IF YOU DON'T KNOW, NOW YOU KNOW Dante's Inferno is an action game by Visceral Games (Dead Space) that is (very) loosely based on one of the most famous and highly-regarded pieces of literature ever: Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy. As far as gameplay goes, the game borrows liberally from acclaimed action game God of War (Sony Santa Monica). Does the combination of these two epic influences result in an equally epic experience, or do they collide into a heap of mess? Well...both.
GAMEPLAY: BORROWING FROM THE BEST
Visceral's latest has been heavily scrutinized for being a total God of War clone, but I would argue that that is not a bad thing. Dante's Inferno does a pretty good job aping the best Kratos' finesse action while tailoring it to the uniqueness of using Dante's scythe and holy cross. The result is unequivocally the strongest part of the experience; the combat system is extremely fun.
The way you upgrade your moves is also unique and well done: you get two skill trees in "Holy" and "Unholy", but rather then being "good" and "evil" paths, they simply represent the unholy scythe and the holy cross, so upgrading each tree (mostly) upgrades that respective area of your combat suite.
The only detracting thing from the combat are the enemies you actually fight. There are many inspired, interesting, and fun-to-fight baddies, but then the game throws in some truly infuriating and cheap enemies as well. I like fighting demons that are generally hard to fight and require skill, but when the game is inconsistent with blocking and, most importantly, visual cues that allow you to counter, you just was to throw your controller. There are some situations where no matter how good you are you will take loads of damage because the game doesn't even give you that split second to read and react (the Marc Antony battle comes to mind).
Finally, it is notable that the game is also extremely short, with my playthrough only clocking 5.5 hours. And that's with an annoyingly long 8th circle that is clearly artificially and arbitrarily extended, and you get the sense that the developers knew that they just needed to pad the game time a little bit. Instead, they could have given more thought to each circle and made them more fully-realized and longer themselves; some circles I passed through so quickly I didn't even realize I had gone through one. After you finish the story, all you have are more playthroughs, a 50-wave challenge mode, and the promise of an upcoming co-op driven user-created challenge mode (though it is unknown whether that will be free or must be bought).
NARRATIVE: ADAPTING A CLASSIC
The game is actually based on The Divine Comedy' first act, "Inferno" (more on that later).The basic story, being based on a literary classic, is in itself interesting. Even though it is only based on the source material, the guys at Visceral have done some interesting things to make it their own. The main character is based on the protagonist and author of The Divine Comedy. His companion in the poem is Vigil, who in the game is represented by a guide that appears in the beginning of each area to give you information about the sins inside. The characters are also legitimately interesting and the story cleverly expand and reveal more about Dante's life and his sins than you originally think it's about. However, the presentation of that story is absolutely repulsive.
The game would learn a lot from studying the conventions of the medium from which it borrows its story. For example, they needed to introduce some key characters much sooner in order to allow us to build a relationship and truly care what happens to them later in the story. Instead, people that are clearly key figures in Dante's life bear no emotional weight in their game sequences, and in result they fall incredibly flat. Granted, the action was probably always the focus rather than the story was--and I wasn't even expecting the good one--but the pieces are there and you can't help but feel like it--if properly handled--it could have been so much more.
CONCLUSION
After it's all said in done, you will definitely appreciate parts of Dante's Inferno, but you will also feel like it could have been so much greater than it actually was. Both its gameplay and its story show some flashes of brilliance but some critical mistakes hold them just short of greatness. When you consider its a new IP, then you can forgive some of its faults and hope they get addressed in the sequel (and barring a total sales flop, they are definitely coming). Given what the game's based on, it probably won't just be Dante's Inferno 2... the title will at least be creative in the game space, and will probably be Dante's Purgatory followed by Dante's Paradise...just predicting that now and saying that's pretty cool.
Overall Grade: B-
No comments:
Post a Comment