14 DAY TRIAL // Death is ugly, that's the main observation I have to make from the first hours of Dante's Inferno. This is true both in the sense that the first character you battle, Death itself, is ugly, sporting the horns of a huge ram and the ribcage of a long rotten corpse, and in the sense that being dead and condemned to forever reside in Hell is one bad outcome for us mortals. I guess Dante's Inferno might very well be used to teach young videogame loving Christians about what damnation really looks like, replacing the rather dull pictures in more usual prayer books.
The game is also pretty capable of using animation scenes to convey the rather harsh realities of the Crusades and the evil things, which good men are capable of doing in service to their religious creeds.
Dante is by no means a serious character, meant to evoke strong emotions about past historical events and to drive gamers to think about the entanglements between spiritual and political power but maybe, just maybe, he will serve as a reason for some who picked up the Electronic Arts game to go on and learn more about history, Dante and why he depicted Hell as he did.
Hell, on the other hand, is not such an ugly place. There's a certain stylish gothic edge to the realms of everlasting torture. And the Charon as boat concept is really appealing. The only downside is the constant wailing, which can make playing for a longer stretch of time quite challenging.
Hell is also a place where you have to stand right in front of doors to open them by kicking hard with your foot on the age old metal and a place where health can only be garnered by repeatedly stabbing at green glowing fountains with a cross. And, finally, Hell seems the kind of place that Kratos from God of War III would feel right at home after he successfully takes out Olympus later in March. Just don't tell him a guy named Dante was there first.