First Impressions: Dante's Inferno

Sometimes I feel like I'm the best hack-and-slash player in the world.

This, of course, is not at all true (especially when you take into consideration the fact that I am abysmal at all Devil May Cry games).  I'm decent.  But I've played enough games like God of War and Darksiders to feel like a pro the first time I start a new hack-and-slash title.  I destroy the first round of practice enemies, because I understand the use of heavy and light attacks.  I obliterate the first boss, because I'm already well-versed in the art of dashing or rolling away.  I solve the hell out of the first puzzle, because it know which tricks to look out for.

This is the point where I usually start feeling pretty good about myself.

Then, of course, the game difficulty catches up with me, and I'm brought back to the reality that, no, I'm not a video game god.  I've just played way too many of these action-adventure type games, and the variety between them is slim.  Now, I'm only about two and a half hours into Dante's Inferno, so I'm at the point in the game where I'm still feeling pretty cocky about my abilities.  This inner glow of self confidence may be swaying my first impression of Visceral Games' new title, so be aware that I'm basing these opinions based only on my initial reactions.

Okay, so here we go:

Dante's Inferno, from the beginning, is dark, polished, impressive...and a little disturbing.  You, of course, play as Dante (you know...like the book) as he works his way through the nine circles of hell in order to save his beloved Beatrice.  The game is wrought with Catholic themes, which (as someone who is non-religious but enjoys Biblical stories as literature) I thought gave the game a nice touch.  For example, you obtain pieces of silver ("Judas Coins" they are called) during your travels in order to gain souls, and one of your special attacks is called "The Power of the Cross" and essentially consists of a giant, glowing cross moving powerfully through your enemies.  When prompted with a special finishing attack, you can choose to either "Absolve" or "Punish" your foe (for a variety of different rewards), and you can choose from either "Holy" or "Unholy" upgradable attacks.  Every aspect of gameplay was very well thought out by the creators, which I appreciated after Darksiders' less-than-polished feel.

The graphics are impressive, and though they are not quite up to God of War standards, I was pleasantly surprised by how smooth they appeared, even though I played on an X-Box 360 consol.  The environment is dark and forbidding...perfect for a storyline that intents to take you through the circles of Hell...and the game doesn't shy away from using disturbing imagery and gruesome cut-scenes to drive the atmosphere home.  Darksiders, though a hack-and-slash, had an almost cartoon-y and lighthearted feel to it...nothing particularly chilled me.  Dante's Inferno is in a completely different ballpark, taking far more artistic inspiration from the God of War series.

And overall, I've really enjoyed the first few hours of the game.  The enemies I've faced thus far haven't been particularly hard, but there's something to be said about getting to feel bad-ass for a while.  The puzzles have been challenging, but not unsolvable.  So far, I like it.

Now for the bad:

Like I said, the bosses so far have been easy...maybe a little too easy...though I've been playing on the Medium difficulty level.  In addition, some of the battles just go on for too long.  Lengthy battles are okay, but you need to be engaged during the entire conflict.  Some of the battles (both common foes and bosses alike) become tedious and repetitive, and would have been more effective if they were more difficult and shorter.

I also get the feeling that this isn't a long game.  It took be two and a half hours (or so) to reach the end of the second circle (Lust).  Half of that gameplay was used to get Dante into Hell in the first place.  The circles themselves don't seem particularly lengthy, requiring perhaps a half hour to an hour each.  I'm anticipating that the game will take around 8-10 hours, which feels a little short to me.  Granted, the amazingly good Dead Space only took me 9 hours to complete, but it had high replay value.  I'm not certain, at this point, whether Dante's Inferno will have that.

And again, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but the similarities to God of War are striking.  This is my third hack-and-slash that I've played in a row (after this, I think I'm going to try an RPG or survival horror title), and that might be contributing to the overall feeling that I'm not getting anything particularly new out of the game.  If Darksiders felt like I was playing a cheap rip-off of God of War, Dante's Inferno sort of feels like I'm playing an early-released God of War 4, or a spin-off that used Catholicism as inspiration rather than Greek Mythology.  Enjoyable as the game may be, I can't help but feel like there has to be something new that these action-adventure game developers can come up with.

Anyhow, as I mentioned, this is just my first impression.  Maybe my opinions will be skewed after a few more hours of gameplay, either for better or worse.  Only time will tell.  All I DO know is that all this talking about Dante's Inferno has made me want to play again, so I'm going to get back to that.

Until next time!

Darksiders: B+

It's hard to talk about Vigil Games' hack-and-slash Darksiders without also talking about the God of War series.  Both games revolve around heavy religious themes, though Darksiders seems to focus on modern Christianity while God of War expores more ancient Greek mythology.  The two games feature similar story-lines.  In the beginning of Darksiders, the protagonist War (you know...from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?) is stripped of his godly powers and forced to gain them back, one by one.  This is reminiscent of Kratos' struggle in God of War 2, where the abilities he gained from defeating Ares in the first game are taken away by Zeus.  The two games have similar gameplay, nearly identical methods of obtaining health and experience, and involve the gradual finding of new and game-dependent weapons and magic.  Even some of the monsters you face are similar.  I could talk endlessly about the comparisons, but I think you get my point.

Games, of course, take inspiration from one another.  Early favorites like Final Fantasy and Zelda set the bar for all RPGs after them (and probably there were others before those, but I was a late arrival to the scene), and it's difficult to be truly innovative within a genre.  In truth, I don't blame the Darksiders team for trying to emulate God of War.  The God of War series is PS3 exclusive (my console), and I imagine that Darksiders acts as a decent replacement for X-Box 360 fans (like my boyfriend).  My point is that if you've played both, you're going to compare, and it's difficult to be impartial.

So here we go:

As I mentioned before, Darksiders is heavily influenced by Christian biblical stories.  The main character, War, is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and has been sent to earth by the Charred Council in order to protect Earth from destruction by warring groups of angels and demons.  It sounds pretty awesome, right?  I was actually pretty impressed by the opening sequences, though that's not surprising, considering that they were pre-rendered.  I was particularly impressed by the smooth, lifelike animation of people during these first sequences, though it's the only time in the game that you see any human activity.

After some initial training battles and early instruction on the controls, you learn that none of the other Four Horsemen have arrived at the scene, and that the Horseman, in fact, were never summoned by the Council at all.  War is therefore accused of attempting to preemptively bring upon the Apocalypse, and, in order to spare his life, promises to seek out the one responsible.  I won't ruin any of the other more fun plot points (though I was pretty excited by the arrival of familiar Biblical figures such as Abaddon and Azrael), but it is with this goal that War sets out amongst the essentially destroyed world to clear his name and confront a host of angels and demons.

So what is there to like?  Quite a lot, actually.  When I first started playing the game and noted all of the God of War similarities, I initially wanted to dislike it.  I've been a God of War fan since the first game, and I tend to be a little game-loyal to a fault.  After a few hours of gameplay, however, I couldn't deny that I was having fun.  And in truth, it makes a lot of sense...if you like God of War, you're bound to like Darksiders.  You get to hack away at demons and feel generally bad-ass, explore a post-apocalyptic Earth (a bonus for Mad Max fans), and be challenged when confronting the more difficult, and sometimes extremely challenging, bosses.  I'm probably about four-fifths of the way through the game with a running time (so far) of about 14 hours, so there's enough to do to make the purchase worthwhile, and there are special "Soldier Artifacts" and other treasures to find for completionists.

In fact, if you are a puzzle person, you might like Darksiders BETTER than God of War.  I actually found the puzzles in Darksiders to be more complicated than those that you face as Kratos, and more numerous.  The entire game, at times, feels like one giant puzzle, and if that manner of gameplay is for you, you'd certainly be satisfied by War's quest.

So why not give it an A?  Or an A-, at the very least?  There are a few things that I find frustrating about the game.  One of them is fairly small - the screen is extremely prone to taring, which I hear is common amongst X-Box 360 games.  To be honest, I didn't notice it until it was pointed out to me, and now I can't HELP but notice it all the time.  In a somewhat similar arena, the camera movements are not as smooth as they could be, and the game lacks the overall polish of a more established game series (such as, you guessed it, God of War 3).

I also found the controls to sometimes be confusing, and felt that the game gave very few instructions on how to equip weapons, how to use weapon enhancers, and how to use or choose bought items.  For example, you can place some of your weapons into the top, left and right slots, but not the bottom.  Only two specific weapons can be put into the bottom slot.  Why?  I'm not sure, and they never quite explain it to you either.  All I know is that I spent several minutes clicking through the options, just trying to get a feel for how the set-up works.  (And let's be frank, I'm not the most skilled gamer in the world -- I just really like to play).

Also, when you have the option to buy items later on using soul points, the store set-up is muddled and quite confusing.  I eventually gathered that the first row of items was consumables, while the second and third contained special upgraded moves for your weapons, and the fourth...well, to be honest, I'm still not entirely sure what the purpose of the fourth row of buyable items is for.  Weapon upgrades, perhaps?  I'm sure that if I took the time to leaf through the instruction manual, I could find out, but (to be honest) I like clarity in a game and being explained what to do.  Eventually, I just started buying items at random, and that strategy hasn't effected my ability to slaughter bosses so far.

I've heard that Darksiders 2 has been announced, and I'm sure that in their second installment, they will more-or-less get their act together.  It takes a long time for established series to really hit their stride, and hopefully Darksiders 2 will have an increased budget to smooth out some of the rougher points of its gameplay.  Overall, though, I can't deny that I've really enjoyed playing the game, and that it has a lot of great qualities that more than make up for a few technical problems.  So though I give this game a B+ (at least at the point where I'm at), I fully expect that they will improve for Darksiders 2 and boost that rating up towards an A...because, overall, the game has a great premise and some great ideas, and I'm sure that, in the future, they will do more with it.

Plus, you get to be War from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  And that's just awesome.