Dante's Inferno Video Game for PSP

Dante's Inferno shares its name with the the famous piece of literature by Dante, the Italian poet. In the poem, Dante journeys through Hell to find his true love Beatrice. In Dante's Inferno the video game, however, you play the role of a warrior from the 3rd Crusade who resists Death after being killed by an assassin, steals Death's scythe, and begins his journey though the underworld to save Beatrice, his love who was stolen away by Lucifer. Dante from the game is certainly a far cry away from the timid pilgrim who is the main character of the poem. He is a muscular vengeful fellow who hacks his way through the denizens of Hell with ease, scythe in hand. What's not to love?

Game Play

Dante's Inferno for PSP plays just like its PS3 and X-Box 360 cousins, which is something that is always good to see in a handheld version. The game is of the 3rd person action genre made famous recently by games like the God of War series. Many action games on the PSP have camera problems, but this game features a fixed camera that rotates as you travel to certain areas. It is well designed within Dante's Inferno which makes for a nice change in portable gaming.

Battle System

The fighting within Dante's Inferno is by no means remarkable, but it is solid and fun. It is a simplified version of the battle system from the X-Box and PS3, including attacking, blocking, comboing, and dodging. Besides your scythe, you also have a holy cross which acts as your long range weapon. The game has less upgrades than the bigger system version, so it can become a bit repetitive after a while, but it could be a lot worse and the fighting is satisfying and surprisingly fluid for a hand held system. To upgrade your abilities, Dante has the ability to collect the souls of the demons he has killed from each level. After defeating certain enemies, you can choose to either Absolve or Punish their souls, giving you either holy or unholy points which can upgrade your abilities. The upgrades aren't particularly innovative, but they are a fun feature that were added to the game.

Graphics

The CGI and cut scenes remain the same in this version has they were in other versions, crisp and nice, but the rest of the game for obvious reasons has weaker graphics. By what they lost in area graphics, they make up for in the fluidy of movements from Dante and his enemies. I think this is an excellent choice; the gameplay exists nicely within a simple world and that's how things should be.

The game is only about ten hours long and like all hand held versions of a game it leaves some things out, but Dante's Inferno on PSP does a much better job than most hand held versions and is something worth playing if you have an itch for an action game on PSP. Reviewers give it between a 7 and 9/10.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante%27s_Inferno_%28video_game%29