Infernal: Hell's Vengeance Review Page 2

30 Jul 2009 at 13:42:22 by Andy Alderson
Systems used to review this title: (360)

In order to enter cover you simply have to push the left stick towards a piece of scenery. Or at least that’s how it works in theory. In practice it involves standing in front of scenery for a good few seconds, repeatedly pushing the left stick until the game finally realises what you’re trying to do. Once you’re in cover, things get even worse.  Now, call me a traditionalist, but I’ve been under the impression that the point of a cover system is to minimise your exposure to bullets. Not so in Infernal. Nope, when you’re in cover and you decide to pop off a couple of shots at the enemy, Lennox moves a couple of feet away from the cover, fires his shot and then remains stationary for a moment giving the enemy just enough time to riddle him with bullets. It’s an utterly pointless system and you’re likely to lose more health from using cover than you would if you just strafed around a bit.

It wouldn’t be so bad if recovering health wasn’t such a tedious process. One of Lennox’s shiny new Hell powers is the ability to drain dead bodies of their energy to recover health and mana (the special move meter). Unfortunately, this takes around five seconds each time you do it which becomes an enormous, throbbing pain in the arse, especially when you’re surrounded by enemies and desperately need some health.  Not to mention that most enemies disappear pretty quickly after they hit the floor. It’s yet another basic gameplay annoyance that could have been easily avoided.

Even when Metropolis has a potentially good idea, it’s horribly implemented. For example Lennox’s Infernal Powers almost threaten to make the game interesting – the Teleport power (Lennox can teleport himself around temporarily), had it been used for more than just operating switches behind locked doors , could have added some gameplay depth to the game. Even when you gain the power to teleport objects other than yourself you’ll find the controls so unfathomably frustrating that you’ll avoid using it until you’re forced to.

However, the award for the most arse-brained design decision in Infernal goes to...the lack of autosave. Yes, Infernal features neither checkpoint nor autosave systems meaning that should you die (and you haven’t manually saved the game) you will potentially lose hours of gameplay. And for a title in which the central gameplay experience is about as enjoyable as having your genitals removed with some rusty pliers, this is absolutely unforgiveable.  It’s enough to convince you that Metropolis Games actually has an evil agenda.

When held up against the 360’s impressive array of third person shooters, Infernal does not compare well. For a game which is essentially Max Payne with superpowers, Infernal manages to pale in comparison to its eight year old inspiration. Of course, some will probably still maintain that it’s an acceptable slice of throwaway fun but those searching for a brief action fix should pick up a copy of Wanted. It’s cheaper than anger-management therapy. 

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