The Dante’s Inferno demo has prompted me to determine why Western action-adventure titles don’t quite match up to the Eastern ones.
The Dante’s Inferno demo went live about a month ago, and I’ve been meaning to write up some impressions on that but haven’t had a chance to. The good thing is, now that I’ve completed Bayonetta, I was able to revisit the Dante’s Inferno demo again to see if any of my feelings on the demo have changed since playing Bayonetta. I started writing about it, but I found myself getting sidetracked from really writing completely about the demo, and instead I’ve divulged into analyzing Eastern versus Western game design. Read on for a little bit of my thoughts on the Dante’s Inferno demo, and a lot of my thoughts on Eastern versus Western game design philosophies for action/adventure games.
When I played through the Dante’s Inferno demo last month, I thought it was a pretty entertaining game and decided right then that I would get the retail version of the game at some point (but not necessarily at launch). In playing through it again this past weekend, I would have loved if the cutscenes were skippable, since I honestly didn’t need to sit through all of the storyline stuff again. To be honest, the storyline is kind of out there, but it works to provide the game with a nice “hellish” backdrop. The protagonist seems to be kind of a loser though compared to Devil May Cry’s Dante or God of War’s Kratos, but with games like this being more about the combat, I guess I can let that slide.
The combat engine in Dante’s Inferno wasn’t as polished as I would like it to be, but it is smooth. Perhaps polished is not the right word but it felt a bit simplistic and not elegant enough. It also gave me a very strong God of War-like feel. I think it’s safe to assume that when anyone talks about Dante’s Inferno, inevitable comparisons to God of War are going to be made. I personally think they look and play similarly, and to me, that’s not a good thing since I don’t think the God of War games are as amazing as the gaming industry makes it out to be.
While everyone showers every God of War game with the utmost praise, I happen to fall into a very small minority group that doesn’t think that the God of War franchise is that good. AAA series? No – more like a B-B+ series for me. And before any flames or whatever get unleashed that I’m a 360 fanboy, I’ll say that if I had the time to play games on both the 360 and PS3, I would get a PS3. There are several titles that I would love to play on the PS3, such as Valkyria Chronicles, Demon’s Souls, Ratchet & Clank, and the upcoming White Knight Chronicles, Yakuza 3 and The Last Guardian. I played through the original God of War on the Playstation 2, and while it wasn’t a bad game, it wasn’t a game that I got super enthusiastic over.
I think it honestly comes down to Eastern vs. Western game design for action/adventure titles. On the Eastern side, we have action adventure games like Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, and Bayonetta. On the Western side, we have God of War, Conan, and now Dante’s Inferno. It may be the old school gamer in me talking, but the Eastern action/adventure games just appeal to be more. They seem to have simpler yet more elegant game mechanics, and are just more intuitive to play. The Western action/adventure titles seem to be more focused on polygons, gore, and nudity yet the Western game worlds seem to be more bland and simple. I was surprised over the amount of nudity in the Dante’s Inferno demo, but hey, now that God of War has made nudity in gaming all the rage, might as well roll with it if you’re going to make a game similar to God of War, right?
Of course, Americans love God of War, but this whole East vs. West game design reminds me of fighting games. Think about the amount of depth and detail in Eastern fighting games versus Western fighting games. On the East side we have games like Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter, whereas on the West we have Mortal Kombat and Primal Rage. All of these franchises are successful, but when I play games like God of War and Dante’s Inferno, I find them to be enjoyable in their own way, but still do not quite hold up to Eastern action/adventure games. The shoe is on the other foot for FPS games and 3rd person shooters, so it’s not like Japanese game design is clearly better.
When I think about why Western fighting games are popular, it’s mostly due to the gore. Think about the amount of game mechanics that are in the Mortal Kombat games – it’s laughable at best. Then I think about my time playing God of War and now the Dante’s Inferno demo: enemies get downed and you are prompted to hit a button to finish them off and perform sort of a fatality. Is this why Americans love these Western action/adventure games? The button prompts to let loose the gore? Then I think about the Japanese action/adventure games, where the emphasis is more on elegance and style of combat rather than sticking your hand down an enemy’s throat to pull his head off. Devil May Cry and Bayonetta were all about gunplay, dodging and combos. Ninja Gaiden was about nimbly moving around the battlefield in order to decapitate as many enemies as possible through chaining.
I think about today how Japanese RPG games are getting poorly reviewed by Western audiences because the gameplay in these JRPGs are not evolving. They are starting to seem almost archaic in comparison to Western RPGs, with their branching dialogue options, morality paths, etc. I’ll be curious to see how Final Fantasy XIII plays when it releases stateside in the coming weeks. But while the Japanese are faulted for not evolving their RPGs, I cannot fault the Japanese for their action/adventure game design philosophies. I like these classic action/adventure game mechanics and believe them to be truly sound. It’s unfortunate these days, but the difference in design philosophies tend to be that the Japanese make better action/adventure, fighting, and platform games, while the Western make better shooters, RPGs, and multiplayer titles. Hopefully both sides learn from each other and we see benefits because of it. In the meantime, I’ll still get Dante’s Inferno, but I know that it’s not going to measure up to Bayonetta. And for Western action/adventure fans, maybe they don’t think Dante’s Inferno will be good enough to compete with God of War III either. We’ll just have to wait and see.
