So, Visceral Games, you’ve made a game about Dante’s Inferno. Only, you’ve made a game called Dante’s Inferno about God of War. While everyone may say that your game is a bastardization of Dante’s first book of The Divine Comedy, I won’t say that. However, I will say that your game (so far from what I’ve seen and played) is really stupid. You’ve made Dante’s story stereotypical and cliche, and you’ve also made Dante into Kratos set during Assassin’s Creed. Good job, you’ve taken something from decent IPs and have made them your own. That aside, let’s get to what this article is about: the demo and what was wrong with it.

Your cinematic cutscenes look nice, I’ll be honest. We’re given a nice view of Florence, Italy and then a nice view of Dante, a returning crusading knight, mutilating himself with what looks like a fish hook and string covered in blood. Already, this demo has started to bother me. Now, I’m definitely not against seeing mutilation or anything of that sort. What gets to me is how blatantly you’ve ripped off Kratos and body slammed him into Medieval Europe. You have a character that is marked for his past sins. Sounds familiar. Anyway, we get a nice little voice over and cartoon of Dante’s past. The Crusades happen and Richard the Lionhearted is mentioned, some prisoners are involved and now you must slay them because they’re rioting. We’re also given a little shot of Dante stabbing himself with aforementioned fish hook and a wail of pain that makes birds fly away.

This brings me to my next problem: why is Dante British? Why is Dante’s wife British? From what I had heard, Dante was Italian. I’ll never really understand why someone would speak English with an accent to someone that always speaks their language, but I guess this game is for stupids. Anyways, Dante is English. So is his wife and almost every other character. If they’re not English, they’re just standard American. I’m glad they speak like Americans in Medieval Europe, at least I’ll know what they’re saying.

But yeah, you’re now thrust into the action with an axe and an angry horde of rioters that only seem to attack 6 at a time. You quickly breeze through them while going through tutorials and then you’re sent off to be stabbed in the back by a shady figure (who I’m sure will end up in Hell and you’ll have to absolve him or something). The Grim Reaper comes up and goes, “Dante, you’re coming with me!” and Dante responds, “No…no…” and then they fight. You know, because poets fight immortals all the time. Oh wait, he’s a crusader now. Whatever. Anyways, you’re taken to a spinning platform inside Super Smash Brothers and you’re tasked with defeating Death. Your axe treats Death like he’s a mountain and you’re wielding a baseball bat, but eventually you beat him into submission and after a very easy quicktime event (VERY easy, I don’t even think I pressed the right button), you’re now the master of Death’s scythe-spear thing. Faster than you can say “total bitch”, Death is begging for mercy. I guess Death is nothing without his scythe or something. I mean, the guy was teleporting around like Nightcrawler, so I don’t see how he’s vulnerable or anything. Why couldn’t he just teleport over to Dante and take his scythe back? I don’t know, this game is stupid.

So anyway, after you take Death’s life somehow, you’re back in Florence amongst the living. There you go back to your villa and find out that your manservant has been stabbed in the left eye by a cross. Oh, and then you find out your wife is dead. Sucks nuts for Dante. Your wife shows up as a ghost and then gets pulled away (like the bad guy from Ghost does), and Dante is left to fight some bad guys in his backyard. This is honestly where I was amazed by the gameplay. Not by how good it was or anything, but by just how stupid some things are. Now, the little barrier comes up to keep Dante from going anywhere but in that fenced in area. But here’s the catch, the stone fence is about knee high. I attempted to make my battlefield a bit bigger, but there were invisible barriers keeping me from jumping over knee high bricks. I could just end this right now and finish off with “this game is stupid”, but I’m just getting started.

Continued in part II.