First impressions on Dante's Inferno demo

-Anthony Beanes
Director

After waiting for this demo to come out I had only expect this game to be a mediocre clone of god of war given the time they showed off and story they been telling about it. Dante's Inferno is loosely based on the story from the bible poem "The Devine Comedy"...

Dante's Inferno is an upcoming third-person action-adventure video game to be published by Electronic Arts and in development by Visceral Games (formerly EA Redwood Shores).[4] The game is very loosely based on Inferno, the first book of Dante Alighieri's epic poem, The Divine Comedy. The story of the game is written by Will Rokos, who wrote the film Monster's Ball.[5]DC Comics' Wildstorm imprint will also carry a serialised adaptation of the game sequence, beginning in February 2010.

When first loaded up the demo it takes you through the beginning as you see Dante sewing tapestry to his chest in the form of a cross as he screams in pain and from there it shows you in a very artistic anime stlye his past and why he is there. He believed to have cleansed his sin when a priest announces to everyone at a gathering that after they take the "holy" land back they are free from their sins which in Dante's case turns out to be not true. From then on you start the game by killing prisoners that attack you and venture off more into the game where you fight the grim reaper, undead, demons, and such in pursuit to get your wife back from the clenches of hell.  As it says it is loosely based on the story and as predicted you will go through the gates of hell to get her back like going through lust, greed, limbo, sloth, and the others. A interesting idea to take for the game and with my time with it I really enjoyed the demo.

The controls at first I was sort of button mashing, x for your light attack, y for your heavy attack, and a for your jump button. As like god of war you have a tree of moves you can unlock and choose from as you progress through the game. As I went through the demo I was introduced to the idea of collecting souls and depending how you kill your enemies you are treated with "holy" or "unholy" points. By grabbing a near by enemy the option of punishing or saving your opponent comes up. if you decided to punish your opponet you will not only kill the person you have on your weapon but also any near by enemies giving you unholy points. But if you decided to save your person you put him down and take out your cross and show him the light and pretty much kill him with the light. As I forgot to mention the B button is for your holy strength and that lets you shoot out white crosses to enemies which after using it, it kinda makes me feel like a bad ass xD. The unholy points seem to unlock more moves for you to do combos with the scythe while the holy points seem to unlock more long range attacks from your simple triple shot to more powerful attacks that let you shoot out crosses like Dragonball Z stlye. Overall the controls feel right and the move sets I am liking with the option of having more holy or unholy moves. I am curious to see how that will play out as a moral decision when you go through the game and I like where this game is heading.  The only gripe is that they put the dodge button on the other stick which feels kinda awkward to me .

The graphics look top notch and even when you go from cut-scene to game-play its still a very good looking game compared to other games right now. The soundtrack could easily been taken straight out of god of war but the orchestral score making the battle scenes in the game seem more epic then it really is. As I stated this is a god of war clone and even the guys who are making this game say they took some ideas from god of war to put in their game and it shows. While you get health you suck it out by putting your hand in it and destroying the fountain and all the green orbs go into you, same goes with magic, and other sorts of power ups. Also Dante has the same weird double jump as kratos has and like him Dante has a "Crusader mode" where when he kills enough enemies there's a small meter in the bottom left corner of the screen where by pressing the LB and RB at the same time will make you faster and more powerful with electricity running all about your body. With all this aside the demo is still a great demo and a very convincing one if you were skeptic like me about the game in the first place. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is wondering weather this game is good or not, and or just curious about it. If you have xbox 360 it is out today and if you have a ps3 it has been out for the past 2 weeks. This game will come out Feb. 9 of 2010.

sources:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante%27s_Inferno_%28video_game%29