Visceral Games

Hellishly Good

HIGH Demolishing hordes of demons with righteous holy light.

LOW Trying to figure out how to stay airborne for eight seconds.

WTF Why is there no second, darker ending for playing the evil side?

I polished off Dante’s Inferno a few days ago, and liked it so much that I went back and completed the Gates of Hell survival mode, and I never do that kind of stuff. In fact, I was almost tempted to play through it again in order to max out the Evil side of the skills tree, but common sense got the better of me and I figured that my time should probably go towards something else in my to-play pile.

After doing my due diligence for the podcast (and noticing that there's a much-needed lull in current releases) I went to my "play this later" stack and selected Dante's Inferno. An infamous title for several reasons, I think it's fair to say that I didn't expect anything more than a poorly-conceived God of War clone, but the reality is that it's a much better game than I could have guessed.

Visceral's Own Aokigahara

HIGH It's free!

LOW It's still not even worth the HD space it's written on.

WTF So Dante fought his fiercest foes before he even stepped foot into Hell?

I'm currently making my way through the end of Dante's Inferno on the PlayStation Portable (PSP) and I find myself enjoying the port much more than I thought I would. As a portable conversion of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) and 360 title, the PSP game impresses: There are audio problems in the CG sequences and some formerly playable sequences (none of them too important or sizable) have been changed to pre-rendered film, but on the whole it's about as detailed and playable a port of a full-sized, current-generation game as one could hope for.

Sinnerman

HIGH Pinning hordes of demons down under a merciless barrage of incandescent crucifixes.

LOW Slogging through the repetitious "trials" of Fraud.

WTF A draw between the giant flaming anuses of Gluttony and Lucifer's huge, physics enabled penis.

For those that don't know, it's an on-rails shooter that acts as a prequel to the original Dead Space. Considering that the first game was a high-gloss Survival (Action) Horror game, I have to say that the decision to create a prequel in a completely different genre on a completely different system is a little puzzling, but the quality is certainly there.

Those crazy Electronic Arts marketing folks are at it again—because nothing says "holiday cheer" quite like a song about Hell and Lucifer sung to the tune of the "12 Days of Christmas".

The demo for Visceral Games' loose adaptation of Dante's classic story is already out for the PS3. The Xbox 360 demo hits tomorrow. Until then, mix this with the Nat King Cole at your holiday festivities and see how your guests react…

First up, news from Electronic Arts (courtesy of Kotaku) concerning the release date for the game's official demo. PS3 and XBox 360 owners will be able to try out the first level of the title sometime next month. EA hasn't been more specific than that but you can at least sleep easy tonight knowing that you'll be guiding Dante through Hades sooner rather than later.

If that wasn't enough to satiate your need for all things Inferno, here's another developer diary on the game. This newest segment covers level six, better known as "Heresy". This new level finds Dante going deeper into Hell–and it's the first area in the game that really portrays a fire-and-brimstone Hell that many of us recognize from the Bible. One of the producers mentions that by this stage, we're "in Satan's backyard".

Dante's Inferno continues to impress me with each new diary they reveal (which means EA's marketing plan is working). We'll all get a chance to experience the finished product when it hits retailers everywhere on February 9th of next year.