The CHIMES

Issue date: 2/19/10 Section: Lifestyle

Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet who lived during the late 1200s. Late in his life, during an exile and fueled by discontent with the church and politics, he wrote one of the greatest works of literature in all of history: "The Divine Comedy." This epic poem depicted Dante's journey through the nine circles of Hell, through Purgatory and eventually into Paradise. Arguably the most popular and well known part of the Comedy concerns Dante's journey through Hell, known as the Inferno. Within the Inferno, Dante literally maps out the geography and architecture of Hell, showcasing the various circles devoted to the punishment of various sins.

It is a deeply themed piece of literature, open to many discussions on context and interpretation. Dante's Inferno the video game is a gory hack and slash about a sin-filled jerk who chases his girlfriend into Hell because she was kidnapped by Satan for some reason. There he fights unbaptized babies, naked women who use their genitals as weapons, and obese gluttons who puke and defecate on him.

A faithful adaptation it is not.

Then again, it really doesn't have to be. Would we want to play a video game about a poet walking through Hell like a sight seeing tour? Absolutely not. We want to play as a former crusader who rips demons apart and literally tears his way through Hell to get his girlfriend back from the Devil, all the while coming to terms with the horrible things he did seemingly in the name of God, things so bad he literally stitched a cloth cross into his chest as penance. You have to invent new words to describe that kind of badassery.

And with their setting being the infernal depths of Hell, the design team seemingly had a ball creating the most disturbing and twisted environments and enemies imaginable. There are the previously mentioned unbaptized babies whose limbs have turned into blades, the evil women of Lust who do just plain disturbing things to attack and the obese denizens of Gluttony who are covered with snapping mouths eager to bite into your hide. There are also insane bosses, like Cleopatra, the giant queen of the Nile who ejects the unborn baby monsters from her naked breasts. I just don't even know how to react to that.

Scene from Dante's Inferno. The game is based on Dante Alighieri's "The Divine Comedy," considered to be one of the greatest literature works of all time. Photo courtesy of IGN.com

So, from a design and story perspective the game is unique and awesome. So what about the gameplay? In a word: bad. In several words: it's just too damn hard for its own good. The game is akin to games like God of War, Ninja Gaiden and Bayonetta. You hack, you slash, you die a lot, you learn from your mistakes, you learn enemy patterns, you overcome. That's how games like this should be played. Dante's Inferno, however, is just too damn hard for its own good.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind a hard game. I beat God of War on its hardest difficulty. I know hard. But God of War is a fair hard. It gives you a challenge and when you fail it's because of something you did, a mistake you made. You have to carefully learn how enemies act before tackling them. Dante's enemies, though, are just too spastic. They're small, fast and utilize cheap moves. The camera is often too far out and the game is too damn dark for players to see what exactly is going on. Plus, the game throws way too many monsters at a time at you. It's like other games in this genre, when you fail at them they're like, "Come on! You can do it! I know it's hard, but if you keep at it you can beat this!" Dante's Inferno, however, says to you, "So you lost again? Good! I hate you! And I'm going to keep hating you! Because you suck! Why do you even play video games?" Then Dante's Inferno gets up and bangs your girlfriend. Right in front of you.

Another big problem are the puzzles. Let's look at, again, God of War. They threw the occasional puzzle at you, but the answer was always evident if you just took the time to look. Dante's Inferno, however, seems to think that keeping players in the dark is just ever so much fun. I found myself more than once saying out loud, "Why the hell would they think I would think of doing that!" This is, of course, after I gave up and looked online for help.

And let's talk about the last part of the game. It seems like they just gave up when they reached the last few levels. Fraud is a series of arena battles. That's it. You go through ten arenas, completing ridiculous challenges because the game needs you to be doing something. What's worse is that in other games like, once again, God of War, challenges like these are always optional. They're extra challenges, not part of the main game. This is because they are usually really hard and only for people who want a little extra bang for their buck. And then, once you finally slog your way through the first eight circles of Hell, you get to the final frozen circle of Treason and man oh man are you anticipating the worst. If the rest of the game was as hard as it was, what is Satan, the prince of darkness going to be like? Palms sweaty, a silent prayer on my lips, I began the last boss fight.

I beat him my first try. Man Dante's Inferno, you can't even be terrible at a consistent rate!

It really is a spectacular looking game, and everything about the design and story show a lot of care. But that might be part of the problem. Just because I am in Hell doesn't mean I want the game's difficulty to match the atmosphere. It's just too bad that a game with such potential and with such a great concept had to be damned by such frustrating gameplay.

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