While I am on the subject of Dante’s Inferno, I gave the demo a whirl to see if the game had any more surprises for me. As you all probably know I had a hands on preview with the game at Eurogamer ’09. So when I came to download the demo off XBox LIVE. I was pretty much expecting the same demo I played at Eurogamer. Oh how wrong I was.
This demo showed me the very start of the game. It shows how Dante got into hell in the first place, and shows the plot of the game. To cut a long story short, Dante was one of the holy crusaders who was ordered to kill innocent people under gods orders (apparently). He eventually gets murdered himself and has to confront death, who gives him a couple of home truths and basically says, you are coming to hell. Dante refuses and a boss fight against death commences. This is how Dante gets his mitts on the scythe he uses throughout the game. I couldn’t help but grin stupidly when death appeared before Dante, it was truly awesome.
So anyway death has been defeated and Dante is still wandering the earth. He thinks it would be a great idea to sew a tapestry into his chest to represent all the innocent lives he plundered as a nice reminder of what a bastard he was. He then returns home to find his wife, Beatrice dead, he then sees her spirit been taken away by who I assume is Lucifer and so the journey to hell begins.
This is the part of the demo where I have to congratulate EA. Because the slow but brilliant conversion of the earth to the gates of hell in this demo is seamless and well put together. We all have some idea of what hell on earth would be like right? Fire, Brimstone, demons coming out of any nook and cranny imaginable. This is pretty much what happens here, but it also has me thinking. The parts where earth suddenly is over run by hell demons, is that in Dante’s head? I mean if demons started sprouting up everywhere surly there would be riots and chaos but no one else can be seen running for their lives its just Dante battling through these demons by himself. So I am a little confused as to whether this will be all in Dante’s head or not. But hey thats story line for you.
The game play, I think is a nice mix between God of War and Devil May Cry. At Eurogamer I was thinking this game was just another God Of War wanna be, who does a great impersonation. But as I played through the demo, I could defiantly tell EA have been looking at all hack and slash games. As I played through I couldn’t help but notice a small bar in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, when this bar is full you have the opportunity to hit LB and RB at the same time to unleash Dante’s unstoppable power which kinda stinks of the devil trigger from Devil May Cry. Not that it’s a huge problem mind. Dante’s inferno is actually combing some great elements from other hack and slash games, and putting is own mark on it, which is pretty damn cool. What I also noticed is that you could condemn or absolve pretty much every demon throughout the game, which you couldn’t do in the demo I played at Eurogamer, I have also found out that the more demons you condemn the better and more powerful the scythe becomes, but the more souls you absolves the better your cross becomes, so it’s a pretty neat way of customizing your weapons. You also have the classic combo purchasing mechanic you have with pretty much all hack and slash games. So fans of the genre will be right at home here and will not feel alienated for a second.
Not much else to say here that is heavily different from my hands on with the game at Eurogamer. This is shaping up to be one hell of a game, and I hope to get my pre-order in as soon as I can, Even if it does come with Dead Space outfit.
Garv
