Infernal Hands-On Impressions

Previously known as Diabolique: License to Sin, the upcoming third person action game Infernal has gotten some media attention of late and last week FiringSquad got a chance to play a two level press demo version of the Metropolis Software title to play for ourselves.

Infernal puts you in control of a protagonist named Ryan Lennox, a man who used to work for the side of the angels, litterally. Lennox used to fight as a covert op for the forces of EtherLight, who are God's main army against the forces of Hell who have an army of their own the Abyss. However, Lennox apparently enjoyed destruction more and more in his job and that's a no-no if you work for the big guy upstairs. Lennox was kicked out of EtherLight and stripped of his God-given powers. Naturally this leaves him open for the Abyss agency to recruit Lennox into their ranks. The result is that Lennox joins up with the bad guys to fight against the forces of God. It's certainly not your run-of-the-mill storyline for a third person action game.

The two level press demo version we got to play didn't have these plot points explained to us. We just got to encounter Infernal's gameplay design and great looking graphics engine (more on that later). The over-the-shoulder third person viewpoint is how Infernal plays most of the time but there is an option to switch to a first person mode as well. There's a catch, though; the FPS viewpoint is seen through special goggles so they obtruct your vision. The goggles are mainly to find health and mana reserves in the game that might be hiddle otherwise.