Dante's Inferno.
After playing the Dante's Inferno demo twice, I came to the conclusion that it was a rip off of God of War and wasn't going to have much depth beyond it's Christian story line, but then I played it some more and learned to upgrade the scythe or holy. The ability to control monsters and use them to destroy enemies as well as open gates is fun. Generally, it's a good ol' button masher that is going to smash its way into our homes.
Graphics: The graphics are PS3, it's clean, it's crisp, it's gonna dazzle your eyes. The enemies are good looking and die with gusto(when you smash them into pieces.) The level design it great and the artistry when the church crumbles into hell is kind of cool. The graphics, themselves, don't strike me as, "Oh - My - Gawd!!" good, compared to games like Modern Warfare 2, where MW2 threw alot of eye effects to make you forget that you are trying to take in it's magnificence trying to stay alive.
Sound: It's sound is also decent; monster types stand out enough. In games like this, sound is meant more for feel than actual use. The enemies are always coming, and when they do the music changes. The slight audio cue is nice, but come on, I have Death's scythe and a holy cross, GET SOME M-f'ers!! Even on mute, dying was still a challenge for me, I didn't need the sound to locate enemies. The music was moody and fit the games dark mood, but didn't stand out to me as "wow, I'm in a fight." or more accurately, "wow, I'm getting jumped." Any normal person would run, but bad asses don't run from jack squat!!!
Gameplay: Feeling like a God of War game, it threw me off having to learn the button mechanics, i.e R1 is to grab for context sensitive kills, where R2 is to grab period. What's next R3 to grab your junk? I digress. Square and triangle are your light and heavy attacks respectively, even though it looks like they do light horizontal and heavy vertical attacks. Right analog is to dodge attacks, which after the dodge leave you open for a split-second. I already found a quick way: jump right after a roll and it will make you less vulnerable to attack. You can do this continuously if you wish. Overall, it works and is responsive, and that's more important than being a clone.
It's biggest feature is how you can use your scythe or holy skills. You can level either up by grabbing(R2) and hitting either square or circle to execute or absolve your enemies. Killing them with the scythe levels it up and gives you point to use to upgrade it's powers, and does the same for the holy cross. It is a neat mechanic, but it will have to be seen when the game is released to see how cool it really is.
Conclusion: This is an EA game, and if you don't know, I dislike EA's methods of hyping sub par games, but I respect that none of their games completely suck(Conan!!!) I think it will be a respectable addition to the action-adventure genre, but it won't be kick Kratos' ass anytime soon.
My rating: 3 and a half middle fingers out of 5.
This is a demo review, edits and revisions may be made to the game for its release date of Feb. 2010. Plus, there are levels that we haven't played, as it was a demo, and may completely stand out.
