You know, after playing this, I get the nagging feeling that this game isn't very Christian. I still enjoyed it though, it was pretty fun.
The presentation is some of the best you can get for a high-budget AAA game from 2010, during the late middle years of the xbox 360 and ps3's life cycle. Of course, it has a lot of the hallmarks of late 2000s/early 2010s graphics, such as a fairly monochrome color palate and cartoonish looking gore. A lot of these gorier games like Dante's Inferno and Darksiders had very inky looking blood and cartoonish gore, making it hard for the game to really feel Visceral (heh). The graphics and art are absolutely breathtaking though, immersing you in these hellish landscapes and taking you through the progressively more twisted realm of the underworld. The soundtrack is your average "insert epic operatic and orchestral music here" soundtrack, with a few standouts. The music that plays when you enter the river styx is excellent, almost reminiscent of Nier Replicant in its haunting beauty. Everything else in the soundtrack is just like the gameplay, more or less a bland knockoff of God of War.
The story is silly. I've studied theology for a while, but I'm not going to go into the intricacies of why this game might not be very theologically accurate. I'm not exactly playing this to bone up on the finer points of soteriology, as that would be like reading a McDonald's menu to familiarize yourself with the finer points of French cuisine. To be fair, the original Divine Comedy wasn't exactly theologically accurate either. Without indulging in sectarian infighting - I'm pretty sure there are not Greek mythological figures currently in Hell as Dante says there are. The story is an average over the top fan fiction about the Divine Comedy. Instead of a timid, mild-mannered medieval poet, Dante is instead a sinful crusading gigachad whose sheer powered overcame Death himself, reducing him to a quivering soy caricature of himself. Speaking of - Dante kills some very important people. Do people still die after Dante killed Death? The game never answered that. There are also instances when Dante kills (but isn't shown absolving) certain bosses, like Marc Antony and Cleopatra. Where do they go after they die again? Is there a mega-Hell that they have to go to now? Did Lucifer drop Hell 2? The story also has this strangeness to it, where it seems like the denizens of Hell are far too interested in the fact that Dante cheated on his wife and she sold her soul to the devil as a wager that he'd be faithful. Why would she do this? I have no idea. Dante basically has to battle through Hell to defeat his wife's boyfriend and send her to heaven. That's another thing that's funny about this story - Dante can absolve people of their sins. After all, it is written in the Bible: "Dante is the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by him."
The gameplay is more or less your standard God of War clone. The enemies range from unremarkable to poorly designed, like the guy who spins around and can only be hit by being parried or through a charged cross attack (I did a holy playthrough). This would be all well and good, but he grinds the game to a halt since he's an absolute damage sponge with an irregular attack pattern, so you have to dedicate an inordinate amount of time to chasing him down to intentionally put yourself in his line of attack so you can parry him. The holy powers are also completely overpowered. You're basically invincible to enemies in the later stages of the game, because of the sheer amount of health regeneration and protection you're given. Plus, the cross is a powerful weapon that works at both close and long range. The platforming in this game is surprisingly competent. There are plenty of fun spectacles to platform through, though some of the instant death pitfalls and puzzles they put in this game are downright annoying. Especially the puzzles, since they don't have a lot of environment tells to help you solve them or even indicate that a puzzle is there to begin with. The bosses, for the most part, are also very good. The one exception is the final boss Lucifer. He has three phases (well, more like two and a half) and his second phase takes like ten minute to whittle down. This man's health bar is obscenely long, to the point where I wondered if I was doing something wrong.
Overall, Dante's Inferno is worth playing if you're into the whole God of War clone thing and are looking for more games like it. I know I was, considering how soulslike mechanics have infected the action game genre to an annoying extent. I want to zip around doing crazy combos, not control a sluggish character through a decaying world for the four hundredth time in a row. It was cool the first few times when FromSoft did it, but it's getting old.
The presentation is some of the best you can get for a high-budget AAA game from 2010, during the late middle years of the xbox 360 and ps3's life cycle. Of course, it has a lot of the hallmarks of late 2000s/early 2010s graphics, such as a fairly monochrome color palate and cartoonish looking gore. A lot of these gorier games like Dante's Inferno and Darksiders had very inky looking blood and cartoonish gore, making it hard for the game to really feel Visceral (heh). The graphics and art are absolutely breathtaking though, immersing you in these hellish landscapes and taking you through the progressively more twisted realm of the underworld. The soundtrack is your average "insert epic operatic and orchestral music here" soundtrack, with a few standouts. The music that plays when you enter the river styx is excellent, almost reminiscent of Nier Replicant in its haunting beauty. Everything else in the soundtrack is just like the gameplay, more or less a bland knockoff of God of War.
The story is silly. I've studied theology for a while, but I'm not going to go into the intricacies of why this game might not be very theologically accurate. I'm not exactly playing this to bone up on the finer points of soteriology, as that would be like reading a McDonald's menu to familiarize yourself with the finer points of French cuisine. To be fair, the original Divine Comedy wasn't exactly theologically accurate either. Without indulging in sectarian infighting - I'm pretty sure there are not Greek mythological figures currently in Hell as Dante says there are. The story is an average over the top fan fiction about the Divine Comedy. Instead of a timid, mild-mannered medieval poet, Dante is instead a sinful crusading gigachad whose sheer powered overcame Death himself, reducing him to a quivering soy caricature of himself. Speaking of - Dante kills some very important people. Do people still die after Dante killed Death? The game never answered that. There are also instances when Dante kills (but isn't shown absolving) certain bosses, like Marc Antony and Cleopatra. Where do they go after they die again? Is there a mega-Hell that they have to go to now? Did Lucifer drop Hell 2? The story also has this strangeness to it, where it seems like the denizens of Hell are far too interested in the fact that Dante cheated on his wife and she sold her soul to the devil as a wager that he'd be faithful. Why would she do this? I have no idea. Dante basically has to battle through Hell to defeat his wife's boyfriend and send her to heaven. That's another thing that's funny about this story - Dante can absolve people of their sins. After all, it is written in the Bible: "Dante is the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by him."
The gameplay is more or less your standard God of War clone. The enemies range from unremarkable to poorly designed, like the guy who spins around and can only be hit by being parried or through a charged cross attack (I did a holy playthrough). This would be all well and good, but he grinds the game to a halt since he's an absolute damage sponge with an irregular attack pattern, so you have to dedicate an inordinate amount of time to chasing him down to intentionally put yourself in his line of attack so you can parry him. The holy powers are also completely overpowered. You're basically invincible to enemies in the later stages of the game, because of the sheer amount of health regeneration and protection you're given. Plus, the cross is a powerful weapon that works at both close and long range. The platforming in this game is surprisingly competent. There are plenty of fun spectacles to platform through, though some of the instant death pitfalls and puzzles they put in this game are downright annoying. Especially the puzzles, since they don't have a lot of environment tells to help you solve them or even indicate that a puzzle is there to begin with. The bosses, for the most part, are also very good. The one exception is the final boss Lucifer. He has three phases (well, more like two and a half) and his second phase takes like ten minute to whittle down. This man's health bar is obscenely long, to the point where I wondered if I was doing something wrong.
Overall, Dante's Inferno is worth playing if you're into the whole God of War clone thing and are looking for more games like it. I know I was, considering how soulslike mechanics have infected the action game genre to an annoying extent. I want to zip around doing crazy combos, not control a sluggish character through a decaying world for the four hundredth time in a row. It was cool the first few times when FromSoft did it, but it's getting old.