Customer Reviews

Dante's Inferno

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(45)
3 star:		(25)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is a solid effort from Visceral Games. The game plays very similar to God of War I/II but the leveling system seems richer with more possible combos and the morality element (absolution or damnation) adds a unique twist to finishing moves and your overall leveling progression. The real standout for Dante is the artwork. The environments are beautifully rendered (if you can say that about hell) and wonderfully creative. I haven't finished the game yet but I can't wait to see the additional circles. Overall I think reviewers were a bit too critical with this one. Some were sensitive to the use of the underlying fiction and others feel it too closely resembles GOW. My personal opinion having read the Inferno is that it's a lot of fun to see the environments and characters in visual form (obviously the story has little / no overlap) and that what makes GOW great makes Dante's Inferno a blast to play too. Imitation is not a bad thing here.

When I first heard about a Dante's Inferno video game a year ago, I instantly got excited with goosebumps. While I never finished reading the actual book, I was aware enough of it to know what the game was being based on and knew it had the makings of a great video game. As soon as they would allow me, I pre-ordered the game.

A few days before the game's release, reviews started showing up online and with great interest I read them.. every single review, ALL OF THEM made out Dante's Inferno as a failed attempt to clone a gaming series called God Of War and rated the game somewhat poorly for doing so. I was bothered by this. I'm old enough to know that a review is only one person's opinion and that just because "Sam" didn't like a game doesn't mean "Tom" won't. So, I was going to get the game anyway. As for God Of War, I'd heard of it before, but I'm probably one of the few people that has NEVER EVER played that game, as I do not own a PS3.

So, the big day came and I got my copy of Dante's Inferno, along with BioShock 2 at a GameStop midnight launch. I chose to play Dante's Inferno first.. and wow! What a thrill ride it has been thus far for me. I ended up devoting that first day to the game as the game's story and fast paced adventure absolutely took over me. And while playing it, I didn't think about all the 6.5 and 7.0 scores reviewers were giving the game.. when my mind would stray, I would think about how all those reviewers said God Of War was better. Really? Because if God Of War is better than Dante's Inferno, then, my God, God Of War must be absolutely EPIC. For the first time in years, I actually want a PS3 now just to see, because I'm enjoying Dante's Inferno THAT MUCH. The game is a blast to play.. but no, not perfect. My only real complaints is that there are a few cheap death spots.. most notably on the level for GREED and I'm not a big fan of quick-time events. But beyond those areas, the game rocks hard.

As for BioShock 2.. the game I got along with Dante's Inferno. I've devoted a day to it, as well. Completely different kinda game. More slower paced, but great, as well. For now, though, I'm actually enjoying Dante's Inferno more.

No SPOILERS. This is not a "bad" game (my review is really 3.5 stars, but that's not possible here). Five years ago, this game could have been all the rage. But it's horribly derivative now. But if this was just a God-of-War knockoff, that would be okay - nothing wrong with going with what's good. Problem is, it's not. It's nowhere near as good, even after being later in time. Unless you're a DIE HARD for this genre (GOW, Devil May Cry, Rygar anyone?), you will find this game kind of boring if you've played some of the other titles recently. I would rent or borrow this first. Because I'm an addict I payed $56 to get it on release day - I wish I would have waited. There is nothing horrendous about this game, just nothing great - hence 3 stars.

STORY
The "story" is there - Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy (with some twists), but it doesn't seem to be intertwined with the action. It's kinda like story...action...story...action rather than one blended product. I rarely felt like it "mattered" (unlike say ME2).

GAMEPLAY
As for the gameplay, this really truly is a hack and slash - again, not necessarily a bad thing - but just hacking and slashing wave after wave of demon gets boring rapidly. Yes, you can use combos and some combos are cool, but you hardly ever need to. I'm mixed on the "puzzles" and on puzzles in general in games. In this game, they're out of place, and rather easy. Again, not necessarily bad (See where this is going? Not bad, just not great...).

VISUALS/GRAPHICS
The visuals are quite stunning though and kudos for the 60 FPS gameplay - soon the be the industry minimum if you ask me. But the camera is annoying as all, well, hell. It's so awkward that it's a "fixed" camera unlike the MANY next-gen games that we're all used to where we have much more control over the camera. This takes away from the visual presentation IMO. I absolutely hate it.

VALUE
You can get through this game in about 12 hours. And I don't think there is any real reason to play it again. At $56, that's just not enough value for a game that's really nothing special. I'd wait till it's bargain bin or rent it or borrow it. At about $29, this game would be well worth it. In fact, I'll probably sell my copy now that I've finished it...

A lot of people say this game is like having God Of War for the 360. Well... the game has a similar gameplay but definitely the storyline is way different. I read the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri and let me tell you, the game is way more enjoyable if you read the book first. So from the book's perspective, this game is a very good approach. Of course the game does not cover all topics from the book but still the main thing is there.

I personally like all these hellish and demonic themes. Dante's Inferno portrays in a good way all this inferno world. There are scary parts like when you arrive to the Limbo and you meet these babies with hooks instead of arms... and when you hit them, you listen them crying as newborn babies... damn... this is scaring. You see also people trapped in the walls, all of them mourning and crying. So in a way this game depicts the experience of being in hell, for sure a terrible place. There are putrid corpses all around, blood and fluids, impaled people, and a lot of satanic environments. I just love it :)

There are interesting things in the gameplay such as collecting souls and exchanging them for new abilities, once in a while and after certain combats you get some sorts of magic and from time to time you find people that must be absolved or punished. Depending on your decisions through the game, your virtue or evil will grow, allowing you to reach new abilities for each mood.

Yesterday I was playing and I came to a point when Beatrice, Dante's wife, was being kissed by Lucifer in an spectacular cinematic. God ... this game is dark... very dark.

If you play it fast, maybe you'll see the game falls short but I like to take my time to see every detail on screen... so for me the game's length is fine. The bosses are hard to beat, so you'll have your hands busy with this game. The colors, sounds and graphics in general are amazing.

The game is definitely worth its price. I recommend it if you like dark themes and of course if you are a dedicated gamer. Don't think about the God of War thing, you'll enjoy this game as much as you have enjoyed your GOW.

Title says it all. The fighting is a lot like Ninja Gaiden but there are a lot of little tasks and puzzles you have to do that usually take exact timing. And for the average person, it's impossible to do these tasks on the first try. You have to do these stupid tasks and puzzles over and over and over and over and over again, often restarting way before said task, with several mobs to fight before you can even get back to this stupid annoying task. I thought this game was great the first few hours I played. I'm almost halfway through and had to put it down for now. Annoying as hell.

This game is, despite what others may tell you, is extremely well done. There are many similarities to the GOW( God of War) games but, having played those too i have to say that i would much journey into the inferno than scale mount Olympus. If you have played any of the GOW games you will not have any trouble playing this one, there are the same moments during boss battles where you will have to execute a quicktime event to defeat the enemy, engage in air battles, use weapons and magic to destroy everything in your path. a major difference is the cross, in GOW you have only one main weapon which does everything, in Inferno you get to wield both the Scythe and the Holy Cross with is extremely useful for ranged enemies and save you a hell of allot of work not having to jump into the air and slash at them. Another important point it the Punish/Absolve feature which lets you choose how to deal with enemies. Punishing or absolving grants experience to either the cross or the scythe, and you can choose to spend it on a wide range of abilities {vs GOW where you just level up and learn new abilities, here you actually pick and choose new moves you want to learn!}. Their are also items to collect, the Damned {historical people you can Punish/absolve} to find, and souls to collect. The world of the Inferno is beautiful, rich, and dazzling. You will defiantly want to consider a replay, and with the great story line, almost flawless graphics, and dastardly enemies it's hard to resist. Also, Dante is more human that Kratos ever was, and controlling him is slightly more enjoyable because you don,t want to rip him apart for being such a piece of $%^#. all in all a great game worth the money and the possible nightmares {if you think i am joking you clearly have not seen the swarm of unbaptized babies scuttling across the floor!}

This is now by far the greatest games I have ever seen graphically besides oblivion and one of the best I have ever played. The graphics are amazing, the gameplay is excellent, the sound is incredible and the atmosphere is chilling. This is the closest image of hell you will ever see, very well done. Worth every penny, I hope they make more of these. Dante's Inferno is amazing.

3.5/5

Is this game worth buying? Yes. However, I'm much more critical than most other reviewers so bare with me. This game is basically a knock off of GoW. You're probably like "oh not this again". But it's too obvious to not mention it. Even though it still does not hold a candle next to the awesome and epicness of GoW, even the first one, it has a lot of potential I am very anxious to see.

Similarities with GoW aka God of War series:

1. Doing special moves by pressing multiple buttons OR mashing one button.
2. Certain action sequence is extremely similar. Example would be the slow motion grappling scenes, those that play GoW should be very familiar.
3. Enemies releasing orbs of energy that gets absorbed by the heroine who is his own worse enemy.
4. The gameplay in general, if you play GoW and this, you'll feel like this is the chinese knocked off version. It's good, but not there yet.

Before I give pros and cons, here are some general advice to play this game:

1. ALWAYS remember to talk to Virgil (your little shade helper, the blue guy that follows you around). Remember to talk to him completely whenever you see him. He sometime gives you stuff like relics.
2. Absolving the damned is good for souls because you get to play the mini game. Punishing will only grant you +600 experience to. They both grant you an automatic +600 experience to unholy or holy. Absolving goes to holy and punishing goes to unholy.
3. Unholy makes the scythe more powerful in terms of adding more scythe skills and holy makes the cross more powerful in that you get more powerful moves for the cross.
4. Some magics I found very useful: Sins of the Father, divine armor, righteous path. Martyrdom is very powerful but is boring to use.
5. All scythe skills are pretty useful, best get as many as you want and use them in a mix bag. There's no dud in this skill, only depend on your own personal gameplay type.
6. Divine armor level 3 magic combine with ciacco's bile relic found after absolving or punishing clodia and talking to Virgil makes this game a cake walk even in the hardest difficulty.
7. Remember to get all of the mana and health increase upgrades as you see fit. The tier 6 and 7 mana and health regens are very useful too.
8. When you press the B button to shoot your cross, max out the skill so you can shoot more. It's the one on the left most side on the holy side, I forgot what it is called.
9. You can open up two more relic slots, each located on the unholy and holy side. Do so.



PROS:
1. Since it is an adaptation of GoW for the xbox 360, and GoW happens to be extremely successful, the gameplay therefore is similarly addictive. Not as good, but similar.
2. Graphics are pretty decent, but still gets beaten by the PS2 versions of GoW and GoW2.
3. I really love the whole setting of hell, again, I'm really anxious to see much improvements to the point where it can closely be more comparable to GoW.
4. I hear some complaints about how short this game is. If you're new it would take you about 9 hours and if you know what you're doing probably 6. However, good things should be left short and to the point. I'm glad it didn't drag on.
5. A lot of check and save points. Don't believe otherwise, they can't possibly add more checkpoints to this game. They might move it so it is more convenient for you, but no game is perfect.

CONS:

1. Button mashing or patterns are always the same. That means it gets a bit old. I believe in GoW there are some slight randomness so that the next time you get a special event or attack, you have to look at the screen and make sure you press or mash the right buttons.
2. They need to increase the beast riding awesomeness in this game. There's only a few scenes where you can ride some sort of monstrosity and most of the time it is very limited or the role is very limited aka three or so types of boring attacks and not enough action and explosion.
3. More outrageous scenes. If this is the adaptation of GoW, they have to at least attempt to match it if not beat it in order to succeed.
4. If you've ever watched the movie, the story adaptation for the game is not as smooth and acceptable. Acceptable means giving the gamer something that has more meaning and has more definition. Watch the movie, then watch the game. The game is very similar to the movie, just that the storyline is not as well entwined and feels a bit choppy and not as satisfying.
5. More weapon choice. Dante only gets 2 weapons and it gets a bit stale.
6. I'm alright with the graphics, but I expect much improvements. I've seen paintings and pictures of hell that scared me more. Hands moving around under the water isn't scary, especially with people that have cable TV. More with area interaction, find the most messed up people in the world and ask them for ideas.
7. There are some commentaries on the artwork of this game, but personally I think the whole baby with the blade for arms is a lame and pathetic attempt. I remember the "making the baby" commentary, I would not accept credibility for such a lame design and concept art. Let's get a baby and chop off the arm and connect blades to there and make it look creepier! People that are phrased for such mediocre attempts are a good example of our society endorsing mediocrity. You do not have to turn to a professional to get an idea like that... most of the artwork in terms of monsters in this game is alright at best.
8. When there's multiple enemies around you, especially air and land combination, trying to hit a specific target is difficult since it is on auto targeting in a general direction and you can't really aim.
9. Magic attacks don't seem to have a secondary purpose other than the use for combat. Secondary purpose such as using it to help you overcome an obstacle that would otherwise be impossible without using certain magics. Other than divine armor for health regeneration, no other magic seems especially necessary, they're just there.
10. Limit in magic use. I find even with ciacco's bile (mana regen relic) that without all of the mana upgrades, you find yourself very limited in the amounts of time you're able to cast magic. Even with max mana upgrades and points in tier 6 and 7 mana and health skills, I still find myself continuously attempting to conserve my mana and never really enjoy using magic to a degree of satisfaction....I'm just always running out of it.



Does this game have a good re-playability rating? I would think so. Unlike what some people say, some of the cutscenes are skippable if you press some buttons. It still has a far ways to go, but I hope I'll be there when it meets my expectations. It still feels like a flimsy knock off

I bought this game for my husband's 17th wedding anniversary present. He loves it! The graphics are extremely real and he loves the challenge. It was well worth the money.

Dante's Inferno is one part super ultra violent hack and slash, and another part classic literature.

Story 8/10
The story follows Dante, a knight who managed to commit many... err... umm... every sin while on a Holy Crusade to Jerusalem. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it works in the game. Dante's lovely wife Beatrice lost a bet with Lucifer and Dante battles his way through the nine levels of hell to rescue her soul. The descriptions of hell and its tormented souls are very interesting. The story is told through 3D cinematics and roughly animated flashbacks.

Graphics 7/10
Hell is black, red, and very dark. There isn't much variety in hell. It sort of looks like the inside of an old BBQ pit with some cool sculptures of sad people.

Gameplay 7/10
There's combat against enemies, boss fights, puzzles, platforming elements, and exploration. The combat is identical to God of War. You fight enemies with a variety of combos and trigger brutal kills that you activate with button presses and movements of the analog sticks. Dante gets is upgrades by collecting orbs and new moves can be purchased through the Start Menu. The Boss Fights are all interesting and imaginative... There's a 300 foot tall undead Cleopatra who shoots bladed unbaptized babies out of her nipples and a ginormous faceless Cerberus that hacks up hairballs of stiff corpses. Some Boss Battles are more fun than others, but overall, they're good. The puzzles are identical to God of War. They all rely on hitting switches and pushing a box onto a pressure plate or using it as a platform. Although the puzzles are fairly simple, a lot of them are not intuitive and can be frustrating. There are annoying platform elements where you must jump onto ledges, or the floor just falls away and you die. It gets really annoying because it's never telegraphed and you feel like the game is taking cheap shots at you. Fortunately, most of the checkpoints are generous. There are exploration elements, too. You search around for hidden souls. But this clashes with the platforming elements. At times, you don't know if you're supposed to run for the door because the floor may collapse, or stick around and try to find bonus souls.

Level Designs 7/10
Some levels are better than others, but after a while, they all sort of look the same. None of the platforming elements are actually fun, so they end up hurting the levels.

Sound 7/10
From the wails of the damned to the fiery explosions to the John Williams-esque soundtrack, it's all pretty good.

Replay Value 6/10
The game is about 9 hours long and there are 4 Difficulty Levels and a Bonus Area where you fight waves of minions with a time limit.

Overall 7.5/10
The gameplay is not original, but if you don't have a PS3 and you want some God of War action, then this is your best bet.

Maturity
This is for adults or very horny teenagers who like violence and gore.

Buy it if you're a huge fan of hack and slash games and interesting stories.
Rent it if you want to kill around 8-10 hours battling Lucifer's minions.
Avoid it if you think the platforming elements will ruin your fun, you don't like mature games, or you didn't like God of War.

If you like this game, check out Ninja Gaiden 2, Devil May Cry 4, or Bayonetta.

God of War Checklist:
Classic Mythology mixed with Violent Action +
Tormented Main Character who wears a reminder of his sins on his flesh +
Two types of Cutscenes, one 3D, one animated +
Bladed weapon with extended range +
Arcing attacks, Heavy Attacks, Grappling, Launching Enemies into the air +
Brutal Finishing Moves Activated by timed button presses and sticks +
Right analog stick to evade +
Authored Camera +
Encounters are a mix of lieutenants and grunts +
Cinematic Boss Fights +
Puzzles that involve pushing a Box and Switches +
Crawling on Horizontal Cables +
Wall Climbing +
Health Orbs, Power Up Orbs, Magic Orbs +
Buying New Moves from an Upgrade Screen +
Mashing a button to open Doors and Chests +
Wall Climbing +
Magic Powers +
Boobies ++