Visceral Games sure knew how to make a fun game, it’s plain to see when you look back on the Dead Space series. The numerical titles are pretty lengthy games that have killer core mechanics and enough weapons and enemy types to make sure your playthroughs won’t get stale or boring. There’s only so many types of enemies in any given game, but with a suite of makeshift weaponry at your disposal, you are allowed a fair bit of player expression that will keep combat engaging no matter how you play 3rd person shooters. Sound design and music in these titles are crucial elements as well, as they should be in an Action Horror series; without effective audio you’re just jogging through dark corridors waiting for something to pop out at you. No tension, no suspense, just thoughtless aiming and shooting. I’d be remiss to downplay the art direction, monster designs and environments go together perfectly in Dead Space; the twisted flesh and sharp appendages of the Necromorphs contrast well with the futuristic-yet-blue-collar aesthetic of the USG Ishimura and the Sprawl. The deeper you get into these games the easier it is to see the harmony of all these elements, everything from top to bottom feels dialed in and refined; say what you will about Dead Space 3, but it’s a fun game to shoot and stomp your way through, even if it is a little long and the weakest of the trilogy. 

All this to say that I’m going to be talking about Dante’s Inferno more as a Visceral Games title, rather than a 3rd Person Hack-and-Slash game. Why? Because I haven’t played many games like God of War or other titles comparable to it; I have played Bayonetta 1 and DMC 5 [only those titles in their respective IPs btw], but I feel that comparing Character Action to games like God of War wouldn’t be an entirely a fair assessment of the latter.

Anyways, how is the game?

GAMEPLAY

I’ll be starting with the category I care the most about in a game. If it’s not generally enjoyable to control, why even bother playing it?

Dante has two weapons in the game, Death’s Scythe and the Cross of his deceased wife, Beatrice. The scythe is your main mode of combat, it has simple bread-and-butter Light/Heavy combos you’ll immediately know how to hammer out, and it can hit multiple targets at once with its wide swings. The cross acts as your projectile weapon, it will launch out holy energy in its religious shape through the air to hit enemies; it’s great for flying foes early on, not so much anything else. As you slice your way through the 9 Rings of Hell you will reap the souls of the damned standing in your way, these are used as currency to upgrade the scythe and cross. Opening the Skills menu you will see two skill trees labeled Unholy and Holy, given your weapons are a reaping scythe and an absolving cross, it may be obvious which tree upgrades either of these items. 

The Unholy tree offers the scythe more moves to integrate into your combos, nothing too complex but also easily forgettable as you’ll probably favor your tried and true combos over these unlocks, save a few specific encounters where they’ll pay dividends. Higher up the tree there are skills to enhance magic abilities that favor a more offensive style of playing.

The Holy tree provides the cross with skills meant to physically push back the groups of damned souls you’ll be fighting, you first get the ability to make the 1-button combo longer. It isn’t long until you get stronger and more devastating moves that unleash wide blasts of holy energy, able to kill weaker grunts quickly and break through tougher mobs’ defenses. Similar to the Unholy tree there are skills to boost the properties of magic abilities, however the Holy tree prioritizes defensive casts.

The separation of skills into thematic trees isn’t new and works fine, the naming of the trees isn’t what I would call misleading, mainly because that isn’t the right word to use, but it did make me assume that there’s a sort of karma system in the game that affects the ending. Though a karma system exists in a style akin to the one in inFAMOUS, it does not affect the story and only dictates the rate of unlocking new abilities. There are only two ways to collect holy and unholy karma: executions on the mobs you fight, and casting judgment upon real historic figures scattered through the rings of Hell. Absolving them rewards you with Holy Karma, while punishing them nets you Unholy Karma. Before you cast your choice on the historical figures you’ll see a text box with their name and a brief description of why they’re condemned to the ring you find them in; again, these do not affect the story, so just choose based on what you want to unlock first. 

Having completed the game, you’ll realistically reach the final level of only one tree, and that’s if you exclusively grind through it. I chose the Holy Tree because once you power up the cross it can mostly replace the scythe as your primary weapon. That, and because at the end of the tree there’s a skill that grants health drops for kills with the cross, very handy if you’re bad, like me. 

You have defensive mechanics such as an evade and a block, if you time your block perfectly you’ll perform a parry that is accompanied with dramatic slow motion, giving you a moment to decide how to counter attack. Dedicating the entire right stick to evading is an interesting choice, but definitely one I’m not a fan of. I would rather not have an evade if it meant I could move the camera on my own. It’s was 2010, Gears and Uncharted had long set the standards for 3rd Person games, taking away camera control this just a baffling decision. Maybe that’s why I don’t care about these types of games, I prefer to whip the camera freely; I understand it zooming out to a fixed location for combat, but while navigating I want to see the world around me. 

As a 2010’s game, it is expected that your title will have the best gaming mechanic: quick time events. They appear in this title and punctuate every boss encounter and you’re incentivized to use them after weakening every goat man knight.  I’ve seen it used a lot worse and they’re not prolonged sequences or too frequent, it’s just a product of its time. I’m glad we’re slowly moving away from them [kinda, not really], I’m a big fan of “Hold button” toggles so I can stop button-mashing as if I find it immersive. I don’t mind it too much when I’m actually invested in the game somewhat, but most games don’t earn that grace.

That was a hearty breakdown of the upgrading system and mechanics, right? In fact it probably wasn’t even that interesting to read because they’re similar to other games you’ve played around the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, like Bioshock and the aforementioned inFAMOUS and God of War. Hear me as I type this, I promise you that proofreading and editing that was more exciting than the gameplay in Dante’s Inferno after a few hours. I had more fun looking up the karma systems in those other games than going through the Heresy ring.

There are generic damned souls to slice through on your jouney to save your wife; a sword gremlin, a strong goat man, and a flying bat thing-- I don’t know what it is, it flies and barfs projectiles at you, okay?

Each ring of Hell introduces at least one demon type that’s unique to that area, their designs aren’t incredibly remarkable but they are better than the emaciated ghoul demons and knight goat men that fill the roles of ‘generic weak/strong mob’. An issue I have with the game is that in the later rings all these previous sin-specific types appear to fill the waves of enemies you’ll encounter. There’s a case to be made that certain rings share similar traits, so reusing these enemy types wouldn’t be too jarring, but why is the Gluttony enemy in the Fraud ring? Why are the unbaptised babies from Limbo here too? The Lust type makes sense, they mention flatterers beng part of this ring. What I’m getting at is that because this is a video game that is going to reuse enemies because money isn’t infinite, the integrity and lore of the rings of Hell is bound to break and affect your immersion negatively. I believe some of them get reskinned once they appear out of their original area, but it’s hardly noticeable when all their attack patterns are almost entirely unchanged; they MIGHT be more aggressive later in the game, I couldn’t tell.

Reusing previous enemies isn’t the issue, it always comes down to how the game handles the situation. There’s no reason for all the various enemies to be coming down on you in the 8th ring, the keepers of each level of Hell aren’t trying to stop you, the structure of Hell isn’t collapsing because you’re tearing through it like a college kid with a crippling stimulant dependency, they just show up because you’re fighting waves of enemies and they’re done spending money on new enemy types. This isn’t a jab at the developers, I’m not calling them lazy and I’m not even alluding to EA being cheap. My issue is that it just doesn’t keep the combat fresh in the latter half of the game.

The Eighth Circle, Fraud, sucks. It grinds the story to a halt so you can do 10 challenge rooms, it’s padding so miserable that there isn’t even a voice telling you what each challenge is, reveling in your failure, or scoffing at your success. It’s done with pop up text boxes. [I originally wasn’t going to include this short-ass statement but after I wrote the score at the end of the this review I was asking myself if it deserved the score. Then I remembered Fraud. This section of the game alone knocks a point off the score. I detest it that much.]

Oh yeah, outside of combat you platform, rappel, swing across walls, slide down pillars of people [I almost wrote ‘cum’ here instead of ‘people’ I don’t know why], and solve basic block puzzles. It’s all pretty samey and not really engaging. 

STORY

You play as Dante, a Knight Templar who participated in the Siege of Acre. After butchering dozens of revolting hostages you survive an assassination attempt, kill Death, pilfer his scythe, and return home to your lovely wife, Beatrice. She is dead, skewed by an ornate sword; your dad is dead too, but Dante doesn’t really care that much. Me too, bro. Lucifer has claimed Beatrice’s soul and taunts you with the fact, you chase after them and quickly find that the ground below you is crumbling away. It eventually gives way and you find yourself in the first Circle of Hell, Limbo. [I just realized I’ve been calling the levels of Hell ‘rings’ instead of ‘circles’. I hope you don’t mind that because I’m not changing it when I go back to proofread all of this.] A ghostly shade greets you, his name is Virgil; he will be your guide through Hell, offering hints of lore as you wander through the horrific sights. 

The game follows the original poem’s journey accurately enough, judging only on Wikipedia dot com research alone, I have not read Inferno. Dante sees the circles in the same order, I imagine that’s where the similarities end. In the game he butchers the damned, slaughters every noticeable figure, and sort of just ignores all the wailing and cries of tortured souls unless he’s talking to Virgil. As you pass through the levels disembodied voices will say lines that coincide with the circle of Hell you’re in, it’s a nice touch but inconsequential. You learn about Dante’s past through flashbacks that are introduced by zooming into the cross he’s stitched into his torso, giving clarity as to why Death said he was condemned to Hell during their duel.

There’s not a lot to dissect from the story, except for maybe why the circles of Hell are depicted the way they are, but even that’s directly addressed in the story. It’s not a compelling or emotional tale, despite their best efforts I did not care about Beatrice or Dante’s plight to save her. I had a more emotional response to some of condemned souls you can punish or absolve than the actual story. 

The story ends with a cliffhanger, I’m sure the plan was to make this a trilogy and adapt Purgatory next, followed by Paradise after. EA put a lot of faith in Visceral, first Dead Space and then Dante’s Inferno; two multi-media IPs by one developer. No pressure to perform and move units at all, I’m sure.

SOUND DESIGN/MUSIC

Generally I try to keep these two sections separate because they deserve the respect of being treated as their own unique aspects of bringing a game together, I often find myself in conflict with this decision because of two factors:

1. I do not make music or know how to design sound so I feel unqualified to critique it earnestly.

2. I have difficulty explaining what I like and dislike about music.

The secret third thing is that I also don’t have a lot say about these categories in general.

That said, I will share my opinions. 

Hell is depicted as horrifyingly torturous in this game, so it makes sense that the agonizing screams and cries of the damned is a prominent sound, I wish the actual sin tied to the circle you’re in was conveyed a bit better in this haze of human suffering. Earlier I mentioned that disembodied voices deliver lines that are relevant to the sin they’ve been guilty of, I wish the rest of the layered tortured voices also sounded more aligned to that. Maybe they are and I’m just forgetting, I played this game in 2 sittings, each over 5 hours easily, so maybe all the screaming in Circles 4-7 really blurred the nuance in my head. The environmental sound and music does not fade whenever you talk to Virgil or anyone else, it’s very distracting and kind of reminds me of Sonic Adventure 2’s awful mixing in the cutscenes, but not that bad. The scythe and cross have sound effects you’ll hear a lot, to the point of completely tuning it out. They’re fine but constant, having a few more weapons would have helped with this immensely.

All the music runs together, almost every single track of it shares the same vibe and none of it is memorable. There’s no melody, no motif to listen for as you wander through Hell, it’s all just broody and horror-y orchestral music. Nothing sounds bad or imcompetently done, but when I’m going through a game that’s based off a piece of literature that has the name The Divine Comedy attached to it, I kind of want something that stands out a bit. There’s nothing even close to resembling a boss track, none of the fights had musical accompaniment that arose to the occasion. Fighting the flesh demon Cerberus didn’t feel terrifying or overwhelming, dueling the Greed boss didn’t feel conflicting for Dante, and the final encounter with Lucifer sure didn’t feel like a desperate but exhilarating last effort. Everything just sort of happened with no fanfare.

GRAFIX

This is the section that’s spelled bad for comedic effect. This game was released in 2010, the same year as God of War 3. Am I going to compare a 3rd party EA title to a 1st party Playstation exclusive? I could, they’re similar games in the same console generation and even came out a month apart; I bet they partnered with Xbox for some of the marketing, I could make this a section console war red meat for no reason. However, I said from the beginning that I’m reviewing this as a Visceral game primarily, not a 3rd person Hack-and-Slash, even though that’s what it is. 

The facial detail and animation of characters during in-game cutscenes isn’t great, they look worse than how I remember the faces in the original Dead Space release. They’re certainly worse than Dead Space 2’s faces, which came out less than a year later, in 2011. Dante’s torso in particular looks odd, it doesn’t really look like it connects to his arms naturally, something about it really throws me off. It’s not like the humanoid characters are stylized, they’re just meant to be real people in a ‘close enough’ realistic style. This game takes place in Hell, so you’re not seeing a lot of everyday humans regardless, but it’s a bit disappointing to see the few human faces in the game look flatly lit and hardly emotive. 

The demons you fight are much better in comparison, they look wretched, intimidating, disgusting, unnerving, and in 2 cases, slightly erotic. Each enemy type gets a closeup cutscene so you can see all the effort the artists put into making these damned souls before you have to view them from an incredibly zoomed out camera angle for the rest of your playthrough. Unfortunately none of the more common enemies really have standout designs that you’ll remember days after finishing the game. The bosses are far more unique than the underlings, but even some of those are just “large human male with sword”. 

The more unique bosses/large demons don’t share any sort of design elements that make them feel similar to each other; it’s a difficult thing to critique because even in Inferno the two examples I want to use are vastly different from each other. Minos is a man with a snake tail and Cerberus is a fuckin’ three headed dog, how are you supposed to make those share design motifs? Maybe using animal features in all the designs, sure, I mean the game has goat men already, as well as the bat[?] enemies. I don’t know, it’s kind of there, but why make Cerberus a flesh abomination then? It’s not that I dislike the design, I actually find it to be an interesting take on the creature, but why not reinterpret the rest of the bosses in that way? Visceral has always excelled in making organic meat monsters, why not commit to it here? You already changed the most recognizable creature, nothing else will get pushback worse than that.

The last thing I want to touch on in this section is the environment design. They absolutely knocked it out of the part in some places, others are okay. Much like the Dead Space series, Dante’s Inferno is superb at scale and vistas, you can feel how tall a creature stands and how vast an area in front of you is. This, accompanied with strong art direction, really makes you appreciate the vison this studio had for their interpretation of Hell: a landscape of brimstone, dead and malicious Earthly nature, cruel tombs of torture, and staues of humans enslaved to their sins for all eternity without mercy or reprieve. The ‘okay’ sections are the more transitional areas, like the halls you’ll walk through and the walls you’ll rappel down and across to descend deeper into hell. There’s a lot trapped souls dot gif walls you’ll have to scale, the effect doesn’t hold up well after a few hours and you’re nowhere near done looking at them by that time.

CLOSING

I bought Dante’s Inferno a while ago on sale on the Xbox store, mainly because I heard it wasn’t a particularly great game and I wanted to see for myself. By the end I just see it as a decent first shot at a Hack-and-Slash game by a studio that made the killer game RE4 in Space; it’s not a title I would care to see get a sequel by any means, but it wasn’t a complete disaster to trek through. Everything works fine, it’s not terribly long, and there’s some great art to see from the guys and gals at Visceral. Rest in peace by the way, you deserved better than the Battlefield mines. 

The game clocked my completion time at 8 hours and 49 minutes, I definitely played longer than that, it may not take restarts, menus, and cutscenes into account for that time. If you like these types of games there’s probably some replay value for you, it’ll take at least 2 runs to unlock all the skills, and there is a harder difficulty that becomes available after you complete the story. There are no achievements/trophies for difficulty clears, so your suffering will not be rewarded. There is no style ranking either, Virgil will not shout “SMOKIN’ SEXY SEXY!!” for you as you’re tearing through the damned. 

The game goes for $15 on the Xbox store, that’s a price I’m willing to pay for a 15 year old title, but always consider what’s worth your money and, more importantly, time. I don’t make recommendations for media because I almost never look at stuff people recommend to me, but if you’re a fan of the now defunct Visceral Games I’d say maybe give it a shot if you can cop it for dirt cheap. 

!!DO NOT BUY THE ‘TRIALS OF ST. LUCIA’ DLC, THE SERVERS FOR THE GAME ARE CLOSED AND RENDERS THIS DLC UNPLAYABLE!!

Lucifer has a hairy swanger in this game, look it up and laugh.

Dante’s Inferno gets a 4/10