I recently starting playing Dante's Inferno with the intention of reviewing it. Despite my displeasure with the marketing campaigns surrounding this game, the lure of exploring a digital version of hell was too tempting to pass up.

I am a very cautious and methodical gamer, and I typically use as many save slots as the game will allow. After about two hours, I realized that this game was very linear, with not much room for choice or exploration. Consequently, I broke with my usual tradition as I did not see much point in cluttering up my limited storage space with useless saves. I didn't realize at the time how much of a mistake this would be.

I continued playing the game at what I thought was a decent pace. After five hours or so, I judged that I was roughly 30% finished with the game based on my knowledge of the original literary source. Then I came upon the puzzle that would soon be my undoing.

The puzzle consists of two levers, two ledges, a spiked door, and a moving, spiked platform. The first ledge is blocked until you pull the first lever, and the rest of the puzzle consists of jumping, pulling levers, and timing your moves correctly so as to not get smashed under or between spikes. My first few tries were not successful.

Retrying this puzzle was slightly more annoying than most of the others I had faced so far because you need to collect an important item on the first ledge. I quickly got tired of taking the time to grab this every time I died, so I thought it would be more conducive to my sanity if I were to pick it up, save my game, and then continue my efforts.

After doing so, I returned to the puzzle and promptly died again. Instead of restarting in the same room, I found myself at the save point which was a few rooms back from the puzzle. This was odd -- and a little annoying -- but I was determined to push forward.

After I made my way back, I discovered that the first ledge was again blocked, but I was no longer able to pull the lever to clear the path. The game refused to let me interact with the lever in any way. At first, I thought this was no big deal, and I could fix it if I just reloaded my saved game.

Alas, it was not to be. Initial annoyance quickly turned to dismay when none of my efforts fixed the problem. I was completely stuck, and the game afforded me no way to progress any further. The only other save I had to fall back on would erase hours worth of progress.

A quick Google search followed by a visit to the EA forums informed me that I was not alone in experiencing this bug.  EA's official response was a terse three-sentence reply that simply stated "We are working on a patch" and instructed players to "Try to have multiple save files in case you encounter this bug."

This advice is a tad bit useless after the bug strikes, and, quite frankly, just makes me more annoyed. People tend not to visit tech support forums before they actually have a problem.

After giving myself a day to cool off, I've resumed playing the game and I progressed past the point that I previously got stuck at. A full review will be coming soon, but my overall opinion is certain to be tempered by this experience. If you happen to pick this game up, please don't make the same mistake I did. Save frequently ... and in different slots.