Two Boobs Good, Four Boobs Better!

We’re about to be spoiled again in the next few weeks with some big release games on the horizon. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is out this Friday and the gaming press is loving it; a short while later, we’ll be getting Super Street Fighter 4, Lost Planet 2 and a new entry in the Splinter Cell series. While we’re waiting for those big names, why not think about wasting money on a couple of average games? Or not….

Review

Dante’s Inferno

Visceral Games / EA

XBox 360 (Version Tested), PS3, PSP

Out Now

So you’ve developed Dead Space, a hugely atmospheric sci-fi horror game adored by the world’s gamers. What next?

Nobody would have guessed then that Visceral’s next game would be based on an ancient poem, The Divine Comedy. Although, look at the subject matter (Knight of the Crusdes battles his way through 9 circles of hell to rescue a princess) and the choice becomes a little clearer.

So, in choosing their source, you can imagine the meeting that followed went something like this:

Exec 1: “So, it’s 9 circles – that’s 9 levels. In Hell. What kind of gameplay should it have?”
Exec2: “How about something like God of War?”

Exec 1: “I have a better idea. How about EXACTLY like God of War?”

All: “Ka-ching!”

So then, what we get is a servicable God of War clone. It cannot be overstated how brazenly the developers have poached their ideas straight from Kratos’ adventures.

The design document for Dante’s Inferno is a checklist of God of War’s features: hacking, slashing, combos, monsters, magic, QTEs (Quick Time Events) – even the repeated button presses for collecting health or opening a door.

There really is no further explanation needed for this game – if you’ve ever controlled Kratos, you’ll be right at home with Dante. Even the button mappings for light/heavy/jump etc are the same! And for at least the first few circles, I was more than happy to play through this clone, eviscerating hell’s minions and moving onwards through the grotesque environments. The controls are for the main part responsive, and there’s an interesting range of combos to master. While not a graphical tour de force, Dante’s Inferno is quite pretty(in an ugly hellish kind of way) in places, and lazy in others as environments and enemies are recycled ad nauseum.

As you plow through the second third of the game however,  you’ll notice a steep decline in new enemy types and boss encounters, and the interesting early environments give way to dull cave after dull cave.

Most of all, this game left me wondering: Why are there doors in hell? And who installed all the switches and levers? And what is the point of having metres of suspended rope over rivers of boiling blood? Lazy design is rampant in this game.

So, what could have been a worthy stopgap on the way to God of War 3 instead turns out to be a lazy and hastily thrown together slog through mediocrity.  Oh, but it does have boobs.

6/10

Get this if you liked: God of War series, Medieval religious poetry, Hell?