Demo Impressions: Dante’s Inferno (PS3)

A demo should do a few things in my opinion. It should lay the groundwork for any relevant story points, it should give the player a strong sense of what the gameplay will be like, and ultimately, it should make the player want to play more of the game. The demo for Dante’s Inferno dropped last Thursday on the PSN and I finally got around to taking it through its paces. With all due respect to my old professors at Queen’s University and the Faculty of English, this demo impresses enough to take it off my ‘œignore’ list.

Let’s just get this out of the way early on, yes I am one of the few who has read the epic poem Dante’s Inferno. I do not recommend it, or the other two volumes of The Divine Comedy. They haven’t exactly aged well. I trudged through it roughly twenty years ago and was only mildly impressed. I recall thinking that Virgil’s character played an interesting role of guide and mentor, but was not fleshed out enough by Dante. There is a section of hell where Virgil and others who led essentially righteous lives, but unfortunately died before the time of Christ and thus could not have their sins forgiven by his sacrifice, had to toil in hell as a result. This was what I thought first of when I heard about this game in development last year. Needless to say, based on my playthrough of the demo, I don’t think that the source material has any real relevance to the game. And you know what? I don’t give a crap, because I had fun with this demo!

Dante’s Inferno is a fairly attractive hack and slash adventure game in the vein of franchises like God of War and, more accurately, like the Ninja Gaiden series. The gameplay should be very familiar to fans of those titles and the demo follows their simple but effective formula; the protagonist moving from section to section by defeating various foes using a combination of melee and ranged magic attacks. The collection of souls facilitates purchasing new attacks as well as upgrading existing ones. The story is conveyed in what obviously are condensed examples of cut scenes from the full game. Most importantly, there are boobies. Yes, breasts are on display in many of the early cut scenes and to be honest I didn’t find them particularly offensive. The breasts in the demo belong to Dante’s wife, Beatrice, who has been killed by a mysterious power. We see them more after she is dead in ghostly form and dragged down to hell.

My big problem with this game involves the camera. Rather than provide the player with access to moving the camera with the right analog stick as many others have in the past, the right stick is dedicated exclusively to dashes. While this may be a refreshing change over the span of an entire game, it was a little off-putting and took some adjustment at first. It clearly is an important mechanic though because the first boss battle requires the player to use this technique often as the boss is quick, and a little cheap in my opinion. Ironically, while the dash can be effective, a fixed camera while facing off against foes in large environments means your protagonist is going out of view pretty often. This could be a minor problem, but it is certainly something to keep an eye on.

So, what’s the deal with this game’s PR? Apparently there is a pool going on around the Negative Gamer writing staff as to how many days following this game’s release that Nintendoll‘s head will pop off her neck, and her hate and outrage will spew all over Electronic Arts PR offices around the world as a result. EA has sent cash to media outlets promoting this game, they have also consistently associated booth babes and puerile marketing approaches with this title at major events over the last year.

The question stands though, why? I ask because, based on a demo of respectable length, this seems like a decent game with efficient mechanics, and pretty attractive visuals. It’s not a gimmicky game that relies on cheap exploitation. I don’t think that this is a buy for me yet; however, I had not been planning on giving this game the time of day prior to the demo’s release and now? Well let’s just say that it’s on my radar. Congratulations EA and Visceral Games, come February 9, 2010, I’ll be paying attention, despite some pretty silly nonsense around this game earlier this year.