I've stopped wanting for games to be funny. People, sure . . . I still like funny people. Game designers, though, don't generally give the impression that they're funny people. With a few notable exceptions (Steve Meretzky, The Apogee Guys, maybe a couple more), the dudes who write scripts and jokes for computer games just don't do a very good job. The industry is overrun by lame puns and overused clichΘs. There ARE some multimedia titles that are truly funny, like the Monty Python and Bill Plympton discs from 7th Generation, but I can't find any games that make me laugh like those did. We need Jerry Seinfeld and Matt Groening to get into the game biz. Or something.
What we certainly DON'T need are more games like Ocean's Inferno, a bizarre space shoot-em-up with enough cinematic cut-scenes to warrant an Oscar nomination for "Worst Supporting Game." You fly, you shoot, you return to base for further orders. Unfortunately, it's the "returning to base" part that's most gratifying, and that should tell you something right away. This is not Wing Commander. This is not Flight Simulator. This is not a dream.
Can Inferno really be THAT bad? Well, no, although it comes pretty close. Ocean calls this game an "epic flight sim that'll take you and your PC deeper than you've ever gone before." The first part is wrong. Inferno is not an epic anything, nor is a flight sim. It's a first-person shooter that controls like a flight sim. You've got your targeting sights and your autopilot and your nav computer and your complex "every key does something" keyboard layout and all that stuff, but I doubt you'll stay hooked on Inferno long enough to take advantage of each of them. I couldn't. Heck, the first couple times I played, I couldn't even find anything to SHOOT at. This was entirely my fault, as I accidentally flew in the wrong direction for a good five or six minutes before my "handy" on-board computer informed me that I was heading the wrong way. It's almost impossible to tell where you are, and the controls (whether you use a mouse, joystick, or keyboard) are so touchy that precise steering is equally hopeless. Unless, of course, you switch on the autopilot, which I did WAY too often. I've never been good at flying planes, and flying banana-shaped spacecraft using a mouse is way out of my league. So, I had some of the more proficient "sim guys" around the office try Inferno, and they needed the autopilot too. Yuck.
If you leave Inferno on long enough (which I don't recommend for health reasons), you'll see one of the many animated scenes involving you and your chief commanding officer, who appears to have a human head and a refrigerator for a body. Using rendered graphics instead of live actors, these scenes are actually quite entertaining and feature semi-realistic dialogue . . . reminiscent of the kind you hear on Star Trek. Inferno was developed in the UK, and most of the voices have heavy accents. While the cinematics in most games are nothing more than meaningless eye candy, Inferno's clips are worth watching for a few reasons: One . . . they look and sound pretty cool, at least until your character starts spewing forth some "humorous" quips. Two . . . they relay your mission objectives clearly and directly, and since your ship's computer seems to be missing some critical parts, you may want to write down what you're supposed to do. Three . . . they give you something to do OTHER than play the actual game, which is irritating and boring at best. Maybe Ocean should've just bagged the action sequences and marketed Inferno as a multimedia title or (dare I say it!) an interactive movie. This game COULD be turned into a winner . . . they'd need to completely overhaul the flying interface so the player actually felt like he was piloting a spacecraft. As it stands now, Inferno's gameplay mechanics are so bad that I had to shut my computer off in frustration. Good games don't make you do that.
