Dante's Inferno - PS3

Dante's Inferno is an action-packed journey through the world of the Inferno, based on the first canto of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. In this adaptation, Dante is reimagined as a Templar Knight, a veteran of the Crusades who returns home to find that his beloved Beatrice has been killed. At this moment, the murderer also stabs Dante in the back. However, Dante manages to resist Death, who wants to take him to Hell, and steals his scythe from him. With these new powers, he descends alone into the Inferno to track down Beatrice, whose soul has been captured by the Devil. Lucifer plans to marry her soul, which should instead have gone to Heaven, in order to escape Hell and overthrow God. To prevent this, Dante must travel through the nine circles of Hell and defeat their demons before finally facing his hardest trial. In keeping with the original Inferno theme of recognising and rejecting sin, he must confront his own past, his own crimes and his own sins in order to free Beatrice. On his journey, he often encounters the poet Virgil, who explains the various circles to him and, in flashbacks, shows how Dante sinned in each circle during the Crusades.

The gameplay largely resembles that of the God of War games. Dante's weapon of choice is a scythe, and he wields magic through a holy cross he carries, given to him by his beloved Beatrice shortly before her death. This magical item emits beams of light that kill any evil it touches. Dante can even tame some demonic beasts and use them for his own purposes. However, players must choose between a holy and an unholy path. When Dante grabs enemies or encounters captive characters (including a large number of historical figures), he can punish or absolve them. Each choice is rewarded with unholy or holy experience points respectively. This allows Dante to level up in one of two tech trees and spend the souls collected there. It's not possible to maximise both sides, so a particular path must be chosen. The unholy side focuses on the scythe's powers, while the holy side focuses on the cross.

New abilities can be acquired with each level. On the unholy path, most of these focus on stronger scythe attacks, while the holy path focuses on the cross's ranged abilities. There are also general abilities, such as increasing the health or mana bar, extending the Absolution meter, or providing extra defence against attacks. Dante has several combo attacks. He can dodge, block and counter, attack from the air, grab and throw enemies, and perform acrobatic stunts, such as sliding down large spikes, hanging and swinging from ropes, or clinging to certain walls. These stunts are often used to solve minor environmental puzzles. Fighting enemies also fills an Absolution meter, which can be activated when full, allowing for faster movement and attack speed. During his journey, he'll also master four powerful forms of magic, which can likewise be upgraded through the tech tree and require a separate mana meter to perform. The currency used to buy new abilities is the souls of the enemies he defeats. Souls are collected automatically when enemies are killed, and both health and mana are mostly restored via shrines. Many major battles feature Quick Time Events (QTEs), where the player must press the correct buttons on cue to defeat a large enemy. These also appear as a mini-game when you need to absolve the souls of important characters.

One final way to expand his abilities is through relics. These are collected during the journey and fitted into a limited number of slots (initially two). They provide additional support, such as resistance to magic, boosted attacks, or regeneration of health and mana. By equipping them, relics can be levelled up twice to make them more effective. Since the number of slots is limited, they often need to be swapped depending on the situation.

After completing the game, a new game mode called the Gates of Hell Arena is unlocked. This is an arena in which the player must defeat various waves of enemies, similar to the arena later introduced in the DLC "Dante's Inferno: Trials of St. Lucia".

The PSP version is not a port, but was developed in parallel with the main console versions. The enemies and general level design are identical, and only a few minor features were cut, such as the puzzle mini-game for releasing condemned souls.

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