pieces together into something new and exciting. Very few games attempt to emulate the source

material as blatantly as Dante's Inferno does, though. In this case, the muse is God of War,

and Dante's quest to save his forsaken bride from Lucifer's grabby hands feels an awful

lot like Kratos' latest adventure in the netherworld. This isn't an inherently bad thing, but Dante's

adventure fails to live up to its lofty inspiration.

In the early going, you'll be hard pressed to separate Dante's Inferno from its superb

inspiration. The decent into hell from your earthly home is overloaded with rising landmarks

beckoning you from a distance, gargantuan monsters begging to be eviscerated in blood-splattering

ways, and epic environments that hint at the impressive scale of your adventure into the

heart of darkness. For the first few hours, you will stare in awe at your impressive surroundings,

and the feeling of déjà vu is more than welcomed.

The first few circles of hell are bursting with disgusting imagery that paints an eerily

accurate representation of the reprehensible land of damned spirits. Lust and greed are

two of the deadly sin you will traverse through early in the game, and they are utterly repulsive

in their portrayal of these crimes against humanity. This may sound like a bad thing,

but the visuals are so shocking and unrestrained that it only builds upon the foreboding atmosphere

of your quest. In lust, you battle condemned prostitutes with exaggerated parts of typical

female anatomy, and though it's gross, it certainly makes you believe you are truly

traveling through this corrupted land.

As you dive deeper into hell, though, very few disturbing abominations await. Early on,

you fight grotesque prostitutes, incredibly obese monsters who

typify the gluttony mentality, and even an army of unbabtized babies this is sure to

disturb even the most jaded of players. But once you get past the first few hours, the

imaginative enemies fade away, giving way to predictable hack and slash. Battles and

levels blur together, resulting in an often monotonous trek through the nine circles of

the damned. And while it is certainly shocking fighting these horrible beings when you first

encounter them, they stay with you the entire adventure, which diminishes the initial hint

of repulsion you tasted. It certainly makes sense that you would fight prostitutes when

in Lust, it makes a lot less sense that they continue to show up in Anger, Hersey, and

every other circle.

The epic level design from the early stages also disappear after the first few hours.

Initially, you would see a titanic being far off in the distance and you knew you would

have to fight it when you finally made your way through the obstacles between you. But

that feeling of making progress through the depths of the underworld quickly goes away,

replaced by a series of smallish rooms that don't even hint at the larger world around

you. Unlike God of War, Dante's Inferno fails to evoke the feeling that you are a tiny person

surrounded by monstrous creatures in a hostile land. Aside from the constant screams from

the damned who line the walls, it's often easy to forget where your adventure takes

place as you dutifully march from one area to the next without any noteworthy encounters

to break up the drudgery.

The combat is also lifted wholesale from God of War and, like the enemy design and level

layout, it too only gives a taste of the source material without ever doing justice to the

real thing. Battles are vicious and bloody, letting you tear into the flesh of your angry

enemies without reckless abandon. It is certainly fun slicing and dicing your way through these

despicable beings, but the combat has a few flaws that make it a bit annoying. When you

start a combo, Dante will see it through to completion, even while you're slamming on

another button so you can avoid an imminent blow from you enemy. Also, you have a projectile

attack you can use at any time. This works well when fighting one-on-one battles, but

the auto targeting is way off, making it a pain to hit a specific enemy when you're surrounded

by a seething gang.

There is a clear distinction between the quality of the first third of Dante's Inferno, the

middle third, and the end. It starts out as an epic adventure with gloriously disturbing

imagery, then loses the imaginative aspects but still has enough fun combat to keep you

motivated. But the final third of the game is awful. For the final few hours of the game,

level design and clever enemy battles has been completely removed in favor of objective-based

combat on floating platforms. Instead of being introduced to vile caricatures that exemplify

the sins of being a traitor or politician, you fight the same enemies as before with

artificial constraints tossed in, such as "Don't use magic." This is not fun in the

slightest and feels like a way to pad the game out so it doesn't end quite so abruptly.

It's a shame the entirety of Dante's Inferno couldn't match the imagination presented in

the first few hours, because it seemed like this game was going to be a worthwhile alternative

to the superb God of War series. But most of the game falls flat, and the final few

hours are tedious and uninspired. This is a pale imitation of the real thing, and though

it's fun for a while, there are much better action games out there.