Thats what I'm saying, most games that lack originality aren't amazing, but "Good" if that.

Dante's is a special case when it comes to lack of originality...just check out 1up, and eurogamer reviews.

I suppose the same could be said for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or Shadow Complex being mere copies of Super Metroid. Metal Slug is nothing more than a Contra clone. Really though, what difference does it matter? It seems God of War fans should be the ones to enjoy this game, not trash it. It's like an extra dose and helping of the GOW franchise more or less. Why shun that? Do you really get enough GOW goodness that a little more feels like overkill? Hey I love God of War. It's my absolute favorite hack n slasher. If another team wants to make a game very inspired in design by God of War, then more power to them. I don't know if there are any plans to revisit God of War after the third, so at least there's a game with the same feel to it just in case this is it for the series. 

I would gurantee if Dante's Inferno was called "God of War 3" it's review scores would be much higher.

Probably higher then GOW3 if called Dante's inferno.

The problem with the game isn't quality.  It's branding.

There are.  The developers stated this wasn't the end of GOW.

Oh also...

Um....either way, Darksiders was recieved better by critics...It combined Zelda + GoW while DI is ONLY GoW...

oh and...

Eurogamer live interview

CaptainCortez asks: Lots has been made of how Darksiders borrows ideas, particularly from God of War and Zelda - and to good effect. But how much influence did those games actually have?

Joe Madureira: I think it's impossible not to be influenced by something that you've enjoyed, or that's made an impact on you or the genre. It's funny, because most of the time we would fire up God of War it would be to make sure we WEREN'T doing something that was too close. Trying to make sure that we were differentiating ourselves enough. If anything we took pains to move away from these games. The adventure structure of games like Zelda was at the core of our game design from the beginning, though.

The point is, critical review in this case doesn't have shit to do with the quality of the game, but instead the perceived opinions of the people who are reviewing the game.

The game could be BETTER then GOW3 and it would still be reviewed worse because of it's branding issue.

Hahaha ! DI doesn't have the mega epic scale that GoW does...God of War Collection is more grand in scale according to Eurogamer's Face-off article.

GoW 3 is a GOTY contender while DI obviously isn't...

You don't seem to be getting it. Eurogamer wouldn't have the same opinion of "epicness" were this game called GOW3.

There is a reason why companies pay money to color margarine yellow even though it doesn't change the taste any.