Previously known as Diabolique: License to Sin, the upcoming third person action game Infernal has gotten some media attention of late and last week FiringSquad got a chance to play a two level press demo version of the Metropolis Software title to play for ourselves.

Infernal puts you in control of a protagonist named Ryan Lennox, a man who used to work for the side of the angels, litterally. Lennox used to fight as a covert op for the forces of EtherLight, who are God's main army against the forces of Hell who have an army of their own the Abyss. However, Lennox apparently enjoyed destruction more and more in his job and that's a no-no if you work for the big guy upstairs. Lennox was kicked out of EtherLight and stripped of his God-given powers. Naturally this leaves him open for the Abyss agency to recruit Lennox into their ranks. The result is that Lennox joins up with the bad guys to fight against the forces of God. It's certainly not your run-of-the-mill storyline for a third person action game.

The two level press demo version we got to play didn't have these plot points explained to us. We just got to encounter Infernal's gameplay design and great looking graphics engine (more on that later). The over-the-shoulder third person viewpoint is how Infernal plays most of the time but there is an option to switch to a first person mode as well. There's a catch, though; the FPS viewpoint is seen through special goggles so they obtruct your vision. The goggles are mainly to find health and mana reserves in the game that might be hiddle otherwise.

The first level we played took place in a monestary where it looked like some monks with special powers and weapons didn't look happen to see Lennox roaming around their wine cellers. Lennox does have conventional weapons to use like pistols and machine guns but he also has special abilities like his Infernal attack. Controlled by the right mouse button, the special attack bascially charges up Lennox's right arm and fires a powerful red energy beam at their enemies. It's pretty devastating but its also fueled by the game's magical energy source mana. Luckly dead enemies have plenty of mana for you to use once you kill them. By pushing the use button, you trigger Lennox's right hand to drain both mana and health from your fallen foes. This causes the enemy's body to dissapear and you to get a special red energy charge all over your body. You don't just use mana for attack, however. There's also a special teleportation power that can be used to get to certain locations and dodge enemy attacks.

The second level in our Infernal press build took place in a multi-level warehouse where more conventional armed guards are seeking to take out Lennox. Some of the enemy's used flamethrowers at us and that's when we really became impressed with Metropolis Software' graphical effects for this game. The fire from the flamethrower was some of the best fire effects we have ever seen in a game, period. With flames that were not just bright but looked like they flowed around object naturally it was a bit of a distraction...until the flames reached our title character of course at which point our goal was then to take out the enemy who was burning us to death. Once you defeat him you can not only suck his health and mana from his dead body but take on the powerful flamethrower for Lennox himself to use.

As we have hinted, Infernal is looking to be a graphically impressive game with great looking visual effects for things like the Infernal attack as well as solid character models and lighting effects. The game uses AGEIA's PhysX game physics engine and Metropolis Software is clearly looking to use it to its fullest with lots of debris flying about from destroyed boxes, wine cases and more. While we don't have a PhysX hardware card, it's a given that people who do will get even more physics effects than the already impressive software version. Even the AI of Infernal's enemies is already well done in this early build with enemies ducking, moving to avoid fire and generally keeping us on our toes instead of just rushing in to shoot.

It's way too early to see how Infernal will turn out in the final product but our brief two level press demo certainly got us interested in what looked like was going to be just another typical third person action game. Recently the game's publisher Playlogic announced a delay in the game's release from this fall to the first quarter of 2007 and we think that should give Metropolis plenty of time to fine tune the game the way they want. Let's hope the final version of Infernal will fullfill its promise.

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