Infernal is a good game - certainly worth playing. It won't be the best of 2007, but deserves better than 6/10.
So next on my list is Infernal from Metropolis Software, a game developer i've never heard of and who was bought out by CD Projekt (The Witcher) a year later. So I guess this is their one and only title.
Now Infernal received fairly average to harsh reviews with an aggregate of 60% on GameRankings.com. However, it was actually a pretty decent game so if this is an indication of the 'worst' of 2007, with 19 other action games on my list that ranked higher, then 2007 is shaping up to the best year for PC action games ever.
Where Infernal received flak was it's short length, repetitive gameplay and not pushing the boundaries. Honestly, those 19 shooters that ranked higher - did they all push the boundaries of gaming? I seriously doubt it. I'll quite happily take a solid, good looking game with fun gameplay that does nothing to evolve gaming. I might have played this type of game a dozen times already, but that's the kind of game I enjoy.
Infernal's level design is good, but often it just feels like you're in a huge room with a maze of small walls and walkways to navigate through. Sure it's better than the corridor-room-corridor of F.E.A.R., but there's still massive room for improvement. We do get a bit a variety in the levels; there five missions going through a monastery, refinery, steelworks, a massive ship and the mountain-based satellite centre.
Now what hides the lacking level design is the great looking engine. Everything has a glossed over feeling and the lighting in particular is very well done.
The gameplay is a little weaker and took some criticism from critics, but it was still fun all the way through. Infernal leans more towards the higher difficulty rather than being an easy game. You can tap your movement keys twice to do an invisible roll to avoid fire, and without this the game would be very difficult. It's an addition that sped up gameplay a lot and is well done.
What slows the game down to a halt is the way you have to hold Enter to strip your dead enemies of health and ammo. It takes a few seconds each time, which you need to do on probably 75% of the dead bodies in this game. It ends up being a strategy of killing everything, then slowly raping the dead bodies of health/ammo for a couple of minutes before moving to the next section. It absolutely kills the flow of action in the game.
On top of that, the game is perhaps in the 5-7 hour zone. It's NOT a long game. I won't go into the story as it's the typical cliched rubbish with a hot chick teaming up with you. Same of the one liners were good though.
Overall Infernal is a good game and certainly worth playing. It won't be the best of 2007, but certainly deserves better than a 6 out of 10.
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