Today we are going to take a look at Infernax. This metroidvania promises to show you lots of gore in an old-school pixelart action platformer where nothing will be given to you for free. Infernax is available on Steam for 19 Euros and 99 cents or your regional equivalent.
With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.
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We are used to the fact that modern games often pay tribute to their inspirations. Often to the classics of their genre that have now been celebrated for decades. Infernax is different. It takes inspiration from the well-known Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest. It – similarly to the second Zelda – decided to take a bit of a detour from what gamers loved about its predecessors and both the series were forced to quickly go back to their roots.
From your first look at the game, you will see that Infernax breathes 8-bit air. Its art style is great pixelart even if it is limited with its tribute and color palette. But this doesn’t take away anything and it is worth experiencing. The hero is full of details and liters of blood drip from him after every battle. Altogether, Infernax doesn’t skim on blood and it needs to be said that violence is part of its soul. Everything is brutal, disgusting, and perhaps even a bit scary at times.
For the vast majority of the game you will be using your trusty mace to smash zombies, skeletons, and these flying eyes you will quickly learn to hate. Just a tiny mistake and a single touch of theirs sends you uncontrollably towards the water meaning instant death. Especially in the third dungeon where you are constantly balancing on spinning gear. It was precisely this third dungeon that broke me. You need to realize one thing. Infernax is a hard game. But not because of the combat as it can actually be handled quite easily. Even the good number of bosses and minibosses aren’t that hard. The true difficulty lies in how much platforming you need to do and how long the areas you need to pass are before you are allowed to save again.
The classic difficulty truly is classic. The game gets saved only when you visit a shrine where you can also upgrade one of your three basic stats – attack, health, and mana. And once you die ten screens further down the road everything you worked so hard for is gone. All your XP, all your money. It’s just gone. I managed to pass through two of the dungeon on the classic difficulty but in the third, I will admit, I switched to being a filthy casual. And just that addition of a single alter in the middle of the dungeon was a blessing. After I beat the level and found the mausoleum with the Game Wizard I quickly fell in love with the 99 lives cheat. Yes, I’m not ashamed to admit – I used cheats to beat the game. Otherwise, I would have not seen the final screen. The platforming itself was fun but having just three lives and being forced to repeat it all was just too much for me.
But back to the game… The main gimmick of Infernax is a large number of available endings. Plenty of moral choices await you and you will get your choice of whether you will do good or evil. And the best ending isn’t available without finishing almost all quests that are in the game and some require you to get quite clever. And the story itself fits the game perfectly and the bits of humor sprinkled in are awesome. And if you wish to be evil then you will get rewarded with lots of brutalities.
Conclusion
Infernax is just an homage to good old games where the length of the game didn’t lie just in how long does it take you to finish if you play perfectly. Luckily, thanks to cheats and the casual mode even those among us who don’t have the patience get to experience the good old time when games were hard.