Review: Infernal

Infernal (2007 Metropolis Software) is a bad game. Let's skip the formalities and commence with the hack and slash, shall we?

Gameplay
It's a third person shooter where none of the elements satisfy. Shooting things is not very fun. Even on low settings, the frame rate gets bad in a hurry, so aiming is a chore. Also, because it's third person, I frequently got shot by enemies my character could see, but I couldn't because of the offset of the camera. The sniper rifle was the only weapon with a first person option, so there was no workaround.

The cover mechanics were useless as the perfect AI targeting meant they generally hit you just as much behind cover as not. Their use of cover and blind firing was decent, though. There were occasionally grenades provided to flush them out, but for the most part I just waited from them to pop back out, or shot them in the back of the calf, which they often left exposed. Morons. Of course, they do have the super power of being able to see through any gratings or foliage that doesn't block bullets as though it weren't even there, so it all balances out. >:P

There's stealth, but it's generally just a bad guy who's facing away when you enter a room. Once an enemy sees you, you can do a little cat and mouse by sneaking around behind them, but since you're usually fighting four guys at a time, one of them will see you and ruin it. Regardless, I did like the one or two times stealth worked. And I always like the feeling I get making my avatar crouch walk everywhere, checking the corners and "staying frosty". :)

There are powers in the game, but they're generally only used to solve the same locked door puzzles over and over. That and the visual effects that accompany them are disorienting enough to be a pain in the butt.

Also, it should be mentioned that I played through on easy because the uneven difficulty provided annoying sticking points. Even when I played on easy, a couple sections near the end of the game ran so poorly I couldn't perform any of my evasive maneuvers, making them unnecessarily difficult.

Oh and the checkpoints are way too far apart, necessitating manual quick saving after every encounter lest you have to play the same last lackluster thirty minutes over again.

Theatrics
Oy. The irrelevance of Infernal's story is eclipsed only by its ridiculousness. Every millennium, the planets line up in such a way that GOD CANNOT SEE EARTH. Apparently he lives somewhere specific in the universe and just has a really good telescope. The good guys decide to take advantage of this time to make mind control satellites to make everyone good and do away with that pesky free will stuff. Um. What did they think would happen WHEN THE PLANETS MOVED AGAIN? God wouldn't notice? They'd invoke finders keepers <Zoidberg>or maybe naval salvage rights?</Zoidberg> I reiterate, oy.

The voice actors actually do a good job, but with no direction, lousy translations (The game was developed in Poland.), and no attempt to give any of the characters a personality, it's a wasted effort.

Aesthetics
Before I had to turn the settings down, the game looked really good. The sound effects are good. The music is okay. Like the characters, it tries too hard to be bad ass. And there are generally only two songs in a level (one for sneaking and one for fighting), they can get pretty repetitive. In an interesting quirk, I enjoyed anticipating where the musical phrase would end as Infernal uses canned transitions instead of just fading from one song to the other.

Final Score
2 of 5