Change of Plans

Due to a variety of reasons I'm gonna have to cut back on reviews. I'm still gonna do the summer reading list but I've decided to expand that into a full time thing. Though I'm gonna cut down on my game reviews, due to money and time they have become stressful. Though I still will do some (few times a month) but they will not be on any schedule. I also an redoing the reading list so a summer schedule will be up soon.

Dante's Inferno

Dante’s Inferno is one hell of an interesting game. Based on the first part of a fourteenth century of a set of poems by Dante Alighieri called The Divine Comedy, the poem follows Dante’s journey through the afterlife from hell (Inferno) purgatory (Purgatorio) and finally heaven (Paradiso). During the Inferno he visits the 9 levels of hell guided by the Greek poet Virgil. Besides the visual descriptions in the poem the similarities between the poem and game end there, the Dante in the poem is a week willed man who is in hell simply because, while the Dante in the game is a strong Crusader who enters hell in pursuit of his love Beatrice who is stolen by the devil. The game starts with Dante in a prison riot in Acre. As he cuts through the dozens of enemy’s he is stabbed in the back by an assassin where Death then appears to bring Dante to the underworld. Dante fights back and kills death (why not) and steals his scythe. Realizing his sins he goes back to Florence to his love Beatrice (in the poem she is an old love from childhood not his wife) and live a life of peace. But it is not to be as he finds his father and her murdered and Beatrice’s soul belonging to the devil due to Dante’s sins.

This leads him to start a quest to get back his love by going through hell itself. Dante begins his quest in the first level of hell (Limbo) where he meets his guide Virgil who begins to explain about hell and does so till the end. This provides a great way to give exposition. He explains Limbo is where all of the virtuous pagans like Socrates, Homer, and himself are. Also people who are to be judged go through Limbo and are judged by King Minos. After the fight through Limbo Dante heads down to the second level (Lust) where he must fight the demons led by Cleopatra and her love Marc Antony. Next is the third (Gluttony), a land of pulsating flesh, oozing with puss and bile where you fight the giant worm Cerberus. Next Dante descends to the fourth level (Greed) a place where people are dipped in boiling gold. Dante must fight his father, a greedy, lustful, and corrupt man who greatly influenced Dante into the man that he is.


With the sixth level (Anger) Dante rides the river Styx as he nears the city of Dis which leads to the final and even worse levels of hell. He breaches the walls by riding the demon Phlegyas, this leads him into the seventh level (Hersey) where Dante fights dark priests and practitioners of dark magic. He drops into the eighth level (Violence) where he must transverse 3 levels of violence. Violence against others which is punished by a river of boiling blood, violence against oneself a dark dense forest, where Dante meets his mother who killed herself when she realized her husband was cruel man and couldn’t take it anymore, and lastly violence against god, a barren desert where Dante meets his fellow Crusaders who went against god. There he fights his friend and lovers brother Francesco who died because he took the blame for one of Dante’s acts. After this he comes to the eighth level (Fraud) where Beatrice (who has been turned by Lucifer) sends Dante through a series of trials testing his skill and strength. At the end though Dante is able to free Beatrice who is then brought to heaven by the Archangel Gabriel who tells Dante that he will see Beatrice one day, and that his redemption will soon be at hand. Dante finally comes upon the ninth and final level of hell (Betrayal) where he fights the Devil. Once he wins he is able to seal Lucifer back away and escapes into Purgatory where upon To Be Continued… appears, and likely a sequel due to there being three poems and the second one being Dante’s journey through Purgatory.


All across the nine levels you encounter a variety of enemies, from standard demons, to flying demons, gold monsters, glutton worms, succubus, and etc. When you kill these enemies you get souls. Souls can be used to upgrade your defense, weapons, or magic. There are three kinds of souls, holy, unholy and neutral. To combat these enemies you have three weapons at your disposable, Death Scythe a melee weapon, Beatrice’s Cross as a ranged weapon, and magic which can be both ranged and melee. Combat is simple involving simple hack and slash with your scythe with ranged attack with your cross. Magic adds more attacks as there are radial, passive, and straight attacks. Magic involves Mana which you can get from Mana fountains you find. Health is also recharged this way as well as you can find souls and relics which provide benefits to you and weapons. Along your path you come upon multiple souls (27), historical people who have been sent to hell for one of the 9 sins. You have a choice when you come upon them to both absolve them of their sins and gain holy souls, or you can punish them and gain unholy souls. Also challenging you throughout the game is a wide variety of puzzles. Most involve moving blocks from point A to point B, while others are considerably more difficult.


This is a very interesting game. Set in hell, this game manages to get the medieval view of hell to a T. Dark, foreboding, and very unpleasant, the game shows a very disturbing view that some people might not like. The combat is very brutal, with blood and gore to spare and it’s even more in boss fights. An example is with King
Minos where you essentially split his face in two with a spiked wheel. The setting is as well disturbing as Gluttony is a land of flesh, oozing with bile and pus. The enemy’s are of a standard variety with each land having their own special kind. But for some reason they appear in other levels even though they have no part in them. This is kind of weird such as seeing a succubus in Gluttony and so on. There are problems with this game; this game has a way of screwing you over with the uneven difficulty. In some place’s puzzles are extremely simple while other’s you use moves that you have never used before or again, or a solution that you would never think of or use again, this is quite frustrating and a huge turn off the only way I beat them is by consulting the internet which you should never have to do in a game. But these puzzles are few and far between so it’s not a huge bother. All in all I would say it’s a good rental.




The Good
• Great voice acting
• Good Story
• Visually interesting

The Bad
• Uneven level of difficulty
• A bit cheap

The Ugly
• A bit disturbing

Written by Historiagamer
Edited by Josh
Images from www.giantbomb.com

Splinter Cell: Conviction

The Splinter Cell series has been around for almost a decade. Beginning 2002 with what was simply called Splinter Cell, the game spawned several sequels the fifth of which is Splinter Cell: Conviction the most current as well as today’s topic.
Till the third game in the series (Double Agent) the game’s story was more background focused, sticking with exotic local and setting while keeping character stories to a minimum. This changed with Double Agent as Sam Fisher’s (main character) personal life becomes the focus as his daughter was killed by a drunk driver, and he was sent on a deep cover mission to take his mind off it. Conviction continues this with not only having Sam leaving Third Echelon (Spy Agency) but having Sam learning that his daughter’s death was not an accident. He is going on quest to uncover who did it, but soon he is roped into Third Echelon business as a former friend now asks him to help as the agency has fallen under a new Director who is up too not too good things. The game takes Sam to a very local place, Washington D.C, where he needs to find out what’s going on and stop whatever evil is afoot. While fighting evil he goes to many famous landmarks including the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial.



While sticking to main idea of stealth this time around there have been many changes to the Splinter Cell formula, rather than sticking to the old method of have Sam Fisher relying on Third Echelon for Intel and equipment, this time he’s on his own. The game has also switched from the old ways of stealth of crouching in the shadow and waiting it, Conviction has turned to a more action orientation stealth approach, similar to what you would see in a Bourne movie with fast action and gunplay. That’s not to say it doesn’t do stealth well, it cover stealth quite well with a couple of new features. When you’re completely in the dark you’re screen turns black and with enemies and targets in color. You also have a feature called “Last know Position”, where if you’re fast enough when an enemy see’s you all that remains is an outline of where you where and that is where your enemy’s will search in that area leaving you to fool them and flank them. Another new edition is the “Mark and execute” feature. To do this simply take an enemy via hand to hand and he can now mark multiple targets and automatically kill shot them all with devastating headshots. To prevent this being a game breaker you can only store one round of kills. Also certain weapons have a certain number of marks you can make to limit easy kills.

Sam gains a wide variety of weapons along your path. Unlike past Splinter Cell game where you only had access to a silenced pistol and rifle along with gadgets like flash bangs and remote cams, you now have access to shotguns, assault rifles, as well as a number of gadgets like EMP, flash, and frag grenades as well as a remote camera, and an EMP backpack. Over the course of the game you gain XP for kills and completing challenges like kill X amount of people in the dark. You can use this XP to upgrade weapons and gadgets, giving an added edge like extra power or reload speed. Also during the single player you come across some interrogation scenes where to get information from a person, you can use the environment to bash them around to talk. Unfortunately what you can smash them into is limited and some scenes it’s not clear what you can interact with, If there’s nothing, then a standard and generic scene with Sam punching them in the face happens.

In addition to the single player campaign, there are two other modes in this game. A single/co-op mode called denied ops, a challenge mode were one or two agents from Third Echelon or its Russian counterpart called Kestrel. Denied Ops has four modes which you can play alone or against a human opponent as you clear out enemies, defend a bomb, infiltration without being seen or a simple death match. There is also co-op campaign where you play as one of said agents working together to take down a rouge Russian general.



Splinter Cell: Conviction is quite a good game, it manages to change game play but still keep the Splinter Cell feel. Stealth is done quite well and while a little dumbed down from previous games, it still does its job. Jumping from uncovered to cover is easy with a push of a button. To make things easier when you’re in the light or someone is seeing you’re screens in color, but when you’re completely in the dark you’re screen is black and white, a difference from the old games as you had a light on your back that went from green to red depending on your stealth. This provides a new level of visual experience that is rather immersive. All in all it’s a step up from the last games, where stealth was usually a step of trial and error as you had to watch out for guard patterns, as being seen could mean mission failure. Now being seen, while discouraged can be rectified without starting over. Also the mechanics of the game have changed focusing more on action than stealth, feeling more like the Bourne than the old Sam Fisher. Hand to hand is better as you can now take down enemies with brutal moves and efficiency. Adding to the fun is the co-op which is done quite well and is equally entertaining.

The Good
• Nice looking
• Excellent Story
• Deniable Ops
• Co-op
• Game play

The Bad
• N/A

The Ugly
• A.I could use some lesson’s

Written by Historiagamer
Edited by Josh
Images from www.giantbomb.com