Dante's Inferno Preview

Welcome to Hell. Watch out for the killer mutant babies.

There's a hole where her nipple should be, and babies are crawling out of it. Not just any babies, you understand, but the mutant kind that have razor-sharp arms. They're scurrying across the hillside of her naked breasts, and in a minute they'll drop down onto the platform next to you. When they get there, they'll attempt to kill you. You'll have to fight them, these babies - you'll have to cut them up with your scythe. And all the while you'll be watched by Cleopatra - a giant lady with claws and what appear to be manholes, or perhaps babyholes, on the end of her dugs.

Welcome to Lust, the Fourth Circle of Hell. If you want to stick around here, you better get used to the omnipresent weirdness. Having played Dante's Inferno before I was prepared to see some strange goings on last week - and yet I was still taken aback by some of the more peculiar bits of scenery: columns shaped like massive phalluses, sperm patterns on the floors, and gateways that looks suspiciously like a Lady's Fairy Garden.

If you're new to Dante's Inferno, here's what you need to know: it's a God of War-style action title from EA's Visceral Games, featuring lots of combo-heavy close combat and quite a bit of platforming, interspersed with the occasional puzzle. It's loosely based on The Divine Comedy, an epic poem from the 14th Century in which the author, Dante, journeys through the nine Circles of Hell. This adaptation has redressed the story slightly, in that Dante is now fighting to redeem himself and to save the soul of Beatrice, his dead lover, but much of the text's sinister imagery is still in tact. Indeed, the game can be quite a trippy experience, and the action all runs at a slick 60 frames per second.

The section of the game I played last week was taken from the middle of the game, when Dante is fighting his way through Lust. As before, frenzied hacking and slashing was the order of the day, but by the point in the story our hero had levelled up his skills quite considerably. From time to time you'll be given the choice to either absolve or punish your enemies: if you pick the former option, you'll save their soul and earn XP towards upgrading your ranged Holy Cross attack; if you opt for the latter you'll get to tool up your melee skills with the scythe. I've not had the time to fully inspect the skill trees for each path, but there certainly seem to be a lot of skills on offer.

The character on the build I played was more geared towards close combat, with a wide array of moves and modifiers on offer. There are heavy and light attacks mapped to two of the face buttons, but one of the triggers acts as a modifier that adds a second set of blows. When you factor in the jump attacks and a set of performance-enhancing spells, it's clear that Dante isn't just good at scribbling out stanzas - he's a teeth-snapping poet of violence. The combat in Inferno is fast, combo-heavy and very satisfying. There aren't quite as many characters on screen at a time as in God of War, but there's certainly a similar intensity at times - and the on-screen combo meter feels pure Kratos & co.