Infernal Final Hands-On

After slipping slightly past its initial Q4 2006 release date, Infernal has been undergoing intensive tweaking and recently arrived on our doormat in its final state. A story of good versus evil with a twist, the game stars Ryan Lennox--a former henchman of God who has changed sides to retain the balance on Earth. As most Star Wars fans will attest, the dark side has all the cool superpowers, so it's not such a bad thing. As you progress through the game, you'll be endowed with a number of tricks that include teleportation and explosive firepower.

Developed by the Polish house Metropolis, Infernal is a higher-profile release than the studio's previous game, 2005's Aurora Watching, otherwise known as Soldier Elite. That game didn't fare too well with the critics or the public, but there's been a quiet buzz surrounding Infernal since it was picked up by European publishing giant Eidos. With the North American version of the game not set for release until May, we wasted no time in taking the game for a spin to see how it's progressed since we saw a work-in-progress version last year.

Whereas our time with the preview version let us play isolated snippets of the game, the finished game provides a much more coherent picture of the storyline. Clearly taking inspiration from comic books such as Spawn and films like Constantine, Infernal opens with our man Ryan Lennox sitting at a penthouse bar enjoying the company of a young lady. Before long, though, your soiree is interrupted by a group of masked attackers rappelling from helicopters through the window, and the inference is that your lady friend has set you up.

This short prelude gives you an opportunity to test-drive Lennox and his gun-fighting ability before you move onto the more serious superpower stuff. Gunplay isn't particularly stylish in Infernal, but you can take cover behind walls, fire around corners, and dive around in any direction. Likewise, enemies will hide away and fire in your direction to keep you at bay, but this is certainly no Gears of War--you can take a lot of shots without taking too much damage, and the impetus is on running into rooms and clearing them out as quickly as possible.

Following the heated battle in the bar, it transpires that Lennox's old employer is getting a little above its station. The Etherlight group is responsible for Heaven's interests on Earth, and that mainly involves fighting it out with Hell's equivalent group--called the Abyss. When an intergalactic set of events puts Earth temporarily out of Heaven's view, the Etherlight group takes the opportunity to try and eradicate the Abyss once and for all, ruining the delicate balance between good and evil and eradicating man's free will in the process. Lennox was cast out of Etherlight because his practices were considered too extreme, but as the group's former star employee, he's considered a threat to its plans. Once the attempt to kill him fails, Lennox's only option is to accept an offer to join the Abyss, which will not only give Lennox a new set of dark powers but also help the Abyss maintain its position on Earth.

It's at this point that events start to get interesting, as the addition of dark supernatural powers makes Infernal feel like a cross between Max Payne and Psi-Ops. First of all, your sideways rolls now make you invisible, letting you evade security scanners and cameras. You can also turn your weapons into superpowered projectiles, which will guarantee an instant death for the person on the receiving end. The ability to pass through weak doors and gates is also one that you'll get plenty of use out of. As you progress, the teleportation powers let you move small distances for a short amount of time, therefore enabling you to open doors with remote switches and take out enemies from a different angle.

Using these forces requires a supply of mana, and because this is finite, replenishing your reserves is achieved by absorbing life force from the souls of your fallen enemies. It's also possible to gather weapons and energy from the dead, although all of these actions are only possible once Lennox is under the command of the Abyss. While you're harvesting, you're vulnerable to attack, but weapons are especially scarce and you need to replenish them frequently to survive. Infernal offers a mix of guns, explosives, and projectiles for you to use on enemies, with an early favourite sure to be the shuriken, which you can casually flick at enemies from afar.

While there are some pretty cool powers and weapons to use, it seems that a lot of the game involves simply finding ways to open doors, interspersed with some pretty standard combat. Our brief run through the game felt a little repetitive and devoid of many imaginative puzzles or combat situations, and while Lennox is easy to control, his movement never feels particularly precise or athletic. Strangely, he's also susceptible to falls--he can be shot to pieces before he dies, but it's game over if he jumps into a small hole.

One thing that's certainly improved since we last previewed Infernal is the graphics, which are more advanced than might have been expected from a small, unproven studio. The team at Metropolis clearly has a great eye for art direction and has succeeded in making an aesthetically pleasing game. Opaque glass decorates the bar areas, light pours through church windows, and objects roll around the game world with an impressive level of interaction. Of course, it helps if you've got a dedicated Ageia physics card powering this aspect of the game, and Infernal is one of the first games on the market to offer support for the new technology.

Overall, it's a game that has shaped up well since we last saw it, and while it may be a ways off triple-A status, it looks like it could be a calling card for developer Metropolis as they move forward. We'll have a full review with a more in-depth analysis of how the game performs in due course.