Dantes Inferno
Review from Matt - Friday, 05 March 2010 @ 12:54pm
Genre: Action
Release: 4 February 2010
Developer: Visceral Games
Most people would be familiar with the film Lost in La Mancha. This now iconic movie documents Terry Gilliam’s failed attempt to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Beset by actor injuries , bad weather, and audio problems, the only result was a 15 million dollar insurance claim and this docu-tragi-comedy.
This review will be in the same basic vein.
My goal was to produce a video review. I’ve learned a lot and developed a real interest in video production over the last year or so, as a result of GameDamage and a few other projects. I’ve always liked the idea of video reviews – you can show, rather than just telling, and there’s the potential for visual humour and other knick-knacks that you just can’t do in text.
In theory it was pretty simple. I bought a small video camera at the end of last year, a Kodak Zi8, surprisingly competent HD pocket camcorder. I would use that to film interstitial stuff, intro, conclusion, etc. The body of the review would use bits of promotional videos to illustrate the statements.
It was a good theory, but I underestimated a lot of things. First of all, I underestimated the amount of video I’d need. While there was plenty of available footage thanks to a series of developer diaries about the nine levels of hell, plus a bunch of other promotional videos released, it was very rare to find content that actually illustrated what I wanted to say. And what footage did match carefully was scattered in 1 – 3 second clips through the videos.
The result was a long process of careful timing. I recorded out the voiceover, using a standard headset microphone. But each paragraph was essentially recorded separately, and I did multiple takes. Keeping track of “final” takes was harder than expected, and a few bad exports resulted in multiple tracks speaking over each other. An issue not helped at all by Audacity, and its prize winning “crashing all the fucking time” feature.
This audio track was then brought into video editing software, and broken into scenes to be synced against.
Thus began the painstaking process of getting footage to the words. I can’t overstate how painful this was. With nearly 2 gig of video footage, finding the right 2 seconds redefined tedium. Remembering that there was an ideal snippet in one of 27 videos, but being unable to remember which one meant a trawl through footage, taking sometimes half an hour to an hour. For two seconds of footage. Longer bits of description could mean finding up to 15 seconds of example video, all in one or two second segments, and painstakingly cutting it in and out at the exact right frame.
It seemed worth it, if I could get something good. Granted I’d put aside a potentially lucrative development project to spend four nights sitting until 5 am cutting tiny snippets of Hell, but at least I was doing something interesting.
Then the Sickness came.
I’ve been sick before, and I know the Flu when I have it. Flu is one of those diseases people misdiagnose. “Oh, I’ve got the flu.” they say. “Really? Can you walk without barfing?”
A real flu is debilitating, soul crushing, enfeebling, and… well, not fun. 35,000 people die of the flu every year in the US alone. Puts the Swine Flu’s 14000 worldwide deaths over two years in perspective, huh?
Anyway, I didn’t eat for about three days. Despite only having patchy work since mid-December, I had to put off two job interviews, because I could barely stand up. Most of a week was spent in bed. A few times I tried to walk anywhere (about 100 metres) and had to stop for a rest.
I was feverish most of the time, though not “out of it” my body temperature was noticeably raised, and had attacks of both vomiting and diarrhea at various times.
Eventually the fever passed. Largely as a result of heroic nursing back-to-health by my ever patient girlfriend I started to get better. I’d like to thank her for that. Eventually I was able to eat again and began to regain some strength.
All the better to enjoy my chest infection.
It started as a mild cough. Quickly the cough became increasingly severe. For several nights I slept on the couch so I wouldn’t disturb my girlfriend, but I couldn’t sleep myself. Sometimes the cough would be so bad that I would keep coughing even after my lungs were empty, leaving me choked and gasping. Other times I would cough intensely for 10 seconds, finally coughing up something that under closer inspection may have actually had a face. And anger.
My chest and stomach hurt from coughing, and my throat was continually raw and sore.
A trip to the doctor got a diagnosis of a chest infection (as expected) and antibiotics (as desired). I started taking them straight away. Normally antibiotics go in and kill the bacteria. But these were special UN approved antibiotics. They don’t actually really do anything, they just go in and negotiate with the bacteria, to see if a mutually beneficial compromise can be worked out, while calmly insisting that the current infection needs to be resolved in a reasonably efficient, but yet to be determined timeline.
Eventually my chest infection did clear up, however. And I got a cold.
For fuck sake.
In fairness the cold wasn’t all that serious. It’s just a cold. But what it did do was make sure that I was not able to film and record the “to camera” portions of the review, which I had by now been able to rally enough to start work on again.
Work continued on the ever fun “getting tiny bits of footage to illustrate points on the combat and setting” process and it became increasingly obvious things weren’t working out. Which each video imported, and each clip edited in, the project was going steadily bigger. Composite views were taking several seconds to render each frame out for previewing, and that made syncing the sequences almost impossible. Playing the video simply wasn’t possible – audio was fine, but the video played as a single frame every five or 6 seconds, and that not at the right time. To see if they matched I had to export snippets, a 20 minute process. Occasionally I’d accidentally have left the voiceover off, and have to repeat the process.
Extensive searches online conclusively proved that the problem was the graphics card was simply not up to scratch. Or there wasn’t enough ram. Or the CPU wasn’t powerful enough. Or I needed a dedicated harddrive.
Fact is, on my aging machine all of the above is probably true. The most clear example of the problem was turning on the System Monitor and watching what happened on “play”. CPU usage went from 40% (already high) to 99% instantly, and stayed there.
I’ve continued to struggle on with my current hardware, and I’ve looked into possible upgrades. I’ve even been given some excellent upgrades by forum user and friend Scarecrow, for which I’d like to sincerely thank him.
But the fact is, this has gone on long enough now. Even with a beast of a machine chewing through editing like Lindsey Lohan through lines of coke the process of going through the video clips and snipping out seconds here and there is impractical, and time consuming.
So I’m calling it here. The attempt is over. With the combination of lingering illness, inadequate source material and inadequate PC performance, this is simply not possible for me at this point. I’ve spent 20 – 30 hours all told on this, and the end result is approximately nothing.
Actually, that’s not true. Maybe it’s for the best. Your first attempt at something is never great, and maybe it’s good that this first abomination never gets shown to the world? In the meantime I’ve learned a lot about what to do and what not to do.
I’ve learned that I need to be able to capture my own footage. Getting segments of gameplay footage or cut-scenes that precisely illustrate what you’re trying to say, and getting them at will in long, clear segments is a key to doing video reviews well and efficiently.
I’ve learned how to do voiceovers. Just reading doesn’t sound good. It sounds like you’ve died recently. Reading enthusiastically and warmly – even that doesn’t work, even though you think it should. In order to effectively carry emotion and interest you have to record an almost manic level of enthusiasm. It feels unnatural while you’re recording it, but it sounds far more interesting when you listen.
I’ve learned how to do video editing. The value of that is hard to overstate. When I begin the next video project I can hit the ground running, rather than having to figure out what the buttons do for even the most basic usage.
I’ve learned what hardware I need to upgrade, how, and why. It’s easy to look at a second hand computer and think “wow, this is way better than the laptop I bought nearly two years ago” and think that means something. But it doesn’t. The PC hardware market changes so fast that your Pentium 4 that seems pretty good is actually so old you can’t even buy it anymore. One core?! Lol!
And I’ve learned that I do want to do this. I really like the idea of doing video reviews. I think it would be a really awesome thing to be able to offer. Hundreds of personal blogs do game reviews, and even doing them well it’s hard to stand out. Doing high quality video reviews and making them available on youtube has the potential to expose AG to a new audience, as well as provide something new and different for current readers.
So I guess in conclusion, though this video hasn’t happened, another one will. I have found a good solution for capturing video, and will be purchasing one ASAP. I will also be upgrading my PC to the point where my current computer will look like an Abacus with some of its beads stuck together with chewing gum. There will be future videos, and I hope they’re worth waiting for, and worth the work.
In the meantime, though I don’t have the video for you to watch, I thought I’d provide the transcript of the voiceover.
Since… you know… I’m supposed to be reviewing Dante’s Inferno and I haven’t even mentioned it yet. What am I, Brett?
Hope you enjoy. I would have liked to present it in a more advanced format but this time it was not to be.
He's cross. Get it? Cross like angry, but he has a cross. Forget it. I'm going home.
Now we can focus on what sets it apart. Character. Story. Setting. Combat. So let's look at Dante's Inferno and see how it stands up in the "being God of War" genre.
Dante's Inferno is based on the classic novels by Dante Aligieri(?). The impact of these novels can't be overstated, as our very concept of Hell is drawn almost entirely from it, along with some pretty freaky paintings. That Christianity is so founded on a medieval fiction is interesting, at least to me.
Dante has been fighting in the Crusades with pillaging, rape, genocide, slaughter of innocents. For God. One of these innocents does some knifey-backy and our hero finds himself having words with Death, who damns him for his sins. Being religious, Dante refuses to accept responsibility for his own actions, and gets all fisticuffs with Death.
Unfortunately for world literature, Death turns out to be made of meringue, and drops like a Haitian ceiling. This makes you wonder why no one ever thought of this before, I mean, seriously, no one fought back? Having bitched up death and stolen his rocking pimp cane our noble friend returns home.
There he finds his beloved wife Beatrice dead and Lucifer himself dragging her to hell. Instead of taking the opportunity while she’s still warm, Dante decides to follow her into the very depths of Hell.
In case you were wondering how much of this was in the books, the answer is neither a skerrick nor a sausage. Dante in the novels was a fainting poet, and he sauntered through the layers of Hell with a Roman pedophile, then they went out for icecream or something. This story is as closely related to Dante’s novels as The Matrix is. The real inspiration here is the setting, not the story.
Dante’s journey is set in the old school middle ages hell that’s so firmly established in cultural consciousness. Which is kind of a pity because there have been interpretations of hell in other games or movies which brought something new to the table. Painkiller’s frozen war is a great example of an innovative and interesting reinterpretation, and Captain Woodface’s Constantine showed Hell as an eternal nuclear blast.
Dante’s Inferno’s setting just feels like you’re playing the lava track from super Mario Kart for 12 hours.
There’s a bit of variety scattered through here and there, seemingly by accident. The Wood of Suicides have a slightly different tone forest tone, The plains of Gluttony are all gross and biological, and the Sands of Being French are a much needed departure.
Still, most of the game is spent surrounded by fire and suffering. There’s more wailing and screaming than that girl in my attic. Like the girl in my attic it’s some much needed noise I could do without, but unlike the girl in my attic it’s going to continue on for more than a few hours. The weird thing about the screaming is that it’s on kind of a loop, varying rhythmically in intensity. It’s supposed to add atmosphere, but it just sounds like you’re near the Roller Coaster of the Damned.
Something else that lacks variety is combat. Considering this is the core of the gameplay any lack here is a critical flaw. You have the scythe you stole from the pavlova of darkness as a melee weapon and a cross, which acts as a long range attack. Most games in this genre vary their combat by allowing you to get newer and more powerful weapons, or even just different ones. Dante’s Inferno doesn’t.
Naturally because it’s a game made after 2006 it’s infested with “rpg elements”. These take the form of experience points which build up levels of holy or unholy, giving you access to new moves.
You pretty much have to get these upgraded moves. They’re like hookers to a married man, you don’t really need them to get through the ordeal. It’s just that you’re going to get bored if you don’t have them.
As well as the weapons themselves, Dante’s has failed at combos. The combos have all the same buttons. There’s a series of light hits, or a series of heavy hits. Or you can mash the cross button. There’s basically no mixing it up, no combos that jump between buttons, etc.
Instead of combat, Dante’s Inferno has focused on a core of boobies. I’ve heard this criticized as juvenile pandering, and I can kind of see that. But to me it’s a good thing. All too often, “maturity” in a game just means violence. Games are held to some different standard on sex and nudity to what movies are.
Adult content shouldn’t be just violence. It should be violence, sex, nudity, drug use, desperation, obsession, betrayal – dark, challenging and confronting aspects of the human experience that result in the conflict that is the core of good storytelling. While sex and nudity are the lowest rungs on the path to true maturity they’re at least a step up from mindless violence.
The sexuality and nudity in Dante’s Inferno is not exactly titillating. The only good glimpse of a non-mutant nipple is on Beatrice, and she’s dead. If he’d stopped to pull out the sword he’d have been crowned King of England. The Lust area kind of pussies out… no pun intended. The exception is the end boss, though the fact that she’s climbing up a giant tower at the time is a little obvious, and the minions of Lust, scantily clad ladies with a little extra something.
A very special circle of hell is reserved for the interface designer of this game. When you have a health bar in light green, don’t put it on a yellow background, you fucking jerks. I don’t want to have to photograph the screen, import the picture into photoshop and zoom in so that I can tell how much goddamn health I have.
Even if you don’t give a crap about the 1/10 people playing your game who have ask a passing friend why they just died, simple interface design would tell you that this is the sort of area even those who aren’t colourtarded could use some outright contrast.
In the interest of balance, one thing I did really like about Dante’s Inferno was the collectibles. Scattered and hidden around are glowing goats, and using these things gives you a “relic”. Relics are equipable objects that improve your stats make you immune to certain attacks, increase your XP rate, etc.
Another interesting hidden object is “sinners”. Scattered through the levels are famous sinners through history. Seeing a bit of their sin you have the choice between Punishing and Absolving them. Punish just shows them being mangled by Dante, but Absolution is far more interesting, triggering a mini-game.
Yes, the redemption of your mortal sins can be accomplished with Parapa The Rapper. Of course, punishing also brings up an interesting question. The absolved go up to heaven, but where the hell do the punished go?! They’re already in hell! “Adelaide” would be the easy joke, but I’m forbidden from making it.
Finding and collecting these relics and sinners is a fun bit of gameplay, but unfortunately the game itself is hardly conducive to exploration. You can’t control the camera, so you can’t see where stuff is. Most places you try to get to that aren’t the in-some-cases-literally-bleeding obvious are instant death, and if you haven’t gotten a save point recently you’re discouraged from giving it a try, because you’ll have to do every collected item, every customization, etc, all over again.
Character design is also pretty nice. Well, to a certain definition of nice. There are some pretty gruesome enemies, though the smaller enemies blend together a bit. The bosses are especially cool, though the reliance on quicktime events is something that should by this time carry warning stickers like the explicit language warnings on music. And the quicktime events are everywhere. You quicktime everything. Bosses are quicktime events. Killing bigger enemies is a quicktime event. Using health and mana fountains is a quicktime event. Even opening the freaking door requires QTE. And what’s with these people and doors, seriously. Darksiders’ War felt the need to kick everything open like it had personally insulted him, and Dante goes as far as stabbing them. Can’t you people find the handle? Or even just push hard?
So to wind it all up here I sound like I’ve condemned Dante’s Inferno, but in all honesty it’s not that bad. The story carries it a long rather predictably but there are interesting moments. Combat is kind of fun despite a lack of variety. Dante’s Inferno is a reasonable entry to the God of War genre, but nothing special. With God of War III waiting in the wings it’s worth hoping that will show us how this genre should REALLY be done.
Dante about to hit something with an ill explained scythe
Pros
You get to see boobs. Some pretty epic bosses. Struggling here to think of things.
Cons
Tedious and unvaried combat, quicktime event-a-palooza, fairly incomprehensible story, irrelevant and pointless RPG elements, frustration and repetition, thorough lack of variety
Summary
There's very little to recommend Dante's Inferno. It's not Golden Axe: Beast Rider bad. But it's not good either. Both Darksiders and Bayonetta are pretty much better in every way, and Dante offers much less in replayability and overall fun than especially the latter. Despite ostensibly being drawn from one of history's most influential pieces of literature, ultimately almost everything about Dante's Inferno just ends up being dumbed down and pointless.
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This entire game can be summed up very easily. It embodies everything that an average game should be. I played it, I finished it, I had very little to say about it for or against. It was literally the most middle-of-the-road and bland game that I've played in quite a while. The great artistic vision that they were touting was nowhere to be seen with (at most) 8 unique monster designs and a few unique bosses, the controls were painful after having played Darksiders (which let you block and dodge in the middle of combos), the sound and music was fairly unremarkable and the level design was the very definition of tedium.
It really was the weirdest experience I've had playing a game in recent years. To have played something so remarkably unremarkable is very disconcerting. It's pretty unfortunate though that it was this average, considering this was following Dead Space which I enjoyed a lot.
Not a problem at all for the hardware Matt. I may even have a solution to your video capture situation.
I feel your editing pain, I recently finished editing a TV documentary (as well as doin the graphics and assistant producing it). my first editing gig and one of the two episodes was on abortion... trawling through clips is the most mind numbing experince I have encountered and I used to animate 2d cell drawings.
anyways if you want any advice on workflows or software PM me or hit me up on email. but dont give up or all the pains for nothing.
(edited to remove blatant contradiction)
I'm glad I decided against doing video reviews as a "time saver".
Good read. Glad you're feeling better!
