Dead Space developer also made the worst/best Xbox 360 game

Movies get the nickname “So Bad It’s Good” all the time; its proof like cult classics room, xanadu, Super Mario Bros., Mac and me, Manos: The Hands of Fate… and so on. It’s fun to watch a goofy movie with friends, maybe while getting drunk, if that’s your thing, since movie watching is usually a more passive activity. On the other hand, video games require input and even skill, and more often than not, a bad video game gets a reputation because of undue difficulty and poor design. The frustration of playing a bad game makes it hard for any of them to qualify as “so bad it’s good”. And yet, I’ve found the perfect contender for that description, and it’s also on Xbox Game Pass. This is a 2010 third person action game called Visceral Games Dante’s InfernoBased on the epic poem by Dante Alighieri, according to the narrowest possible interpretation of the words “based on”.

main reason i recommend Dante’s InfernoThe reason, despite its laughable plot and setting, is that the combat still feels great after all these years. Its laugh-out-loud protagonist and religious themes make it a pitch-perfect God of War knockoff. (Its lead combat designer, Vincent Napoli, left Visceral Games in 2010 to work on God of War games for Sony Santa Monica until 2018.) It also sounds a lot like God of War. In fact, stringing together combos as Dante feels more satisfying and fluid to me than in modern-day God of War – which is why I’m almost sad this game never got a sequel. Instead, it has gone down in history as the black sheep creation of Visceral Games, the studio better known for the Dead Space franchise.

It’s probably for the best that this game never got a sequel, as the plot is completely disjointed. I mean, I think the premise of the various circles of hell seems modeled after video game levels (Hades did something similar, and quite well).

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Image: Visceral Games / Electronic Arts via Play Gamez

But Dante’s Inferno takes some extreme liberties with its source material, which are a lot of fun if you’re familiar with the original poem. In case you haven’t read it, here’s the gist: the divine comedy Alighieri’s self-involved character (named Dante) going on a guided tour through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Why does he go on this tour in the first place? It’s not really important; The setting is merely an excuse for the author to make social commentary about various contemporary political and religious figures. He also waxes poetic about a crush on a dead ideal woman named Beatrice (she appears for a tour of Heaven), and he spars with the ancient Roman poet Virgil, who serves as tour guide for Inferno and Purgatorio. Acts as a god (but cannot go to heaven because he is a pagan).

The video game makes more than a few changes to this plot. The protagonist’s name is still Dante, but he’s now a mega-muscular Templar knight ready to fight in the Crusades. Beatrice is still dead, but in this universe, she was Dante’s wife – and didn’t get a chance to go to heaven. Instead, he’s in hell, all because he made a deal with the devil (something you shouldn’t normally do). before the events of Dante’s Inferno, Beatrice agreed to a bet with Lucifer that Dante would not cheat on her while he was away fighting. Not only did he cheat on her, but he did the same to a war-prisoner Muslim woman who offered herself to Dante in exchange for the life of a man who turned out to be her husband. That husband tracks down Beatrice and stabs her in the back, which sounds like a bad day for Beatrice until you remember that she had already made a bet with Lucifer that her husband would definitely Will not cheat him. Virgil is also in the game, and he is exactly the same.

These drastic changes to one of the most iconic poems ever written are hilarious enough, but Dante’s Inferno Just getting started.

Image: Visceral Games / Electronic Arts via Play Gamez

Image: Visceral Games / Electronic Arts via Play Gamez

Image: Visceral Games / Electronic Arts via Play Gamez

Image: Visceral Games / Electronic Arts via Play Gamez

Instead of walking around life after making sober observations, this version of Dante has a scythe which he uses to rip and tear apart the naked bodies of demons and the damned. “Damned” includes several children wielding knives, which I assume is because of original sin? The “Gluttony” level includes dehumanizing depictions of fat people, who are portrayed as inherently evil (they should know better than to inherit a genetic predisposition toward being overweight), and the “Lust” level includes genitalia. -inspired architecture and naked female monsters whose attacks aren’t sexual, just annoying. The Disturbing Thing: There’s a boss fight against a giant, naked Cleopatra, whose nipples open like a mouth and a tongue wiggles inside. You know, just in case you were excited by seeing boobs? Cleopatra’s boobs are going to make you feel bad for ever getting excited about boobs in the first place.

Dante also meets many people in Hell, whom he can pardon for some reason and send to Heaven. It is unclear why Dante has this ability, nor why Salvation of These Lost Souls involves a rhythm-based minigame where circle-shaped “sins” fly towards a cross in the center of the screen. This minigame sucks. And yet, I was still happy to do so in order to forgive Tiresias, who was condemned to hell for gender divergence.

Image: Visceral Games / Electronic Arts via Play Gamez

The game comes pretty close to being an equal opportunity criminal. Even portraying the straight white male protagonist as a total Jagoff for both cheating on his beloved wife and participating in a crusade (which the game depicts as immoral and anything but righteous) Has been done Beatrice manages to be both a virtuous damsel in distress and the devil’s wife, and in the latter role, it’s an open question whether she’s enjoying it. If I had to pick someone who comes out best in this game, it would probably be Virgil. I mean, that dude is just vibing.

I downloaded Dante’s Inferno As a joke on Xbox Game Pass, after spending years wondering what could possibly happen in a game based on the divine comedy, What I didn’t expect was to spend the whole game having a good time with combat as well as laughing out loud at the utter absurdity of its super-edgy 2010 video game machismo. It’s a glimpse into a different time — one that I’m glad video games have left behind, not least because I never want to see massive nipple-to-tongue again. If you can manage not to vomit, you’ll laugh — and you’ll learn some history, too. By which I mean, the history of what early b-games were. not about any history the divine comedy,