Okay, so in another thread there was this discussion about this game Herman or whatever. So I was like, "If I had it, I'd review it!" People were all silent and stuff, which is fine because I assume they don't care. Well, I like to be critical of games and whatnot so if anyone wants to provide games (not literally, unless you really feel like being that generous) for me to review then post the game title here along with the system it is on. I have a PS3, Wii, PC, 360, PS2, DS, and a PSP that lets me emulate any old system I want to.
After I get about 5 suggestions or so, I will either start a poll or randomly pick one. This top post will be updated with the reviews and whatnot. I'm pretty critical about things and will section them according to visual, audio, stability, gameplay, controls, and replayability. Each section will receive a score out of 100 and the game will receive an average total score out of 100. Then I will post my personal notes about the game. For instance, a game that is wholly unremarkable may score a 70~ or so, but it may just be really, really fun. This is a redeeming factor that should be taken into consideration. Even though the score is meant to be an across-the-board, very objective look at the game, there may be redeeming factors that make it a blast.
Let me know what you guys think!
Dante's Inferno - (WARNING: NSFW): 70/100
Visual: 90/100
Visually, Dante's Inferno is very stylized. It's got that crisp look you'll find in many blockbuster games like Gears of War, God of War, Darksiders, and even a touch of Elder Scrolls. The enemies are tailored to the areas you fight them in, so if you encounter an enemy in the Lust circle of hell, it will be related to that. There are also generic enemy types that follow you around, like general tormented souls and whatnot. When you get up close to some of the generic models, you can tell that they were a bit under designed as the textures become very obvious.
The areas of the game, in general, are really great to look at. The background and foreground mesh very well and, often, it is difficult to see where one ends and the other begins. Interactive objects also don't suffer from different textures, so they are often indistinguishable from the non-interactive scene items. The two levels of Hell I had a chance to see were Lust and Gluttony and both were stunning in their own way. Lust had spirals of wind that, essentially, consisted of the pleasured wails and moans of those damned to that circle while Gluttony had pools of bile and acid that the damned flailed about in, wailing in agony.
Some of the visuals, however, were rather over the top. Lust is a great example of this. There were female enemies in Lust that, I kid you not, had vagina tentacles. They would reach down, spread themselves open, and this great disgusting demon tentacle with a vagina-shaped mouth would splurt forth to attack you. It was insane. Then there is the giant penis tower. I'm still not joking. It rises out of the purplish undulating sea that seems to bracket this level of Hell and is surrounded by a sheath of the Winds of Lust, complete with moaning charred Damned flying around it. Your goal is to climb to the top of this tower via an interior elevator, and the interior looks mighty veiny and flesh-like. While you're going up, however, you get to the icing on this cake. No, the tower doesn't splooge... but a giant naked woman (Cleopatra, actually) climbs the tower. Yes, she is in the nude, completely. Wait, maybe she had a loincloth or something... But it doesn't matter. She climbs the tower after you, or perhaps intending to use it for some other purpose as she is the ruler of this really weird place... My brain hurts to think about it. Needless to say, she is highly detailed, complete with breast physics that make me feel like a saggy grandma. Of course, her nipples are little mouths with undulating tongues that spew out a cloud of yellowish ichor and unbaptized babies with knives for arms. I really wish I was joking, but yeah. Lust pretty much tells you exactly how outrageous this game gets.
Audio:70/100
There isn't much to say about the sound, as it really was spot on. The voice acting was a little standard, but the sounds for various beasties and attacks seemed, largely, on target. I didn't have any gripes except for the fact that the Damned, in this game, almost never stop wailing. There are three easily definable tracks to this game: Music, FX, and the Wailing of the Damned.
Unfortunately, the Wailing keeps grating at me, even while locked in combat. I hate babies crying, I hate emergency vehicle sirens, but neither is as bad as this Wailing. The main problem is that it's a subtle noise, so even when you think it's disappeared, you quickly realize it's just hovering right on the edge of your audible range. Unless you're really close to a wall, which are all composed of the Damned, then it's really fucking loud. I hate wall-crawling scenes because of this.
Stability: 90/100
I encountered no major bugs or snags in this game. Of course, there was a patch right after release, which lowers the score... Loading times seemed acceptable as well.
Gameplay: 50/100
Repetitive hack and slash. God of War fans, you'll be right at home. You have heavy attacks, light attacks, and your "other" attacks, which are ranged cross-based ones in this case. Boss battles get very tedious as there are actually triggers to downing the health of many Big Bads. Games like God of War simply say, "Fuck up the quicktime? You die or get injured, but the boss still has a heath bar, buck-o! Bring that shit to 0!" Dante's Inferno decides, "Nooo! Fuck that! We're going to cut out boss health. Instead, to kill these fuckers, you need to attack them until they're staggered, then perform a usually complicated and almost never intuitive quick time action. Repeat this until we say you win. On second thought, no... We'll just give the boss aggravating area attacks that you can just barely dodge as their attack path is almost twice as wide as your dodging radius and let you suffer!"
Boss battles really made me feel like I was in Hell, which is not a good thing in this game. This isn't figurative Hell, nor an allusion to how immersive this game is(n't). This is literal Hell. Boss battles are aggravating, repetitive, and often make you go, "What the fuck do I need to do?!" or "When the fuck does this end!" It only got better with a boss like Cerberus. I mean, at least you know that bastard only has three heads so as long as you can count that high you know you've got that many to go.
Unfortunately, fighting is all there is to this game. It can get old, quick. There didn't seem to be any puzzles or anything to variate from the formula, which may not always be bad but makes Dante's Inferno seem shallow.
Speaking of shallow, the "upgrade" system they have is stupid, too. You have a pseudo-moral choice in which you can damn the baddies or absolve them. Damning them nets you unholy points while absolving them nets you holy points. How intuitive. Of course, now you get to spend them and, oh... What is this? Well, there are seven levels of each track and they are quite specialized. To put it bluntly, the unholy track nets you melee attacks and the holy one nets you ranged attacks. This means that any moral decision is tossed out of the window. They then hurl the window into the sun when you realize that your choice has no effect on the ending. None. Dante's Inferno is, by no means, a literal interpretation of the epic so you think they could have at least given a "good" and a "bad" ending? No, no way. To piss you off a bit more, you can occasionally find what I like to call the Super Damned. Everyone in Hell is Damned, but the Super Damned are those special ones that are pretty much just famous. You can damn them in one quick stroke, or play 30 seconds of a Guitar Hero, Rock Band, or (for you obscure gamers out there) Guitaroo Man style minigame to absolve them. While that sounds cool, they actually make a power-up where you can auto-absolve these Super Damned... But you have to find it first. So they torture you with a shitty minigame and then say, "If you don't like it, scour all of the levels and find all the Beatrice Stones so you don't have to do it!"
Well, at least the hack-and-slash bits are solid.
Controls: 90/100
Except for camera concerns, the controls were also good. The camera liked to be finnicky with me, but others may like it so it isn't too major of a concern. I didn't like how, in boss battles where the boss is redonculously large, you can often miss the quicktime triggers because they appear on scenery objects. You miss these because the camera likes to be finnicky. Minor problem, though, as once you figure out where the triggers are, you can easily watch for them again as boss battles are goddamn tedious. Whoops, raging on that again...
Replayability: 50/100
(Not) long story short, it's akin to replaying a God of War title. You do it if you like it or are a completionist, but not because there is actually some substantial bit of game you missed.
Overall, my experience with Dante's Inferno was enjoyable. Despite some major hangups and annoyances, I liked playing it. In my opinion, it's not worth $60, but then again very few games these days are. With God of War III out, though, your money and time could be better spent there as Dante's Inferno is really just EA's attempt to be God of War. It tries to be more epic, but ends up just being more outrageous. I have heard that, as you get deeper into Hell, the levels get even more base and that the beginning levels are far better. I didn't put this in the review, however, as I don't have first hand experience with that. I didn't beat the game as it, simply, did not hold my interest that long. I hear that the last level is on the Lake of Fire and all there is to do there is to lay the smack down on the Prince of Darkness himself. I found myself thinking, "They got Ozzy in the game?" at first, but then I realized it's just probably a boss battle with an oversized generic Satan figure. Joy.
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Topic: Games - Suggested by you, reviewed by me! (UPDATED: 4/23/10) (Read 2734 times)