Infernal is an in-your-face demo of a game that’s all about kicking ass! Even the menu screen will kick you in the ass with your own face! In fact, the hero of the demo, the guy you play, is named Jake Asskicker. I know, it sounds like I’m making that up, but I’m not — that’s his actual name. Jake. Asskicker. I am not lying.

Yes, he does listen to a lot of Breaking Benjamin.

Okay, I’m lying. But you know the type, right? His hair is spiky, he’s got stubble, a goatee, a tattoo, he probably banged Lindsey Lohan just about the time when she started getting kind of repulsive, and he’s got that sort of wry growl when he responds to the overwhelming odds against him. “Looks like my weekend plans are ruined,” he might say detachedly as a fifty-foot mechodemon bursts through his dining room floor. Or, when forty armed terrorists sound the alarm and start firing their machine guns at him, he might mutter, “Looks like they weren’t expecting company.” That sort of thing.

Oh, holy crap. No lie, I just looked up his actual name and this time I’m not even lying: Dark Eaville. Jesus. Tell me Jake Asskicker isn’t a more subtle name than Dark Eaville. Someone got paid to come up with that name and I’m sitting here giving away gems like Jake Asskicker for free.

Anyway, as Jake Asskicker, you’re some kind of supernatural commando that shadowy government agencies are always hiring to infiltrate lairs filled with gun-toting hooligans, in this case, some sort of cybernetic monks. As is required in such situations, some dude directs you through your mission with instructions via earpiece. Your first enemy is a technomonk who is sipping coffee and talking on a cellphone.

Glad they called in a specialist to deal with the guy covering the front desk.

After you murder the monk, you’re instructed by your boss to suck out the monk’s soul. This will charge up your magic powers as well as give you ammo somehow. Jake Asskicker takes this all in stride. I’m not sure a) why he doesn’t already know that he can suck people’s souls out, or b) why, if he didn’t know he could suck people’s souls out, they waited until he was already on the mission to tell him. The ability to eat souls is not something you want to explain over a bluetooth. You really want to sit down in person with someone to deliver that kind of news. Especially if you may be called upon to suck out their souls through their buttholes. Really, right out of their butts.

That’s Jake Asskicker for you — he’ll kick your ass and then suck your soul out of it. Then he just might kick your soul’s ass! Your soul is having a terrible day!

Soul-sucking isn’t all Jake does in this demo — he can also set his own arm on fire and shoot people with it, and he possesses another unusual skill that is revealed upon entering a hallway with a laser beam security system. How will Jake get past the lasers? Lasers have no ass to kick! Confounded lasers!

As it turns out, Jake has the power to turn invisible — but only when he is doing a forward somersault. “Remember,” the guy on his headset says, “when rolling, you’re invisible.”

What the hell kind of power is that? How do rolling and invisibility even go together? I think everyone fantasizes about having the power of invisibility at some point, but would you even want it if it required you to roll around on the ground at all times? It sort of ruins the fun of spying on someone or sneaking around if you’re constantly having to hurl yourself forward, getting dirt in your hair and bruising your shoulder and being all red-faced and out of breath. That’s like being granted the power of flight but you can only achieve it by constantly doing jumping jacks.

At least the demo provides us with some quality cutscenes. Just check out the animation, voice-work, and plot advancement in this YouTube clip I uploaded. And the writing! My, that’s some convincing dialogue. If I were a cybermonk faced with intruder alert, I wouldn’t take chances either. I wouldn’t even risk taking chances. And I certainly wouldn’t gamble with rolling the dice on the risk of taking chances.

So, if you’ve been looking for a demo that’ll let you suck the soul out of a dead monk’s ass, you might want to give this one a try. Otherwise, I’d skip it. I’m sure there are some books on ass-kicking in your local library that you’ll find much more rewarding.

Not really as asskicking as you might expect.

]]>