Impressions of the Dante’s Inferno demo

I’m writing this on the fly since I have my sister over today. Forgive any typos, since I’m pretending to be a good multitasker. I’m not. Really.

Before we begin, let me get this part out of the way first.

• Don’t play this game if you have kids in the house

• Don’t play this game if there are women in the house that are against, you know, the objectifying their sex

• Also, I won’t be going into story too much here. It’s worth experiencing for yourself.

Right from the get go, the audience for this game is readily made apparent. They’re shooting for the twenty-something male, single male demographic. The short half hour of gameplay you’ll get to experience will have you seeing: nudity, graphic self-inflicted violence, more nudity, sex in cartoon, and even more violence. Don’t let that give you the impression that it wasn’t fun. It was. But this isn’t the kind of game you want to go into under any delusions of how bad it will actually be. I haven’t seen this many boobs in a game in… well, ever.

Knowing what you’re in for, however, the demo was a lot of fun to play through. If you’re a fan of God of War, you should love this game. Actually, when people say this game is pretty much a God of War clone, I don’t think they’re that far off. But, in this case, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

The combat is fluid, fun, and satisfying. You’ll unlock attacks as you kill the waves of demonspawn, progressing your character in much the same way as other beat ’em up action games. Boss fights give you the option to execute a series of highly animated and hands-off attacks with timed button pushes (ala, GoW). Environments are partially destructible and the enemies you fight throughout the demo are well rendered and truly seem like the hell hounds they are, making it all the more pleasurable to dispatch them in the droves they arrive in.

As you progress through the demo, you discover how Dante finds himself in Hell. The reasons, without going too far into it, are a stretch. Pretty much, you kill Death (all logical conundrums aside, it was pretty wicked), avoid being taken to Hell, so they take your wife instead to lure you back.. This sequence boils down to “cartoon sex with with = love” but hey, I don’t think story is the main reason people will be playing this game anyways. The actual poet of Dante’s Inferno even makes an appearance but in mythic form.

By the end of the demo, I knew that I wanted to buy this game. But, I have my reservations.

The gameplay is great but let’s be frank here. Dante’s Inferno is pretty much God of War with smut. It’s over the top in almost every way. I don’t like the fact that I’ll only be able to play this game when my wife is out of the room and I think the whole thing could have been done just as well without pushing the bar quite so much. After a non-sensical scene of a man stitching a cloth cross onto his chest, and somewhere around the eighth boob, I had a strong feeling that the level of obscenity in the demo was going to be pretty much standard for the game. I’m a tolerant guy when it comes to this stuff, I love the GTA series, but there’s a fine line between pushing it and being totally without taste. It pity the tastebudless state of the Dante’s Inferno team.

There’s also the pesky fact that you can’t move your camera. Instead, you’re set with a locked camera and the usual controls for it are replaced with dodge mechanics. It’s okay but it will take some getting used to.

But, wrapped up in all of the over-the-top story, you do have a core of good game play. It’s God of War without Kratos and that’s a compliment. Not to mention, the visual promise of this game is amazing. I mean, what other title promises to show you Hell, in all of its black grandeur? At one point in the demo, the floor falls away beneath you, leaving you with a the gaping maw of the pit. I’ve never seen anything like it in a game before and it was, in a word, amazing.

So, in short, if you’re easily disturbed by violence, sex, and the macabre don’t get this game. If you’re like me and own an Xbox, this is about as close as we’re going to get to GoW, so it’s probably worth the purchase. Give it a download and see what you think.

I wonder how long it’ll take for me to get through it if I can only play when my wife is away?