Dante's Inferno: Video Game Review

Dante's Inferno is a classic work of literature that has changed both the literary and christian world.  Did you know that the Bible makes no real mention of the structure of Hell as thoroughly as the Hell depicted in Inferno? So everything taken as common knowledge about Hell is taken from the pages of a poem written some 700 years ago. Amazing huh?



Okay, history lesson over.



WHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!





The game in a nutshell follows the story of the Inferno, though it has been tweaked a little bit to enable plot twists, naked women being captured by Lucifer and of course massive amounts of beating up demons. 

Numero Uno: The Good Things

1) It's beautiful. Never to be outdone EA Games (Medal of Honor, Rock Band) and Visceral Games (Dead Space) really worked their booties off to create a game whose cut scenes are gorgeous, lifelike and almost like watching moving artwork.  There's a scene where Lucifer is floating around gloating over his "marriage" to Beatrice and *shudder* he's so creepy looking! This coupled with the complex and layered scenes depicting Hell as Hell-ishly as possible makes the game a joy to look at and each scene more interesting than the last. You've got "souls" hanging off spikes that actually move their arms and legs when you get closer to them. The depiction of demons is beautiful and horrible in its execution---really gross looking demons and boiling blood rivers....very Hellish. I never really saw two settings that looked the same as the last.



I really want those shoes

 2) It's clever. I really like the Absolve/Punish feature which adds a personal touch to the gameplay. I always felt really bad when I had to punish someone but absolving Pontius Pilate made me feel all good about myself. But there are some really cool characters in there, including some from Classical Literature like Orpheus, Mordred and Hecuba. There are also some cool historical characters like Boudicca, Emperor Frederick II and Attila the Hun. There are minigames to capture sins and all that. It's great. The Virgil element adds a bit of class to all the demonic blood-shed and I completely fell in love with the direct quotes from the original text. Really quite an intelligent game.

3) It's fun. I like hack/slash games because of their pick-up and play mentality. I like being able to kick the crap out of some demons at the end of the day. I like how cool and fluid the actions are behind the combos. I also like the relic-collecting and upgrading along with the combo-tree aspect you can enhance your character with as you free more and more souls. As a fan of platforming I also like the puzzle aspect of the game and how you really have to figure out where to go next to get to the next level--this interwoven with beating up bad guys makes the game a lot more fun.

Numero Dos: The Bad, Bad Things.



TAKE THAT!

 1) Okay. Here's my problem. The game is really, really, REALLY repetitive. I thought Assassin's Creed was repetitive but this is just ridiculous. The first level is great because the demons are cleverly constructed in how the kick the crap out of you. They're hoochies with crazy man-eating lady-parts.  Because that level is Lust. Get it? And Gluttony is full of big wormy eating things. Because its eating stuff, get it? And even Greed...Greed is full of molten gold and spinning guys full of coins.....wait...what? And beyond that? It's mostly just angry angry demons that get different shades of paint for each level. It gets really old after a while. Old in the way "I just want to finish this part because I know the boss will be something cool." Which, granted is generally true. But I felt like I was doing a chore...like I'd seen everything I was going to see.

2) The mechanics were pretty irritating. Sometimes I really had to trick my character into doing what I wanted him to do...like jump straight up. And it was often unclear just where I was supposed to go next. This coupled with unforgiving environment (it IS Hell after all) led to a great deal of very fatal accidents involving cliffs and me falling off them.  There was one point in particular---and I will clarify something first if only to mollify my pride. I've been playing video games since I was 5 years old. I know how to jump over somewhere that will kill me. But I "misjumped" into lava like 20 times because the edge mechanic and the AI controlling how my character reacts with the environment is retarded. I would land on the edge of a rock and just slide off. On top of this, there is no camera control. I can't zoom in, rotate, even 1st person the scenery which makes the game feel really difficult to explore and makes my character hard to maneuver sometimes---especially when something I need to jump on is off screen. Talk about leap of faith.

3) No saving. You only save at specific points. Which is lame. Because if I die (constantly like that lava thing, which wasn't the only time kiddies) I go allllllllll the way back to my last save. Unless there was a random cut-scene or whatever. As a goody-hunter this is a little irritating--which brings me to my next point.

4) No backtracking. I don't like how there are all these things to look for and they're constantly hidden randomly all over the place in these "off the beaten path" locations and WE CAN'T GO BACK FOR THEM! There are only 2 points in the entire game that you can backtrack and of course those two points? There isn't anything for you to go back for. GAH!

All-in-All I really liked this game because it gave someone like me, a huge history and literature nerd, something squeal about. I like the beauty and horror tied in with the hack/slash platforming aspect. While a little bit rough around the edges the game is certainly worth playing and definitely make a worthwhile effort to beat. Give it a shot most definitely. I have it on XBOX 360 if anyone wants to borrow it!

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Legion Review

I enjoy angels. I've read Sandman and Lucifer, I cried at Michael (1996) and saw that weird Paul Hogan movie that came out after Crocodile Dundee II (1988). I enjoy bad ass things with wings. And somehow the idea of angels with weapons other than flaming swords while admittedly unorthodox (pun slightly intended) is potentially cool. So when I saw Legion was coming out this year I was intrigued.

The plot has potential: apparently God has lost faith in humanity and has sent his legions of angels to possess weak willed humans to kill humanity's one last hope that is currently growing in the womb of an unwed mother (Adrianne Palicki) in the middle of the Mojave Desert in Nevada. *inhale* Michael (Paul Bettany) the archangel still has faith and cut his wings off and found a bunch of big guns and is helping the really important baby be born despite being told not to by his brother archangel Gabriel (Kevin Durand).

From an action movie stand point this film is entertaining. Lots of guns, scary jump moments (kind of) and some icky scenes involving bugs and blood. The film is also really pretty and obviously had a pretty decent budget. I like the filters that are used to shoot the desert scenes and I think the CGI was completely awesome. A ton better than the angel-stuff in Constantine(2005). The gore presence was small but focused. They use it in the correct places, like when a dude gets his back melted down to the spinal cord (wicked awesome) with angel acid and a possessed lady bites a chunk out of somebody etc. And again, the premise is really promising. I like that the film isn't just another "Satan versus God" shtick. It really does put a new-er spin on things and adds a breath of fresh air to the newly re-popularized end-of-the-world movie fascination in the US.

However, my problem with this film is how little time it spent on the angels. I mean their costumes in the film are totally cool and the CGI wings (bullet proof and really sharp apparently) are totally bad ass. But they spend a ton of time on the people in the film and not nearly enough on humanity through God's and the angels' eyes. They dwell on it vaguely through the eyes of a jerk cop (who then proceeds to fake-shoot a bunch of homeless people) but don't really give us God's story on why all the sudden humanity isn't worth it. What was the breaking point? What was the last straw? How do all the other angels feel about this? Can we meet some of them? Show us the beginning of time where Michael begins to love humanity. Show us more Gabriel/Michael arguments. More than just gun fights etc. Throughout the whole film I feel like I'm party to a story that happened just before I walked into the room. It's rather distracting and is borderline confusing.  I love back story in films and wish there was more to this one.

Then there is the ending. I guess that Hollywood has run out of endings for movies involving the apocalypse. Terminator (1984) anyone?  I mean come on! The film ends with a woman with a baby in the front seat of a car driving in the desert. She's even wearing a bandanna!

 That on top of the fact that the girl spends about 80% of the film arguing with a guy who 1) comes from a different plane (Kyle Reese was from the future, Michael from Heaven) she wields several guns none of which she could have just instantaneously learned how to use 3) fights a giant dude who can't be killed with weapons like a M16. I mean Gabriel is so obviously Arnold's character from Terminator (right down to Gabriel's weird Heaven-ese accent) that Legion's director Scott Charles Stewart should be paying James Cameron royalties. *sigh*

In the end I'm really glad I didn't see this movie in theaters because I would have felt like I'd spent WAAAY too much money. But it is a definite rent or watch on demand, I wouldn't buy it on DVD or Blue-Ray. The film is certainly entertaining but is bland and unoriginal enough to prevent my clearing a space on the shelf for it.