By now I bet you’ve been wondering, “Where the hell is Abraxas anyway?” Well, the simple truth is I got called in for a special job or two. That’s right, you’re old pal Abraxas got called up for a black-ops Beta Test for two different games. The reason they phoned the Monkey Labs and asked for me? Well, I’ll just quote “So our game will suck less.”

Now, the NDA prevents me from reviewing the games just yet, but, trust me- both of these games will suck less because of my involvement. Also, I didn’t want to play any of the end of summer movie tie-in games. I hate movie games. They all suck. I know that just saying they generically suck is a bit like being a 12 year-old on youtube, you know, posting on a video “UR gehy and U suk.” But, hey, they suck.

This weeks game: Infernal, Hells Vengeance. Infernal is published by Playlogic International and developed by Metropolis Software. Originally for the PC, it has been ported over to the Xbox 360.

Right off the title lets you know this game is a early 90’s fanboi fantasy about being from Hell and being all badass. The game starts of like a fanfic story you’d find a some forum. You’re some angel dude that got fired or quit or whatever from Heaven’s Detective Agency. You’re hanging out with some hot chick, drinking espresso, and wearing her underwear on the patio of your penthouse suite when Heaven’s Swat Team shows up to kill you.

I guess Heaven needs a detective agency and doesn’t like it when you quit so they send SWAT teams after you. Instead of, you know, an omnipotent God just waving his hand and wiping you from existence. But then why would an omniscient God need a detective agency? And, even if the SWAT guys killed you, wouldn’t you go to Hell anyway?

Think about this: one of the rules from the big guy is, “Thou shalt not kill” yet the Angels are whacking people left and right all the time in the Old Testament. How many first-borns died in Egypt, anyway? So, if an angel dies wouldn’t they be forced to go to Hell even though they were killing in the name of Heaven?

As you can see, the game story is breaking down and we haven’t even made it through the tutorial yet. I blame Todd McFarlane and Spawn for this kind of crap. I really do.

Anyway.

That goes on for a bit. Frankly, I wasn’t paying attention anymore. I was having a hell of a time using the “cover system.” The controls for Infernal were basic, only a few buttons on the controller were used but over all they were like two old people having sex.

You know, slow and sloppy.

You would not believe how hard it was to aim and pull off a face shot. In the game. Not with your grandmother. That’d be easy.

Back to the controls. It’s a standard setup of look with one stick and move with the other, shoot with this button, jump with that button, and crouch with the other. Nothing surprising or unusual. Or all that interesting. While the aiming can be fine-tuned in the options menu, it still is sloppy and never really works well. The diving mechanic is overly touchy and will often go off when you only meant to move forward. The cover mechanic is easy to set off, you’ll stick to a wall like glue, but you won’t be able to move off of that wall anytime soon and when you do get off it, it throws you right into the lanes of fire. I guess you could say the cover mechanic works well at getting you killed. So, good jorb there.

Back to the “story”. And, I use that word lightly. After you’ve killed Heaven’s SWAT team, you escape to New Orleans to talk to a cliché Voodoo guy that works for the Devil. Or Hell, or whatever because it is poorly explained. He gives you some lame flame power that really doesn’t do anything neat and sends you to the Swiss Alps to kill Heidi.

I surmise that what was I was supposed to do, as it’s the only reason I could think of that you would be in New Orleans in one scene and then in a Swiss Alps farm in the middle of winter a second later.

I should add, the whole board in the Alps depended on you going into a chapel to find a locked door. Except I said, “Wait, I’m like a demon now so I can’t go on hallowed ground! I’ll just avoid that and go in this farm house instead. Hey, what’s this computer terminal doing in a house made from stone in the middle of the Swiss Alps and why does it say it’s unlocking a door? What stupid door is that? Screw this, I’m gonna go kill the farmer outside.”

So, yeah, I spent a good 30 minutes wandering around a small farm in the mountains trying to find ways to kill the farmer. You couldn’t put a bullet in his head as the game wouldn’t let you pull the trigger in his direction. Which, to me, brings the question, “What the hell is the point of being a bad guy?”

In my game, guys who work for the Hell Detective Agency whack Heidi’s goat and her grandfather right in front of her and leave her to starve on the farm in the middle of winter. You know, she might even have to eat the goat and maybe grandpa to survive a few days until the storm breaks and she can make it to the nearest neighbor. Not fuck around in the snow looking like Euro-trash in a leather jacket, a turtle-neck sweater, and a few tattoos. No, let’s be a mass murdering psychopathic destroyer of lives! BuwahahahahahAHAahaahHAhaHAHAahahahah!

Hah. Ahem.

Eventually I found my way into the church, and I had to sit through the craptastic dialog that told me to unlock a door I’d already unlocked before I could go through the unlocked door. It also told me some lame crap about losing my infernal powers while being on holy ground and how I’d have to commit “sins” to recharge that power.

“Sins? Really? Are we talking a sliding scale here? Like, the worse the sin the more of a charge I get or is it flat rate?” I was ready to flay the skin of the backs of newborns for parchment and use the blood to create binding oaths for people’s souls level work, but the game really meant you get a energy meter refill at a flat rate when you kill a gun wielding NPC and absorb their body after-wards. No, you can’t shoot anyone else. Or flay skin.

Which, if shooting people is the same thing you were doing as an agent of Heaven how could it be that sinful now? I mean, either the act itself is a crime, sin, or not. If murder is modified only by the person who is doing it, then it’s really the person that is the sin and not the act. So, anything an agent of Hell would to could be construed as a sin. Like, ordering espresso. So, really, even opening the door should recharge your energy bar.

I don’t think the writers thought about this long enough.

After that little bit with the door, I broke into a Monastery basement where the troops of Heaven were developing an ultimate weapon- no, I don’t get why they’d need one either but they were making one. From there I got a new weapon in my arsenal against Good. The “up-grade” from the piece of crap pistol I’d been stuck since the tutorial? A shuriken.

Whoa- hold me back! A shuriken to replace my pistol. ,b>Wow. They must have spent months in development for this idea. I mean, I haven’t seen anything like this since the original Ninja Gaiden game back in the 80’s. Good job guys, you totally recaptured that 80’s sidescroller action game feeling.

I should mention the monastery was on the other side of the locked door of the church. Apparently churches are hallowed ground but monastery’s that develop ultimate weapons are not. Frankly, I felt that I was actually losing braincells at this point from oxygen deprivation because I was drowning in stupid.

So, I move through the board with relative ease. There’s some vague puzzle thing they have going on about needing a key from one room to open a door from another, but I really wasn’t paying attention. It was very boring and business-as-usual for a shooter game. The part that got my attention was the part where you had to sneak across a beam to go from one door to another- no I don’t get why either but the game leaves you no choice- anyway, I am sneaking across the beam when the crap control steers me off the ledge to the ground 6 feet below.

And I died.

I thought, “Wait, that can’t be right. I know I jumped from a higher distance before. Yeah, I jumped off the balcony at the farm to try and land on the farmer’s head to kill him. That was at least twice as high as that.” So, I reloaded the game and got to that spot again. This time I jumped off the ladder that got me to the ledge and landed on the ground with only a few points of health lost.

Then I got up on the ledge and moved out to the middle. And jumped to the same spot I had landed with the ladder jump. And died. From the same height as the ladder.

Apparently, ledges are instantly lethal to the minions of Hell, but ladders are not. Which, I guess was the ultimate weapon the monks were working on. While having a ledge 6 foot off the ground being capable of killing anyone that jumped from it is an interesting choice in ultimate weapons, I think it’s a bit limited in its application.

Seriously, how many people can you sucker into jumping off it before the jig is up? How many battlefields can you find in need of ledges for troops to sneak along? Can you carpet bomb with ledges?

Anyway, after finding the super lethal ledge I stopped playing. I really couldn’t bear crap like that any further. Arbitrary falling death is lame and should not be encouraged. Ever.

At this point I would like to paraphrase Mark Twain: Metropolis Software, what you have created is both interesting and creative. However, the interesting parts are not creative and the creative parts are not interesting.

I would like to do that, but I am not going to because Infernal: Hells Vengeance is neither creative or interesting. Crap dialog drives a lame story that pushes you through uninspiring boards filled with repetitive enemies that are made difficult only by the sloppy game controls.