Xbox Game Pass features the so-bad-it-good classic Dante's Inferno

Movies get the moniker “so bad it’s good” all the time; the proof of this is in cult classics like The room, The cage, Super Mario Bros., Mac and me, Manos: hands of fate… etc. It’s fun ripping a silly movie with friends, maybe high if that’s your thing, since watching a movie is usually a rather passive activity. Video games, on the other hand, usually require input and even skill, and more often than not a bad video game gets its reputation due to unfair difficulty and poor design. The frustration of playing a bad game makes it difficult for any of them to qualify as “so bad it’s good.” And yet I’ve found the perfect contender for that description, and it’s even on Xbox Game Pass. It is a 2010 third-person action game by Visceral Games Dante’s Infernobased on the epic poem by Dante Alighieri, according to the loosest possible interpretation of the words “b ased on”.

The main reason I recommend Dante’s Inferno, despite its ridiculous plot and setting, is that even after all these years, the fight still feels pretty damn good. Its scythe-wielding hero and religious themes make it look like a perfect God of War replica. (Head combat designer Vincent Napoli left Visceral Games in 2010 to work on God of War games for Sony Santa Monica until 2018.) It even feels like a God of War. In fact, stringing together combos as Dante feels more satisfying and fluid than even modern God of War reboots – which is why I’m almost sad that this game never got a sequel. Instead, it went down in history as the black sheep creation of Visceral Games, the studio better known for the Dead Space franchise.

It’s probably for the best that this game never got a sequel because the storyline has gone completely off the rails. I mean, I understand that the premise of the various circles of hell seems to be tailor-made for video game levels (Hades did something similar, and quite well).

The scythe-wielding Dante stands tall as he faces Lucifer, a massive demon towering over him

But Dante’s Inferno takes some extreme liberties with its source material, which are far more fun once you’re familiar with the original poem. In case you haven’t read it, here’s the gist: The Divine Comedy is about Alighieri’s self-imposed character (who is named Dante) who goes on a guided tour of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Why is he even allowed to go on this tour? It doesn’t really matter; The setting is just an excuse for the author to make social commentary on various contemporary political and religious figures. He also becomes poetic about his crush on a dead idealized woman named Beatrice (she shows up for the Heavenly Tour), and he hangs out with the ancient Roman poet Virgil, who serves as the tour guide for Inferno and Purgatorio (but can’t get to Heaven , because he is a pagan).

The video game makes more than a few changes to this storyline. The protagonist’s name is still Dante, but now he’s a mega-muscled Knight Templar fresh out of battle at the Crusades. Beatrice is still dead, but in this universe she was Dante’s wife – and she didn’t go to heaven. Instead, she’s in hell, all because she made a deal with the devil (something you shouldn’t normally do). Before the events of Dante’s Inferno, Beatrice agreed to a bet with Lucifer that Dante would not cheat on her while he fought. Not only did he cheat on her, he did so with a Muslim prisoner of war who offered herself to Dante in exchange for the life of a man who turned out to be her husband. This husband tracks Beatrice down and stabs her in the back, which sounds like a bad day for Beatrice until you remember she already bet Lucifer that her husband would definitely not cheat on her. Virgil is also in the game and he is exactly the same.

These drastic changes to one of the most iconic poems of all time are hilarious enough, though Dante’s Inferno is just beginning.

Just before she is kidnapped by Lucifer, the completely naked Beatrice bemoans her decision to bet on her husband's fidelity to her

Beatrice wears a bustier and is surrounded by fire. She has become Satan's wife. When she meets her husband in the underworld, she berates him for his claim that he has faced all his misdeeds, telling him,

Instead of wandering around the afterlife making pithy observations, this version of Dante wields a scythe, which he uses to shred the naked bodies of demons and the damned. “The Damned” includes numerous knife-wielding babies, which I assume are there because of original sin? The “Gluttony” level involves inhuman depictions of fat people portrayed as inherently evil (they should have known better than to inherit the genetic propensity to carry more weight), and the “Lust” level is replete with genital inspired architecture and naked female demons whose attacks aren’t so much sexual as just disturbing. Speaking of disturbing, there’s a boss fight against a towering, naked Cleopatra, her nipples opening like mouths with tongues wiggling inside. You know, just in case you were excited to see boobs? Cleopatra’s boobs will make you feel guilty for ever getting excited about boobs in the first place.

Dante also meets many people in Hell whom he can forgive and send to Heaven for whatever reason. It’s not clear why Dante has this ability, nor why the absolution of these lost souls involves a rhythm-based mini-game with circular “sins” flying toward a cross in the center of the screen. This minigame sucks. And yet I gladly did it to pardon Tiresias, who had been sentenced to hell for gender differences.

The ancient Roman poet Virgil introduces himself as Dante's guide through the circles of Hell, and he plays the role with as much solemnity as in the Divine Comedy

The game comes pretty close to an equal opportunity offender. Even the straight white male protagonist is portrayed as a total Jagoff, both for his loving wife’s cheating and for participating in the Crusades (which the game portrays as unethical and far from fair). Beatrice manages to be both a virtuous damsel in distress and Satan’s consort, and in the latter role it’s an open question whether she’s enjoying it in any way. If I had to pick someone to do best in this game, it would probably be Virgil. I mean, this guy just swings.

I downloaded Dante’s Inferno on Xbox Game Pass as a joke after years of wondering what might happen in a game based on it The Divine Comedy. I didn’t expect to have a great time fighting the entire game and laughing out loud at the utter absurdity of its super-edgy 2010 video game machismo. It’s a glimpse into another time – a time I’m glad video games have left behind, not least because I never want to see a tongue coming out of a massive nipple ever again. If you can manage not to throw up, you’ll laugh—and you’ll even learn some history. By that I mean the history of what B-games looked like in the early years. Not any story about it The Divine Comedy.