Hands-on Dante’s Inferno Preview
As the release of God of War 3 is nearing fans of the series are trying to keep themselves busy, but how? Well the God of War Collection on the Playstation 3 is how, but that doesn’t help the Xbox 360 owners who don’t have the money to shell out for a PS3 — that’s where Dante’s Inferno comes in. The demo I played on the PS3 last week was very similar to the gameplay you would remember from God of War; in that there is heavy and light attacks as well as magic. You also go along the game collecting souls as you disembody enemies that stagger in your path.
You play as Dante who’s on a mission to save the soul of his beloved Beatrice from Lucifer who’s main objective is to wed a soul that is bound for heaven in order to leave Hell and take Heaven over. As Dante goes on his journey he must go through the Nine Circles of Hell — each one symbolizing the very sins he is guilty of. As Mark Hinton concluded in his preview analysis of the game you do in fact obtain Death’s scythe after facing off with him early on in the game. It’s very satisfying when you attack your enemy blow after blow in mid-air a la God of War, but this doesn’t come without its problems. The camera could be a lot better instead of always being distant which will hinder your ability to fight in the game. For instance when you are pummeled your enemies instead of zooming in gradually as you are getting closer to deliver the fatal blow it opts to just shaky camera effects as you continue your attack. Leaving the camera at a slight distance as it usually would be if you were just going around looking for loot when there would be no enemy around.
As you attack enemies left and right with heavy and light combos you can also grab on to characters and whip them around with your scythe as you please or just rip them apart with your bare hands — sound familiar? Yes, there are quick time events in the game and they are just what you would expect them to be. In one of these button mashing events I found myself climbing to the top of a Behemoth to reach and murder the demon on his head who had commandeered the beast, but that wasn’t the end of it — I was then able to control the giant biblical creature and vicariously fight off the remaining enemies.
A Behemoth approaches Dante -- attack until you are prompt with a quicktime event. Follow through and take her for a spin!
Dante’s Inferno is very much like God of War so much so that even the power ups have you button mashing the action button to open a chest of some sort and receive health or magic. This isn’t saying the game wasn’t fun; I had a lot of fun playing the game and it was also a pleasure to watch. The aesthetic of the game is not something worth noting as unique because it also looks a lot like the aforementioned popular game I named numerous times already. As far as the presentation goes they give you three different styles in cut-scene. You have your normal in game cut-scenes, the pre-rendered videos with CGI, and finally the animated cut-scenes; which were my favorite. The graphics aren’t spectacular but they’re good enough, although sometimes there is ugly texture that pop up and the enemies aren’t all that interesting to look at.
The Demo is out now on PSN and it will be available for download in the Xbox Live marketplace on December 24th. The full game is due out in North America on February 9th 2010 followed by a European release on the 12th for Xbox360, Playstation 3 and PSP.
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