Big, dumb, and very fun. Just like God of War, as everyone knows, but a worthy distraction.
The game play is fluid and works well, and the difficulty is certainly solid on the harder settings, but noticeably the difficult curve is a little off, the game's first boss being by far the hardest.
The graphics are good, nothing stunning mind, but good. The locations and backgrounds are far superior to the characters, in my opinion. Which is nice that they put so much effort in the look and atmosphere of the layers of Hell, but it would have been better if the characters that inhabit it were so detailed and innovative.
As far as characters are concerned, they are a wee bit bland. Dante himself is very run of the mill, not exactly much to him other than his single minded quest, but that hasn't stopped most of gaming's most prominent figures. Beatrice is the typical poor love interest, torn between heaven and hell, bare naked throughout and obviously in dire need of help. Virgil might as well be a talking tourist manual for all the relevance he has the story, but at least his dialogue is straight from the Divine Comedy, and reminds you nicely of the source material in some areas. The best character in my eyes was Lucifer himself, he just had more energy and more emotion than any of the protagonists.
The bosses were big, revolting to look at and fun to fight, so pretty much perfect, and there's a nice few of them.
The game clocks in a little short, in my eyes, some might take longer to get through it but I could finish it within a single solid night's gaming. Replay value is to be found in the harder (and they are HARD) difficulty settings, as well as finding various unfortunate souls to punish or absolve as you see fit, silver pieces from the hands of Judas, and other such collectible knickknacks, as well as the promise of downloadable content to come in due time.
All in all, a fun ride, if a little short, and probably nothing you haven't experienced before as far as mechanics are concerned. And perhaps not for those types who are sensitive to nudity, as Dante's Inferno features a plethora of nudity, from Beatrice's helpless topless princess routine right up to Cleopatra's bare rack that any guy would say is more than a handful, and even Dante's own exceptionally well endowed penis is to be seen.
So go after it if you enjoy a good action game, but if you're the hardcore type, you may find it over and done with a little fast.