Dante's Inferno

We need to make a confession, dear reader. We need absolution for our sins – and no, we’re not talking about that time we played Dead Or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball and enjoyed it. We’re talking about our recent journey to the very depths of hell. The things we’ve seen, the things we’ve done…

Grrrr. And that is all I have to say about that.

We’ve hewn faces in two; grappled across the limbs of the tormented undead; eviscerated creatures and quenched our violent urges with their very blood. We’ve hacked our way through scythe-limbed toddlers; slashed at vaginal tentacles; chopped through rolls of slimy fat and swam through fountains of bloody ichor. And you know what? We revelled in every moment, a sinful smile tugging the corners of our mouths. We’ve given our soul over to Satan, reader, and it feels good.

Dante’s Inferno is a game spectacular in scope, and epic in its violence. Dante’s descent through the nine circles of suffering is easily one of the goriest games we’ve played, one that delights in keeping you guessing what’s around the next corner. It might be a towering Cleopatra that lactates unbaptised babies from its gaping mouth-nipples; a liquefying, vomiting creature that looks like Dogma’s Golgothan with a case of diarrhoea; or a level that resembles the inside of Beelzebub’s butt. Even something as pedestrian as opening a door requires the player to slash the belly of some poor creature by hammering the O button until its guts turn inside out.

Strange, then, that all this grim grotesquery looks… well, nice. It’s hell by Hollywood: even when you’re looking at a churning wall of tangled limbs and wailing faces (Visceral’s version of a climbable texture) you can’t help but note how gorgeous the flame that’s torching these poor souls looks, or how prettily the lighting angles off a disembowelled torso.

Eat Jesus, foo!

Which is to say nothing about the near-flawless frame rate. Locked at a sinuous 60 frames per second, Dante swirls, slashes and slices his retractable scythe with incredibly satisfying fluidity, while bombastic choral chants intone an accompaniment to the cacophony of violence.

Combos start off vicious enough, but grow increasingly dramatic as you level up (see Demonic Strength boxout). Sweeps and thrusts soon open into devastating arcs and ground stomps of ferocious power, complemented by the white-hot projectile attacks from your Holy Cross. Dante’s Inferno’s combat isn’t about the balleticism of Bayonetta, it’s about hitting things repeatedly, in the face, until it poops out its own viscera. It’s about one man taking on the forces of hell, alone, and the violence lingers in the hand after every crushing combo.

Unfortunately, we can’t play devil’s advocate forever, as there are worms hidden deep within the core of Dante’s Inferno’s otherwise incredibly tempting apple. The indelible mark of Kratos reverberates throughout Dante’s Inferno, and although it stays on the right side of the line between homage and plagiarism, it borrows as many negatives as it does positives. There are the poorly signposted and frustrating puzzle elements, for example, and an overabundance of repetitive QTEs. Frustratingly, Dante’s Inferno is another perpetrator of that woeful videogame faux pas – great action sequences that you can’t properly enjoy because you’re too busy watching for button prompts.

… continued