The Hawkeye

There should not have been a video game based on Dante Alighieri's Inferno, the first part of his Divine Comedy. Electronic Arts disagreed, recently releasing a game called Dante's Inferno. Whatever the game may have in common with the epic poem is irrelevant as Dante's Inferno (the game) has problems of its own to overcome.

The story of the Divine Comedy is an allegorical representation of hell in which Dante, with Roman poet Virgil as his guide, travels through hell as a metaphor for a sinful soul's path to god.

The story of the game Dante's Inferno deals with a sinful and often inhumane Dante facing hell and all of its demons to get his lost love, Beatrice, back.

So they have turned the brilliance of the Divine Comedy into a shoddy love story you find in most blockbuster films. The game has nothing deeper to offer as Dante travels through hell, he must face all of his earthly sins and his betrayal of Beatrice in order to free her soul from hell.

The second, and most difficult, challenge Dante's Inferno faces is its presence in the overrated genre of stylized action games. Bayonetta just recently being released Ninja Gaiden 2 and Devil May Cry 4 (two much better games).

However, Dante's greatest enemy is God of War, God of War II and the fact that God of War III comes out barely a month after Dante's initial release.

Anybody who has a slight urge to play Dante's Inferno at any point may as well play God of War. Dante's Inferno may as well be a shameless reskinned version of 2007's God of War II, because it does nothing that game didn't do, and doesn't do some things that game did.

It is almost like they had a God of War Clone checklist while making Dante. Stylized melee combat with an ancient 'greekish' feel to it, quick time events used to kill tougher enemies, large bosses, and a way to upgrade character through use of souls are all contained in Dante.

If you are wondering how Dante's Inferno plays, chances are you already know if you have ever played Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, God of War, Bayonetta or any hack-n-slash game made in the past ten years.

As far as presentation for Dante goes, it can be summed up as "looks and sounds just like God of War." I'm actually pretty sure I heard a song in Dante's Inferno that played during the first God of War.

It's like they didn't even try to be original. The game looks good, but so did God of War II on the Playstation 2 back in 2007. The game's art style is a carbon copy of God of War.

Ripping something off to this magnitude should be a crime. The developers of this game should be in jail. David Jaffe (creator of the original God of War) even made jokes about Capcom (creators of Devil May Cry, arguably the first stylized action game) putting him in jail for ripping them off when Dante's Inferno was announced.

The difference was those two games had significant similarities and differences, whereas Dante is a synthetic clone of God of War.

While Dante as a game works to an extent (other than bastardizing the epic poem as a showcase for violence and nudity) because of its utter absence of originality, it will never be remembered.

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