It doesn't succeed at much, but it's hard not to appreciate what Dante's Inferno tries to do.
Not long after you get to hell, you'll be told by a poet named Virgil that there are nine layers of hell that are dedicated to nine different sins. The first few are reserved for people who commit minor sins like limbo and lust, while the deeper layers are home to much worse sins like heresy and fraud. You'll need to travel all the way down to the bowels of hell to save Beatrice, which means that you'll traverse through all nine layers in your quest. Dante is armed with a huge scythe that has a surprising number of uses. Not only does it cut demons up beautifully, but it can also be used to grab onto ledges and make Dante swing from it like a rope.
At certain points in the game, Dante will have visions of his past; this is how the majority of the story is told. Not all of the cutscenes are clear, which makes the story confusing at times. What you'll learn is that Dante has had a very rough life. The more I learned about him, the more I disliked him. His past makes him come across as a heartless jerk who's difficult to relate to. The story filled cutscenes use a cartoonish art style that reminds me of the one from God of War.
As you'd expect from an action adventure game, you'll be doing a lot of combat, platforming and puzzle solving in Dante's Inferno. You use the X button for light scythe attacks, the Y button for heavy scythe attacks, the B button for a cross attack and the left shoulder button for magic attacks. There are a disappointing amount of scythe combos in the game, even after you've unlocked all of them. It's likely that you'll use a combo that's good for hitting multiple enemies and then continue to use that same combo throughout the majority of the game. This makes Dante's Inferno not much of a skill based game.
With a press of the B button, Dante will use a magic cross to throw an illuminated crucifix at his enemies, which stuns them. It's funny to see demons burn after they're hit with a big white crucifix, but the cross isn't as effective as the scythe. The platforming and puzzles are quite good, if a bit underutilized. The puzzles are enjoyable but they tend to be short.
Despite the combat being underwhelming, the boss fights in Dante's Inferno were better than I thought they'd be. This is due to the greatly designed bosses in addition to the environments you fight them in. These bosses range from the grim reaper to Satan. With all due respect to other games, I don't think it's possible to have a better villain than the devil himself.
From time to time, you'll come across prisoners that are off the beaten path. These people committed terrible sins in their mortal life. When you talk to one of them, their sin is written on the screen and you're given a choice to either absolve them or punish them. Absolving them will award you with holy points, while punishing them awards you with unholy points. As you keep collecting holy/unholy power, you can unlock more powerful combos for combat. You use a currency called "souls" to buy these; as you defeat enemies, they'll leave behind souls. This gives the game an interesting moral twist. If you choose to play the game as holy, you'll be able to buy cross attacks, while unholy people will be able to buy scythe attacks.
Dante's Inferno is a great looking game from a technical point of view; the combat animations are fluid, the textures are generally sharp looking and the frame-rate never seems to drop. Artistically, the layers of hell look good in some cases and bad in others. You'll find people drowning in molten gold in the circle of greed, people locked in cages in the circle of limbo and floating platforms that look like raw hamburger patties in the circle of gluttony. On the other hand, the game doesn't do anything with the concept of lust; you would expect a level themed around lust to look very sexual or grotesque, but the developers dropped the ball on that. The circle of lust, along with a few other circles are dreary to look at.
Dante's Inferno will take you about ten hours to get through. A mode called "Gates of Hell" is eventually unlocked, which gives you a time limit to defeat increasingly stronger waves of enemies. It's worth mentioning that the developers plan on releasing some downloadable content in the near future; apparently it'll feature a co-op mode. Dante's Inferno is not a game that I can reccomend as a purchase because it'll only appeal to a select group of people. At the same time, I don't regret buying it because I enjoyed the puzzles, platforming and Gates of Hell mode. It's worth a rental if you're into gore and boobs, though. Thanks for reading.