14 DAY TRIAL // Dante's Inferno is one of the titles Electronic Arts is releasing in early 2010 on multiple gaming platforms, following all the controversy and the discussions after the announcement of the title, which is based on poet Dante's Divine Comedy. Now, the videogame has a demo up on Xbox Live and on the PlayStation Network, and a quick look at it shows that Dante's Inferno is a fun yet somewhat flawed action adventure focused on taking on large groups of enemies at once, all punctuated by the occasional boss fight.
One quick fact that jumps at the player is the slick presentation. The cutscenes have a hand drawn feel (even though that elephant, which takes out a crusader at one point is very much out of place for the era and the two armies fighting). Even unclothed people in the videogame seem, as far as the demo shows, natural and somewhat necessary.
The fights are pretty standard in the demo, with most of the enemies very forgettable. The fight that remains after the demo is the fight with Death itself, which encourages the player to actually deploy the full array of skills they have (it took me about three tries to take out the boss).
Unfortunately, it seems to rely too much on the block move. Without using it, even if leaping from one place to another and jumping when Death deploys its special attacks, the player has little chance to win the fight, mostly because of the quick recovery of the enemy character. Blocking for about one minute at the beginning of the fight and about another one once Death begins floating means that the gamer can learn the moves and time their counterattacks. The fight becomes much less exciting than it could be. Oh, and the final is a series of quick time events, which should constitute a capital sin in the gaming industry by this time.
Otherwise, it's a fun demo and the game might attract a throng of players who are itching for a third person perspective action adventure slasher. But I bet it would have been as good if the Dante name and the Beatrice name would have been dropped.