now today. But sometimes games like Dead Space come out and blow us away, and all it does is combine a bunch of different elements together from different games. But it does it in such a well designed way that it feels incredibly fresh.  radiangames Inferno is just such a game. 
 
It’s hard to nail down Inferno’s genre down to a couple words, so I’m going to explain it the hard way. Inferno combines the dual-joystick gameplay of Geometry Wars and the RPG elements and exploration of Metroidvania titles into one awesome beast. In Inferno you must navigate a series of 30 levels filled with baddies and a heck ton of lasers and bullets in search of your ultimate goal; to find the exit and move on. As you roam around you’ll collect keys to open up gateways and you’ll pick up money to upgrade your spaceship (like upgrades that give you more health, or make your bullets track in on enemies) or to buy helpful items like drones that follow your spaceship and add a considerable amount of firepower to yours.     

While Inferno doesn’t have many unique ideas on its own, it combines familiar elements of these different genres together to make it feel fresh and special. You’ll be pressed up against a wall as you try to dodge the almost never ending supply of enemies and lasers, when suddenly your character moves through a hidden path in the wall that you didn’t see and you uncover not only a ton of valuable money and items but a hidden bonus exit which transports you to a bonus stage where you have to quickly race around the bonus level collecting as much money as you can before the timer on the top of the screen counts down and teleports you to the next level. 
 
The game isn’t bursting at the seams with a ton of these hidden rooms (that I know of), but there’s just enough that when you stumble upon them you get that strong emotional sense of discovering these secret places that you got when playing other Metroidvania titles.  But what the game does have a lot of is shooting.          
 

 The game overall plays like a standard dual-joystick shooter. You move with the left-stick and you point and shoot with the right-stick. But the game constantly introduces new enemies that’ll keep you on your toes. One such enemy; a black orb that can’t be destroyed by conventional weapons which can only be vanquished with a rare and expensive bomb that eradicates everything on your screen. Running away from these enemies almost made it feel like a survival-horror game as I was out of bombs and I was forced into using my only shield (an ability you gain at the beginning of the game that temporary protects your spaceship from damage) to block them and generally trying to run like hell for the exit before I got smashed.

Currently, developer radiangames is one of the best developers on the Xbox Live Indie Games service. Their titles have been very solid games (JoyJoy being a solid dual-stick shooter, and Crossfire being an interesting take on the Space Invaders genre of games), but Inferno is a step beyond anything they’ve down so far. Inferno is not only their best title, but one of the best games on the Xbox Live Indie Games channel period. The game has practically zero flaws, and it has a ton of content to keep you busy. 30 lengthy levels, three different difficulty modes, a New Game+ option, and a 2 – 4 player split-screen mode (couch co-op only; no online play), and all of this is available for the incredibly low price of $1.00 (80 MSP). You have no reason to not pick up this game. Go download one of the best Xbox Live Indie Games now. You won’t regret it.  

 
Final Verdict: GO BUY IT NOW!    
 
Price – 80 ($1.00) Microsoft Points [DOWNLOAD HERE]