Dante's Inferno starts with a bang, but slowly dies out before the credits roll
Dante's Inferno is the first part of an epic poem by Alighieri's, named "The Divine Comedy". It is a tale of Dante's journey through the nine circles of hell: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Wrath, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery. with the aid of a guide known as Virgil. The story in the game uses this concept, with the fact of Dante's wife is suffering for the Sins Dante has committed through his travels, with templars and false prophets, and it is up to you take out Lucifer and save your loved one. Dante's adventure starts out strong, with you taking out Death himself and gaining the ability to wield his scythe As your journey continues, The game chronicles Dante's past with use of CGI and stylized animations throughout and see how everything comes into place. This breaks up the action and help the player see just how tainted Dante's past life was.
The first few circles treat us with some graphic, yet welcomed imagery. The amount of lost souls who are being thrown into the depths of hell, Crumbling Bridges, boiling lakes of fire and just an overall sense of dread as visceral games tries to interpret the visions of hell based off of Dante's Divine Comedy. to supplement this horrifying playing field the Enemies suit the playbill nicely. In Lust, we are attacked by prostitutes who sold themselves for the pleasures of the flesh who are grotesquely depicted now as vile demonic beings and in Gluttony, disgusting hulking monstrosities. The enemy design is top notch within the first 4 circles but as we pass onto the fifth, The enemy designs lose their luster because of the "over-recycling" of previous enemies and overall lazy design by the developer
Dante is not without help of course. To combat the darkness, Dante make use of his Scythe and Cross. Combat progression consists of these two classes: Holy-which enhances cross attacks, and Unholy-which powers the Scythe. Unholy is definitely the favorite, it provides a great mix of combos and heavy attacks. Holy however, is lacking, and can be somewhat overpowered. The cross is a ranged weapon, and the more you keep powering it up, simply mashing the "B" button most of the time will get the job done. Kind of dumbs it down to much, but a nice mixture of both styles helps make things interesting. The game also does not let up on the Blood and gore since everything can be finished off into a bloody mound of flesh.
The game also has a few puzzles here an there, but are more for annoyance than any particular accomplishment. As previously mentioned, the game starts to wind down after the fifth circle. Enemies' designs become lacking as does the scenery. The descent towards the final circle is anti-climatic. During the build-up phase we are succumbed to a combat trial area. A completely worthless and meaningless end to Dante's adventure. Trials consists of asinine tasks such as defeating enemies with only air attacks or not being able to use magic. the last 30% of the game looks uninspired and boring compared to the beginning, it seems EA gave up on the project during development and wanted to throw something in there to make the games deadline. To top it off, the entire campaign will only take about 6-8 hours to complete, and aside from finding all the collectibles in the game, there is no other reason to warrant a second-play-through.
Dante's Inferno is mostly fun for the first half of the game, but slowly you see that Dante's descent into hell slowly becomes more and more boring and stale. The game is worth a rental and nothing more, I don't see this title spinning in to many 360's or PS3's for too long.