Dante's Inferno - I saw it from a MILE away

[binary solo]

Well. Haven't EA just bought God of War in disguise to the XBox 360? How is that in any way a bad thing? Actually EA probably deserves bonus points for it. And in that respect Santa Monica and Sony should be greatful because 360 players who really dig the gameplay of Dante's Inferno might just feel the need to go get themselves a PS3 to continue the blood lust with GoW III. It's a win-win situation.

Imagine a review of the 360 version of Dante's Inferno banging on about how like God of War it is. Somone who's only ever owned XBox consoles isn't going to have a clue what the reviewer is on about, and unless the actual gameplay points are described the reader is going to leave not knowing enough about whether the game is for them.

Same for a 360 Darksiders review saying "it's not like God of War". Yeah thanks, real informative there dude.

In my book being highly derivative of another game is worth about 0.2 points off for not being original. If the game is worth playing on it's own merits (I thought the demo was good) then score it on it's own merits (at least for 95% of the score). You wanna make God of War your benchmark for excellence, that's fine, and probably a reasonable thing to do given you are working in the same genre you need some high, medium and low banchmarks to work from to pitch the review score right. But don't make the mere fact of similarity a significant point.

Besides, it has it's own points of originality, the absolution / condemnation thing is a good addition to the game play dynamic that has no parallel in GoW.

I'm no EA fan. The only EA games I'm contemplating getting are the Bioware games. But Dante's Inferno also looks to be an EA game I'd like. I do plan to get it eventually. But I do agree with the reviewers overall on 2 counts: I prefer God of War and Darksiders over DI. But not by as much as they seem to.