Dante’s Inferno is a God of War clone. There! So now that that’s out of the way, and half the people have skipped to the last paragraph and score, let me talk to those of you who haven’t cast it aside as a bad game just because of it. Anyone who’s played Darksiders knows that a game based on borrowed ideas can still be fantastic. So if Darksiders can be great, then Dante’s Inferno can be great too.
But it isn’t. On the surface, there’s not much technically wrong with Dante’s Inferno, but the things you earlier overlooked as slight niggles, slowly gnaw at you the longer you play, which eventually sucks the enjoyment out of it. To be honest, I know nothing about the Divine Comedy, so there’s no way for me to tell how faithful to the original the game is. But in the game, you play as Dante, who must journey through the nine circles of hell to rescue his wife Beatrice, who is being held captive by Lucifer.
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In EA’s recent financial report, there’s mention of a shooter from Epic Games scheduled for release between January and March 2011. After a little digging around, it’s almost certain that this game is Bullet Storm, developed by People Can Fly, which is a sub division of Epic Games. The game will be a collaboration between People Can Fly and Epic, and will be published by EA Partners for consoles and PC early next year.
People Can Fly is the Poland-based studio that brought us Painkiller as well the PC port of Gears of War. Further evidence comes from the developer’s website which states, ‘A brand new IP is in development as a collaboration between People Can Fly and Epic Games. The title is being published by EA Partners’, although the title ‘Bullet Storm’ isn’t mentioned. It’s unknown whether this will be third-person or first-person shooter, but with release only a year away, we should see an announcement very soon.
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Those who listened in to our latest IVG Podcast would have known about a little contest we held to celebrate the release of Mass Effect 2. We asked listeners to name all the EA games that Nash and I mentioned throughout the podcast. We’ve picked six winners, one of whom will receive a copy of Mass Effect 2 for PC and an N7 T-shirt, while the remaining five winners will receive N7 T-shirts.
Click here to see who won
It feels like it’s been ages since the last IVG Podcast. So Nash and I finally decided to get on Skype and see if we still remembered how it was done. As it turns out, we never knew how it was done in the first place, but regardless, we finally have IVG Podcast #12 after a gap of six months.
We’ve tried to keep the podcast as short and crisp as possible. Hit the jump for a round-up of what we talked about this time and to listen to the podcast.
Click here to listen to IVG Podcast #12
Usually in a game when you come across water hazards or pools of bubbling lava, the only way forward is to swing across, climb around or jump over them. Avoidance is the only plausible solution. In PixelJunk Shooter, however, the way forward is often through molten lava and water bodies. The contrasting hot and cold characteristics of the game world form the basis of the PixelJunk Shooter formula. The word ‘Shooter’ is a little misleading because, although shooting is involved, this is very much a puzzle game.
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Many people may have been turned off by the fact that The Saboteur is a World War II game. And you can’t really blame them thanks to the steady stream of generic Nazi-killing first-person shooters that have been shoved down our throats over the years. But The Saboteur isn’t a World War II game, it simply happens to play out in a World War II backdrop. You don’t play a soldier fighting for his country on the frontlines, but rather a man on a quest for personal vengeance in Nazi-occupied Paris.
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Choosing Umang aka ThePainkiller as IVG’s Gamer of the Year for 2009 wasn’t a very tough decision; in fact, it was unanimous. So when I asked him for a picture of himself for this feature (one that wasn’t taken in a bathroom) and he refused, I had no choice but to bribe a constable from the Orrissa Police Department to get us his mugshot from the police’s juvenile records. As it turns out, Umang had his run-in with the law when he taped his eyelids to his forehead and ran around scaring unsuspecting residents of his sleepy Cuttack neighbourhood. As you can see, the effects of having his eyes stretched open for a long time are still visible in the mugshot.
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The following is part of IVG’s year-end feature, where each of our writers will highlight their top 5 games of 2009. You too have the opportunity to let us know your top 5 games of the year, and in turn contribute towards picking IVG’s overall Game of the Year for 2009. Click here to participate in the Game of the Year polls.
There are good games every year, so every year is a good year for gaming. But was 2009 a great year for gaming? I think not. It’s not a good sign when you see very few decent new IP. While 2008 was full of great new properties in many genres – Pure, LittleBigPlanet, Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space, just to name a few, it’s been slim pickings in 2009. Secondly, I was left disappointed by many of this year’s high-profile games that I expected big things from. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Gran Turismo PSP, FIFA 10, and Brutal Legend all failed to impress.
I apologise if this is starting to read like an orbituary, so let me now get to the good part. While I think 2009 wasn’t a great year for gaming, there were still plenty of great games to enjoy. In fact, it hurts that I can only talk about five of them in this feature, when I could easily list five others that I enjoyed just as much. There aren’t too many surprises in my top 5, but here they are all the same.
Click here for Sameer's Top 5 Games of 2009
Dante’s Inferno isn’t going to win any awards for originality. In fact, barely minutes into the game you’ll start to wonder how EA isn’t neck deep in Sony lawsuits for all sorts of legal violations. It’s almost funny at times how blatantly similar this game is to God of War. The art style, the health pick ups, the enemies and bosses, the static camera angles, and yes, the gore. It seems all too familiar, and not in a subtle sort of way. It’s in your face, almost like the developers (Visceral Games) are openly saying, “Yes, we’ve made a God of War clone, and a good one at that”. And they may be right. Dante’s Inferno can be a lot of fun once you get over the striking similarities between the two.
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Dark Void is the latest product of Capcom’s little experiment of commissioning games from independent Western studios. The last game to come out of this westward approach (Bionic Commando) sank without a trace and the studio behind it was forced to close down as a result. Eager not to turn that into a trend is Airtight Games, helmed by former members of FASA, the studio behind arcade flight game Crimson Skies.
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