Firstly I will actively give a warning to those who haven’t played this game, as I will be posting NSFW pics from this game at some point. And these pics you ask obviously, they will be of Lucifers giant horsecock and ballsack. I mean what else would you expect?
At the very core this is based off the epic poem from the 14th century, comprising the first part of the divine comedy. The plot is pretty simple, man goes to Hell to save his dead partner. Or the slightly longer plot, Dante goes to Hell to follow his beloved Beatrice to save her soul from Hell and go to paradise (Heaven) Instead. And he has traverse all the nine circles slaughtering and saving many souls along the way. With the game being a perfect blend of the old devil may cry, God of war and Prince of Persia games.
The game itself is from way back in 2010, honestly graphically as well it still ain’t bad. Through the game with the basic animation at hand, there is also CGI cutscenes which are very well done, wouldn’t look amiss from a full blown animated film a couple years back. As well as cartoon sections that come from the self stitched cloth to Dante’s skin, metal as fuck, right?
It probably isn’t for everyone, especially if you are religious, but then again maybe it is for you still, who knows certainly not me. Amidst all the extreme blood and guts you wade through the story is woven tightly in the realm of very strong religious horror as well as body horror, and psychological. Everything is designed to be grotesque and the game follows a simple principle, if it can bleed it will. This goes from enemies, walls of corpses, even the gargoyles on the door have to be severed in order to pass through. The game is a strong 18 rating over here and is rightly deserved.
The combat is slick, fluid and hyper violent stylised hack and slash, and it only gets better the more upgrades you attain from adding extra moves and even magic to expand your arsenal. You have two skills trees two follow for upgrades, holy and unholy. Which are unlocked in tiers by either punishing or absolving certain enemies. This is usually done through a quick time event of 2 or 3 button prompts.
The whole game is linear so it’s near impossible to go wrong, everything is straight forward with only a few hidden areas, or small paths which leads off to hidden artifacts, souls to be purged or equipable relics which grant extra useful boons. Health/mana are collected from enemies or fountains which fully replenish you but are one time use. All saves are manual at beatrice statues. The path is littered with puzzles of various kinds, and are mostly all there to kill you rather than be too solved. Nothing will kill you more than the uneven jumping which normally makes you miss the ledge or platform you are trying to reach. This goes hand in hand usually with the fixed camera that you have no control over, which I liked to forget and use the right stick instead which is for a rolling dodge which also would cause me problems.
For a 12 year old game, I have very few gripes about it, it’s fun, the story and animation is interesting, as is all the visual level designs for every individual circle of Hell. From the boiling swamps, rivers of blood, the suicide forest. Every level is designed well enough to come off fresh and new each time. Combat is fun as hell, fun boss fights, the whole game has a great sense of size and scale. Other then at times a shit camera angle, the only other thing i’d say is bad it’s not particualry long only clocking in around 7 hours to complete. But on the plus size it’d take about two playthroughs to platinum if that interests you, and even then it’s easily replayable and not too tasking to be picked up as and when.
For all the remasters, remakes that we are given nowadays, I feel the newer engines and consoles would do wonders for this game. A fully fleshed out explorable map/area for each circle of hell, with new; weapons,armour and magics would be nothing short of immense. Really build on the new open world style games of today with everything they already did well here with more bosses,side quest stuff even crafting, it would be money.
So with all that said i’d rate this a solid 9/10 some Pure Tasty Gaming.
Sony PS3, 4th February 2010.
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