Improving upon the most boring character in the history of world literature, Electronic Arts is going to release an action game called Dante’s Inferno.  From the looks of the preview, this version of the Dante character is much more interesting and capable than the literary original who is the main character in the Divine Comedy trilogy consisting of the epic poems called Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.  Author Dante Alighieri wrote himself into his epic poem as a rather stolid, questioning dullard who follows the ghost of Virgil around in hell.  He whines about all the people who did him wrong in life and coincidentally runs into almost all of them during his sour-grapes tour of Satan’s domain.  But this video version of Dante kicks some smokin’ butt.  This is the Dante I’ve been waiting for and I am going to relish using my Xbox controller to stomp around and cut the heads off some nasty devils and repentant sinners.

It’s probably best to at least read Inferno before playing so that you can agree with me on how to improve the irritating main character.  But I will credit Mr. Dante Alighieri with one major achievement: he seems to have invented multi-level game play.  His version of hell is a series of rings that descend toward the most terrible of sins and punishments.  That’s pretty much the definition of modern computer gaming.

Here’s a chart of Dante’s hell by Barry Moser: