I've openly bagged on Dante's Inferno for months. I've made comments that could easily be categorized as any or all of the following: dismissive, snarky, bitchy (assuming heterosexual men can be bitchy; I believe they can), pompous, nasty, bratty, cruel, and unnecessarily harsh. 

Asked by Joystick Division editor J. M. Zoss if I'd like to review it, I declined: "What's the point of writing one more awful review of the game?" I sniffed. 

(Keep in mind this was weeks before the game was even released. There hadn't even been a review written of it, much less an awful one.)

I had deemed the game horseshit the moment I heard of it; casting aside accusations of confirmation bias with a guffaw, every bit of Dante's Inferno news between announcement and launch only encouraged my suspicions. In the week prior to Inferno's release, I toiled away on an elaborate piece lampooning it; the possibility the game could turn out to be an interactive masterpiece and make all my work a waste of time never crossed my mind.

I know how this sounds. If I heard some game critic openly declaring his disdain for a game months before even playing it, I'd wonder if he was a narrow-minded blowhard. Or at least be curious to know why.

Well I can tell you why, if you want to hear me out. 

I love games, and gaming. Like Tarantino loves movies. I also see gaming as a legitimate medium that doesn't get the respect it deserves, a bit like rock n' roll a few decades ago, or comics before that. And while I'm not looking to nominate myself as its fulltime defender, I have that impulse. When gaming is attacked, I want to champion it - thoughtfully, truthfully, and effectively.

The flip side of this is: I don't like it when gaming proves its critics right. I think games can be mature, smart, relevant, and once in a while they can even be art. But that isn't the opinion of gaming's critics, many of whom view it as pretty much either murder porn or Wii Fit, with little in between. And while I'd never argue every game from now on has to be Braid so we can prove the bastards wrong, my worldview doesn't allow for games that are not only one-dimensionally bad but also vulgar and - to complete the trifecta - high profile. Those sorts of games, to put it simply, hurt the cause.

Taking one of the greatest literary works ever written and turning it into a kaleidoscopic orgy of blood and vaginae dentata isn't mere disrespect for a classic work: it's a fucking punchline for The Simpsons, with gaming as the butt of the joke - because of course gaming would interpret a nuanced masterpiece in that way. Of course it would, because that's what gaming is: insipid masturbatory snuff fantasies for antisocial adolescent males. Right?

This is what makes Dante's Inferno offensive to me. This is why I could dismiss it out of hand and sight unseen, irrespective of the game's triumphs or failings: because Dante's Inferno - good or bad, intentional or not - is a caricature of gaming, and as far as caricatures go it's a golliwog.

A gamer on a discussion board recently asked me (perhaps rhetorically) how Dante's Inferno as told by Visceral Games ruins Inferno as told by Dante Alighieri. My answer was it doesn't. The Divine Comedy will survive EA's clumsy fumbling at its bra strap. Dante's Inferno doesn't hurt literature. It hurts gaming.

Is this a rational, reasonable, defensible position? I can't answer that. I'll just quote Bill:

"I didn't say I was going to explain myself. I said I was going to tell you the truth." 

'Till next time...

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Gary Hodges is a freelance writer and artist who contributes to Joystick Division. And he's not always this grumpy.