Infernal: Between Heaven and Hell
Company: Playlogic
My first impressions are that Infernal has character. I like the stylish way the main character, Ryan Lennox, is dressed. He bears a tattoo and sports a hip, layered look. If you saw him walking down the street (on a day when he's not packing heat), you probably wouldn't think twice, yet he'd still be a recognizable character. My thumbs up goes to good character design. Enemies are well designed too, though in this preview version, I did see a lot of clones running around. Lighting and textures are realistic, and don't take away from the action. If you stop for a moment, you'll notice things like falling snow or dust hanging in the air in a cellar. Chances are you won't have time, but it's good stuff.
Infernal is an action shooter with an over-the-shoulder camera view. It’s not a straight run and gun shooter, and you’ll need to learn to make use of more than one tactic, along with the different abilities your character possesses. For example, in the foundry level, enemies seem to have an unfair advantage in arms and numbers. They line up along a very high walkway and fire away, creating a gauntlet of bullets and making themselves small targets to strafe at. I made frequent use of the teleportation ability to thin their numbers before moving further in. Teleportation seems to be a way to fire around corners (or perform other tasks) without taking damage. You send out a kind of spirit copy of yourself that doesn't take damage, but deals out as much as you have ammo. My problem with this teleport abililty is that it can't actually teleport your flesh and bones body. I did manage to get myself stuck behind a fence, and with the lack of actual teleport, and your Lennox's fear of climbing over barbwire, I had to restart. Level design issues like this probably will be weeded out in the finished game, but it did stick out as a problem when I explored the level.
The music is a decent rock soundtrack. For the most part, however, it was repetitive and intrusive during gameplay. It didn't help that the music always starts playing when you start fighting. I found I had to turn the volume down on the background music to be able to concentrate. As for sound effects and ambient noise, I wasn't too impressed. Sure, the sound effects themselves are fine: gun blasts, fire, and enemy speech are all of good quality. The problem is in how they are used. I could hear a person yelling "Show yourself!" through a brick wall as if he were standing right next to me. I was also thinking at first that I was supposed to be listening to the enemies' comments in order to determine how I should plan my next move. Alas, it seems they will shout something like, "Go, and check it out!" all day long, but only rarely will one of them "go and check it out." No, they will be on the same alert level no matter what they say they plan to do. In general, the only way the sound effects helped you was by telling you that "Hey, someone is standing near you."
Overall, Infernal looks great, and wins "cool" points with anyone who likes the Heaven vs. Hell scenario. Lennox seems to be leaning toward the demonic side with his hellish fire magic. This demo didn't explain any of the story or background, but it looks to be steeped in this type of lore. A good storyline could be the motivation for mastering the many necessary skills to advance through the game. Right now, Infernal is at least a good looking, fast-paced action game. For people who are fans of this type of game, that’s all the motivation you need.
-Fights with Fire, GameVortex Communications AKA Christin Deville
Related Links: Official Site for Infernal Playlogic Site
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