Dante's Inferno: Gates of Hell demo

BY ANDY ASTRUC

Dante's Inferno, developed by Visceral Games, is a third-person action game soon to be released on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. It is based on the first part of Dante Alighieri's epic poem, the Divine Comedy, which chronicles Dante's journey through the nine circles of Hell.

Possibly the first time a poem has been adapted into a video game, Dante's Inferno follows the poet warrior as he hacks and slashes his way through the demons of hell to save his girlfriend from the Devil.

Are you just screwing with me, Visceral?

Surely this is a joke. Surely a developer would be too crippled with embarrassment to put so much money, time and effort into something so ridiculous - turning a literary allegory on the nature of good and evil into a blood spattered God of War clone.

As you might have heard, it IS basically a clone. A carbon copy of Sony's successful massacring of Greek myth. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Plenty of fantastic games are shameless copies. Bioshock is System Shock plus Fallout; Saint's Row is Grand Theft Auto minus brains. If you can make a good game that resembles one people already love, then why not?

But Dante's Inferno isn't just a clone - it IS God of War. The attacks are the same, the plot elements are the same, the quick-time events are the same, the health bar is the same. There are God of War orbs to collect so you can unlock more God of War moves to use on God of War enemies so you can get to giant, powerful God of War bosses.

If this game was any more identical it would be turning up to Sony's house wearing Kratos' skin as a suit.

But okay, a clone can be good. And the game is good at cloning. Unfortunately, it isn't good at anything else. The animations are clunky, the textures look like Satan rubbed his ashen buttocks on all the furniture, and the menu and subtitle font makes my eyes fill with blood. The nine circles of Hell have been lovingly rendered so that you pass through the slate grey rocky one, the fire-filled one with pillars and the dark brown one with the smoke.

The enemies so far include humanoid brown thing, flying bat-bird thing, giant black dudes with sheep horns and Dante's inner turmoil about being a tosser. There are also giant beasts ridden by smaller demons, one of whom you battle at the end of the demo. And boy, do you feel like an idiot, riding them around like the Pope's personal cowboy.

The main bosses of each circle will be representations of the classic sins, meaning visits from lust, envy, pride, violence and giant lava monster.

One game mechanic not stolen directly is the moral choice system. By grabbing certain enemies you are given the chance to either Absolve or Punish them. One gets you points, while the other one gets you totally different kinds of points.

And then there's the story.

First of all, we're asked to step into the shoes of a crusader - the Crusaders being a historical group famous for stealing the land and the lives of tens of thousands of people because they believed in the wrong sky fairy. As human beings, they sit somewhere between high-ranking Nazis and serial pedophiles.

But this is a story of redemption... apparently. The demo opens with Dante murdering a large number of Muslims in the Middle East. I can tell the number is large because I got a combo high score. Take that, Islam.

One of those dirty heathens stabs him in the back and Death immediately appears personally to Dante - because Death has nothing better to do. Dante is all, "Wait a minute, I'm supposed to go to Heaven" and Death is all, "Nah dude, turns out killing hundreds of men, women and children is totally a sin" and Dante is all, "Damn, nobody told me."

So we are asked to identify with a character that commits reprehensible crimes in the name of God, and is also too stupid to realise this is a bad thing.

Anyway, Death is ready to take Dante to Hell, but Dante suddenly becomes too awesome and stops Death with the power of being a god damn man. And suddenly you're fighting Death. Well, it's more like beating up Death and spitting in his mouth, because the fight is for babies. All the suffering in the world, and it turns out the way to cheat Death is to keep pressing X until you win.

Dante is so shiny and fantastic that he manages to steal away Death's scythe and make him beg for mercy, before cutting him in half with no regard for the metaphysical paradox. Someone sat in the writer's room, or at a bar, and thought it would be great if our hero managed to cut the balls off the Grim Reaper. Oh that Dante, he's so dreamy.

Overcome with a bad case of the sads, Dante does what any logical person would do: he stitches a fabric cross into the skin of his chest. That's how you know he's serious.

Dante makes his way home to Florence and arrives at his house, which looks exactly like Russell Crowe's house from Gladiator. Exactly like Gladiator, his family has been murdered. Someone has shoved a cross through a man's eye socket because a regular stabbing is too subtle.

At this point Dante pauses to cross himself, still being a devout religious man after everything that has happened. This is because, as we know, he's an idiot. If you looked up the word "stupid" in the dictionary, Dante would still be too stupid to read it.

Outside, he finds the dead body of his lover, Beatrice. In the poem, Beatrice represents love and maternal feeling. In the game, Beatrice is a hot, chesty woman with a craving for demon meat. She's lying dead and half-naked on the ground, then her spirit pops out, naked, to be groped by a cloud of smoke known to most as Satan.

She's naked because men buy video games and men loves breasts. So that will make them buy the game, right? RIGHT?! Look forward to the upcoming game adaptation of Othello where Desdemona is a pole-dancing hooker.

Sadly, the demo cut off just as I was about to enter the Gates of Hell, so I'll have to wait until 05/02/10 to see if Dante gets to punch Lucifer in the nuts and get jiggy with some sexy demon chicks.

Maybe the final level is the real Dante Alighieri, throwing up in disgust and crying.

- © Fairfax NZ News