Classic poem, video game. There's a good reason these two things generally don't go hand in hand. But there's no denying that Dante Aligheri's 12th century epic, the Divine Comedy, is an amazingly discriptive work that at least conceptually, lends itself well to the video game medium.

And thus we have Dante's Inferno. The latest title from Visceral Games (who also developed 2008's brilliant Dead Space), a third-person action game based on The Divine Comedy, that can best be described as God of War, in hell. Dante's Inferno follows Dante as he delves into the nine circles of hell, in an attempt to save his love, Beatrice. The presentation of the story elements are excellent, and are a combination of in-game and pre-rendered cinematics, plus a smattering of 2D animation. The three are very well blended in a way that's surprisingly not jarring in its transition from one to the other.

The combat in Dante's Inferno is by far its greatest strength. It's fast paced, responsive and has a good amount of depth. As you progress through the game there are a number of enemies and characters that you can punish or absolve, giving you points towards the holy or unholy paths respectively. While this concept, in and of itself is quite uninteresting and poorly explained, the end result of it gives players some interesting options and choices when it comes time to upgrade your abilities.

Each enemy you kill will give you souls which can be spent upgrading your abilities. What abilities you can choose varies depending on how holy or unholy you are, and each skill-tree has a unique set of abilities for the player to choose. After a few hours with the game, you'll be able to upgrade and get some impressive abilities, and you'll be chaining them together for some massive combos in no time.

You're given magic abilities at specific points through the game. Your magic gives you some powerful and impressive-looking new attacks, which when combined with your cross (which is essentially your ranged weapon) and scythe, give players some excellent combat options. It's fun to play around with the different alternatives, as there are many, many ways you can use your various offensive abilities to eliminate the hordes of demonic creatures that you'll find throughout the game.

Once you're taken out of the combat is where Dante's Inferno starts to deteriorate. Exploration is as simple as moving from point-a to point-b, but it can be somewhat difficult any time swinging or puzzle-solving is involved. The main issue with these aspects of the game is that their solutions aren't always as clear as you'd like them to be. And when you solve a puzzle that's been frustrating you (the MC Escher-esque puzzle in th Gluttony Circle comes to mind), you don't feel content you figured out how to do it, you more question how you were meant to know that was the right solution.

The exploration elements can be a problem because often they lead to trial-and-error gameplay. Too many times (and surely one is too many) you're required to make a blind leap, only to have a button prompt show up mid-jump, that is easy to miss, causing you to fall to your death and try the sequence over again. It makes the concept of travelling through hell all the worse, and  can lead to some frustrating moments.

The nine circles of hell all have different themes, and each are represented with a slightly different visual style, one for gluttony, one for greed etc. Each theme is applied to the environment and the enemies within it. Despite the different themes that are in place, much of the overall level design blends together, and it can be hard to distinguish where one level starts and the other ends. The fact that you're in hell obviously doesn't lend itself to bright colourful visuals, which can lead to a fairly depressing visual experience.

Dante's Inferno is a good game, but nothing more. For the mostpart it's very competant, but once you go outside of the combat arenas, things start to fall apart. It's clearly a game that takes a lot of influence from God of War, which in and of itself isn't an issue, but Dante's Inferno does very little to innovate on its own terms, and the end result is worse off for it. You'll likely have a good time playing Dante's Inferno, as it's a solid action game, just don't expect to be blown away.