Dante's Inferno [PSP]

Frequently, we hear people say, "go to Hell," but EA's latest action game, Dante's Inferno, is planning on bringing players on a guided tour of the harsh afterlife location. Spanning both consoles and the PSP, Dante's Inferno follows the titular hero on his journey to defeat Lucifer and save Beatrice, his true love. Sections of the game have slowly been revealed, such as our hands-on with the Anger level where we fended off the creatures in and around the River Styx. During a recent demo, we got a glimpse at two additional sections of the game, including the newest level of Heresy and a quick taste of Limbo.

The section of Heresy that we were able to play was about a third of the way through the Heresy level, and involved Dante trying to free Abraham's soul from Hell. I was told that part of this eventually involved shattering a large statue with a divine light, which would only shine down upon the statue once certain conditions were fulfilled. Clearly, this meant that Dante would have to fight through the demons in his way as well as solving puzzles. Considering that this is the sixth level of Hell, fighting through demons isn't particularly new; however, the newest creature that you face is the priest, a twisted version of a spiritual man. A tall and thin creature carrying a long staff, the most defining facet of the priest is the fact that its dark powers completely render Dante's holy cross powers useless as long as it is alive. This could be quite dangerous, particularly considering that priests frequently attacked in groups with other demons that would easily be destroyed with some blasts from the cross.

Clearing out the narrow hallways and rooms of the priests and their dangerous undead congregation, I had a chance to stop and observe the surroundings of the circle. Although there were a few sections where I had to leap from one area to another or scale the souls of the damed trapped in the walls, the majority of the level I was shown focused more on exploring. For example, one puzzle involved dragging boxes around to specific places so triggers could be used. One of these involved preventing a distant cauldron from trying to reset after pouring its load of boiling oil, allowing players further progress through the stage itself.

While we weren't able to play the Heretic level any farther, we were given a quick taste of an earlier section of the game, which was the Charon Limbo section from the first stage of the game. Having played through this section multiple times on the console version, it was interesting to see just how the build translated to the PSP. There weren't the same number of monsters that you had to fight before you leaping on top of a controllable demon (after slaughtering its rider, of course) and jumping from Charon's back to the rest of the Limbo stage. The same comment could be made about the size of the stages themselves, as it was a bit more linear to get to the battle with King Minos on the PSP.

However, it did manage to pack in a decent amount of features from the PS3 version of the game. I was told that Blur rendered some of the cutscenes, while A2M transferred some of the same movies and transitions from the PS3 into the PSP version. On top of that, many of the elements from the consoles manage to carry over to the portable, such as the righteous and unholy powers that are dictated by souls collected from the defeated opponents. While the relics that you would be able to collect in the console have been excised from the portable version, the power and weapon upgrade system remains. So does Judas' thirty pieces of silver which have carried over because of the bonus souls received for each piece, making their collection even more vital during a play through to strengthen Dante on his journey.

©2009-10-22, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved